Teen Titans #9

Rogue Targets Part 1

Will Pfeifer Script
Kenneth Rocafort Art
Dan Brown Colors
John J. Hill Letters
Bengal Cover
Scott McDaniel & Tanya Horie Joker 75th Anniversary Cover
Special thanks to Tom King
Paul Kaminski Associate Editor
Mike Cotton Editor
Eddie Berganza Group Editor

Our main cover shows the Titans fighting over Superboy. Beast Boy and Chimera are trying to pull Kon away from Power Girl, Klarion and Kid Flash. Sadly, for some unknown reason, Rocafort did not draw this cover, and I think it kind of sucks. The characters all look really bland and slightly off. And the cloudy sky background makes it seem like Beast Boy is flying in the air, when he can't — unless he turns into a bird. Also, Superboy and Beast Boy do not wear those outfits in this issue.

Look at this! DC is putting their variant covers with their digital comics again! Unfortunately, this is another bland, disappointing cover. The background is a giant Joker face with some blood splatters and playing cards floating around. And completely unrelated from that, is Raven, Wonder Girl, Beast Boy and Red Robin standing in a boring, generic pose. It honestly feels like it was thrown together at the last minute. "Wait? You want a Joker variant for Teen Titans, too?"

Our story picks up from the Sneak Peek with Wonder Girl and her team still unable to locate Superboy, who isn't just wanted by S.T.A.R. Labs and Manchester Black, but by the whole world, basically. Every news station is reporting Superboy as a mass murderer, and even though Chimera thinks Kon should stay in their new Chicago penthouse apartment for safety, Red Robin thinks it's fine to let Superboy burn off some steam by flying around the Windy City in his old Tron uniform.

Tim is almost immediately proven wrong, as Superboy decides to save a woman from a crashing train. This not only creates a surge in police and public reports, but a wave of energy that S.T.A.R. Labs is able to track. So Manchester Black interrupts his team's training and has Wonder Girl, Power Girl, Klarion, Guardian and a girl named Trinity teleport to Chicago. Kid Flash chooses to run there himself instead.

Superboy has naturally already fled the scene of the train crash by the time Wonder Girl's team gets there, but Kid Flash has a handheld device that lets him track Superboy's energy and calculate his destination. Klarion teleports the team right to the front door of the Titans' penthouse. Kid Flash says he wants to get his hands on Red Robin, but Wonder Girl reminds him of their mission. She tells everybody that the Titans are still her close friends, so she asks them to let her do the talking. And then she punches the door down.

This story is kind of a mess. There are too many characters to keep track of, and I can't believe how Kid Flash was so casually inserted into this story without any explanation whatsoever. He seems like Bar Torr, wearing the old uniform Static Shock made him. But Cassie is calling him Bart. And Rocafort and Brown are making him look like a young Wally West. I guess that's a throwback to the pre-Flashpoint days when half of the artists at DC presented Bart as Wally. Sigh! I just hope we'll get some questions answered soon.

We have two DCYou house ads:

We're not sidekicks. We're an army! Are YOU ready? We Are ... Robin.

Man vs. Machine. Are YOU ready? Cyborg.

On a two-page spread showing nine of the new DCYou comics, Dan DiDio writes a note, in which he falsely claims that DCYou is a bolder step than the New 52. He is correct in saying DCYou is creating stories of different tones and styles, but this reboot is nowhere near as bold as the New 52 was.

We also have an interview with Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner about the new Starfire series.

Next: Wonder Girl vs. Superboy!