Young Whippersnappers

Teen Titans #50

Most of this issue seems to be dominated by the Titans sitting around and reminiscing about the recently-dead Bart Allen. As such, the plot seems pretty darn thin, because we’ve spent the last month or so watching DC’s characters mourn Kid Flash. What makes this issue cool is that large chunks of it are written and illustrated by people who have helped make cool “Teen Titans” comics for the past 20 years, including Marv Wolfman and George Perez (creators of the classic mid-1980s “New Teen Titans”), Geoff Jones and Mike McKone (from the most recent incarnation of “Teen Titans”), and Todd Dezago and Todd Hauck (creators of the slapstick “Young Justice” series).

The problem is that seeing all that awesome artwork by Perez, McKone, and Hauck just serve as reminders that the art team on the current book doesn’t do anything nearly as cool as all the stuff that came before.

It’s also pretty disappointing that they essentially ripped off John Rogers, writer of the “Blue Beetle” series, by reprinting seven whole pages of plot and dialogue he did in the last issue of his series without crediting him. I don’t know if that’s just an unbelievably clumsy oversight or an unbelievably rude snub.

Verdict: Thumbs up, almost entirely for the chance to revisit the great Titans teams of the past, because this current set of creators don’t seem to have the chops they need.