Teen Titans - TV Tropes (2024)

You know something's wrong when Deathstroke is leading the Titans.

In hindsight, from their tower the Teen Titans should have been able to see these Dork Ages coming.

Teen Titans

General agreement is that the first decline occurred after George Perez left. This sent a number of shockwaves throughout the book, including a huge increase in Wangst, Deathstroke being Easily Forgiven, and the introduction of the much-reviled Danny Chase. Then came the long, difficult-to-follow Titans Hunt arc, and the book began self-destructing, with a ton of uninteresting and/or unlikable new characters being introduced, loads of 90s clichés, chaotic storytelling, and art, and tons of Ass Pulls. After Cyborg got Put on a Bus to Hell, the book was left in shambles, with the team constantly changing and being interrupted by crossovers. By the end, many felt the ending to the run was a Mercy Kill. However, many fans consider Roy's era as the leader of the Titans as a positive time, especially with his father figure dynamics with Rose Wilson, the second Terra and Grant Wilson (to the point of helping him with coping with the trauma from past sexual abuse), Kyle Rayner and Donna Troy joining the team as powerhouses, as well as managing to bookend the title in a way that felt respectful to the legacy of the title.
While divisive for its approach to the Young Justice characters, Geoff Johns' 2003 relaunch of the series was largely well-received in terms of direction. Unfortunately, after Infinite Crisis, Johns' plans for the book went down the drain due to the one-two punch of Superboy's death as a result of legal disputes with Siegel and Shuster's estates and Bart Allen being given a Plot-Relevant Age-Up and then death due to plans to bring Barry Allen back in the Flash. This left the book directionless for years after Johns left, and the series bounced between various writers with inconsistent creative direction and ideas (including an infamous story where a demonic Wonder Dog killed Marvin and crippled Wendy from the Superfriends and was later killed himself by the Titans, leading to backlash from comics sites), characters holding the Jerkass Ball, and the unstable team roster. It didn't help that the mid-2000's is when the Titans as a whole were made into DC's main supply for C-List Fodder in events, making the tone all the more dour. Things did eventually begin with stabilize with the possibility of both Damian Wayne and Irey West joining, only for that to be Cut Short by the New 52 and abandoned.
The New 52 Teen Titans is considered one of the weakest titles of the reboot, even among Scott Lobdell's other panned works from the same era. The first arc failed to leave a good impression on readers, as the plot haphazardly tried to cross over with six other books, and the lead characters had core personality traits ironed out to almost In Name Only level^note . Later plotlines excessively focused on fight scenes to the detriment of character development, which also contributed to a convoluted and inconsistent narrative where the Titans didn't feel like a team or even like friends. Lobdell seemed to understand this and tried Revisiting the Roots by reintroducing Beast Boy and Raven to the team and making them battle actual Teen Titans villains like Trigon, but the book only dug itself deeper. This, mixed with the uncomfortable sexualisation of minors or barely legal teens, very bland villains, and bizarre attempts to incorporate traits from Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol make this era of the team one of its most infamous.
Will Pfeifer wrote largely forgettable stories trying incredibly hard to be "relevant", with the social media side of things amped up and characters being unlikeable, a huge amount of focus on Creator's Pet Manchester Black, and tons of continuity issues with the previous run. When Lobdell was brought back, Pfeifer had to rush whatever he had planned and just ended up dumping most of it. The series then limped along with some fill-in writers (who wrapped up some lingering plot threads) until the DC Rebirth relaunch, which ignored the majority of the New 52 era while also making fun of it in-universe.
Teen Titans (Rebirth), like its sister book started strong, but quickly fell apart afterwards. The main problem ended up being the portrayal of Damian, who ended up being written as a huge jerk who treated his team like crap and yet was never really reprimanded for it. Even beyond that, the team, being largely whoever was available from the Wolfman/Perez run or their legacy versions, felt extremely stale and unable to develop as a group, with attempts to develop a bond between them being composed of characters quite literally explaining their character and motivations to others and then just becoming friends out of nowhere and never developing beyond that. The stories were pretty much regurgitations of prior runs or incredibly basic concepts and the book kept getting tied into crossovers that developed the stories of other books, leaving it utterly directionless. Sure enough, the run ended as a result of DC's Justice League: No Justice Crisis Crossover, with Promoted Fanboy Adam Glass becoming the new writer and everyone besides Damian and Wallace getting dumped.

Titans

Everything in Titans (1999) after Devin Grayson left. While her replacement started off relatively strong, a bizarre case of Executive Meddling by editor Andrew Helfer (who wanted to push a team of random runaway orphans as the main characters) caused a huge amount of planned storylines to be tossed away, with the replacements making very little sense with the prior set-up. This, combined with an infamous story where Jesse Quick slept with her mother's fiancé, left the book in shambles by the time Helfer left, and it was left dragging its feet until it was canceled.
Titans (2010), a retool of the 2008 run, featured the baffling decision of retooling the Titans into a team of mercenaries composed of various villains and anti heroes, something nobody asked for and was near-universally despised. The team was lead by Deathstroke the Terminator, reduced to an irredeemably evil psychopath who treated everyone around him like sh*t (Now granted, Deathstroke has been portrayed like this before but here he wa supposed to be at the very least somewhat likeable). Any attempts of sympathy for the team, however, immediatly ended when in their first one shot where they murdered the second Atom and mailed his corpse to Giganta, and everything just went downhill from there. The actual comic reads like something straight out of The Dark Age of Comic Books with distasteful gore and violence, everyone being miserable and unsympathetic (More often than not unintentionally), tons of Wangst, bad attempts at shocking (Most infamously Cinder burning off a guy's penis with her vagin*) and extremely poorly handled attempts at treating complex topics like grief, drug addiction, suicidal ideations or sexual abuse. It's cancellation was soundly celebrated.
Dan Abnett's Titans (Rebirth) run. The series started off strong, with a focus on the friendship between the characters and the return of Breakout Character Wally West. However, the huge mishandling of Wally West and Donna Troy that seemed to fundamentally misunderstand parts of their characters, awful romance plots that went nowhere or were unwanted or poorly executed, Conflict Ball elements that existed for no reason (especially when the Justice League show up to basically be huge assholes for no reason a few times) and plots that felt straight out of the 90s all led to a title that nobody but the most diehard fans liked. The handling of Donna Troy is especially despised for, against all odds, reigniting her Continuity Snarl by being beholden to her despised New 52 incarnation, in a relaunch where writers seem to be encouraged to scrap what they dislike from that era. The only positively received aspects were Donna Troy's relationship with Roy Harper and the implication of a past history between Roy and Cheshire (because it leaves the door open for Lian Harper's return). In the end, the series was cancelled, and Abnett even apologised in-universe for his handling of Wally. Unfortunately, attempts to shift the book into a new focus in the aftermath of Justice League: No Justice did not quite pan out. The book lost the majority of its cast to other titles and was forced to replace them, becoming tangled in the stories of other titles. The new direction didn't resonate with fans, leading the series to be cancelled not long after.

Individual characters and titles

Beast Boy: New 52 Beast Boy became an almost In Name Only version of the character, down to losing his signature green skin, in an attempt to tie Gar to the Myth Arc from Jeff Lemire's Animal Man (2011) and Scott Snyder's Swamp Thing ^note. His past with the Doom Patrol and the New Teen Titans also disappeared, and the attempts of giving him a new characterisation, such as a friendship with Bunker or making him a bit of a New-Age Retro Hippie fell flat on its face. Teen Titans (Rebirth) managed to revert most of this and bring back the old Garfield Logan, and Beast Boy's ties to the Red have been downplayed ever since, much to fans' delight.
Cyborg suffered a substantial one in the New 52 era when DC attempted to promote the character to A-List as a core member of the Justice League (Geoff Johns, who wrote the Justice League run featuring Cyborg, also incorporated him into Flashpoint presumably to test the waters on whether he would be successful as an A-Lister). Not only was the decision highly controversial among fans for erasing both the role of the Martian Manhunter and his relationship with the Teen Titans, but Vic's actual personality, role and relationships were all left severely diluted, with little attempt to integrate him into the League's dynamic outside of a token friendship with Shazam in the latter half of Johns' run, leading to accusations of tokenism from DC to promote a black character. Zack Snyder would make Cyborg The Heart in his Justice League film as a way to fix this when adapting the same material. Varying adaptations around the same time also perpetuated this depiction throughout the 2010s to the point of it becoming his default portrayal among mainstream audiences, seeming to popularize him in this role, to the point that DC League of Super-Pets still featured him as a core Justice League member long after DC's push for him in the comics as one would end. Despite this, Vic wouldn't receive a solo series until 2015, and, while David Walker's run gained some praise, his Rebirth book was widely accused of re-treading the same stories over and over about his lost humanity without actually committing to building him up, all while he continued to function as The Generic Guy on the Justice League. It wouldn't be until 2020 and the publication of Dark Nights: Death Metal that Vic's relationship with the Titans would be finally restored.
Raven: During the 90s, Raven was brought back to life as an evil spirit in a Stripperiffic costume so she could crash long-time awaited wedding between Nightwing and Starfire. What followed was Character Derailment at its finest: She put the Titans under mind control and turned them into her slaves, with the implicationt hat she also raped Changeling (Or forced him to cannibalise someone, who knows?). This was a plan to put "Trigon's seed" inside new bodies, but aparently the "good side" of Raven implanted herself inside Starfire and she was later able to gain her own separate golden body, with which she was able to reduce evil Raven to ashes. It was so confusing that everyone collectively agreed to ignore it.
Starfire: The New 52 version of Kory appearing in Red Hood and the Outlaws is universally considered the lowest point of the character. Firstly, she now has very short attention spans and frequently forgets thing, including her time in the Titans^note, something so controversial that was later retconned. Her already skimpy costume got somehow even skimpier to the point of parody, which combined with the weird poses she made through the comic made her look goofy or weird instead of sexy. It didn't help that she was implied to be much more casual about sex (Also retconned due to its dodgy implications), which lead many to claim DC was trying to turn Starfire into hornybait. Her personality also changed from The Heart of the team and someone bubbly and smart to aloof, cold and who served little more than muscle to Jason and Roy Harper. Other unnecessary changes to her origin was as having been traded into slavery by her own sister or a brief fling with Jason Todd. Starfire (2015) fixed a lot of these issues by giving her a more sensible outfit, making her naïve and cheery again and hinting at a possible reconciliation between her and Dick Grayson.

Teen Titans - TV Tropes (2024)

References