Holy crap, you guys, I actually liked Teen Titans Annual #3! I fully expected an explosion of horror and bad writing. But damn if Scott Lobdell doesn’t pull one out in the end. I would like to think, that over all these long years of me writing Teen Titans reviews, that you readers have come to trust my judgement. Or maybe you’re finding my blog for the first time and don’t know what to believe. Perhaps you, like the rest of us, just wanted to see how the final issue of Lobdell’s Teen Titans would turn out. I’m happy to say–no, ‘happy’ isn’t the right word. I’m…comfortable saying that Teen Titans Annual #3 isn’t the train wreck I thought it was going to be.

Teen Titans Annual #3

In his final issue on the series he introduced to the New 52, Lobdell manages to go out on a high note, so he’s got that going for him, which is nice.

Comic Rating: 6/10 – Pretty Good.

Two things make this final issue pretty good: focus and teenagers. This Annual features the return of Harvest, the villain that technically brought the Teen Titans together at the start of the series. He was a bad character then and he’s a bad character now. But it’s clear from this issue that Lobdell had intended to stretch this story out across several issues. I would bet dollars to donuts that he had always expected to get around to this story, and he never intended it to be only one issue long. But time makes fools of us all, and here is is cramming everything into a single, oversized issue. On the one hand, it sucks, because there are a lot of themes and moments here that would have benefited from a little room to breath, like his attempts to flesh out Harvest’s character and motivation. Predictably, they’re terrible. But maybe Lobdell could have done something more with them. Of course, that’s a big maybe.

On the other hand, forcing Lobdell to rush through this story keeps the focus of the issue tight. I can’t say that the story is all that good, but at least it doesn’t meander and he doesn’t have time for all of his worst traits, like he did in the recent space story. The whole adventure is over and done with in a single issue, and, again, it wasn’t half bad.

As for the teenagers, Lobdell actually takes the time to treat his characters like real people. The first half of the issue, or at least the first few pages, are the Titans out of costume talking to one another about the future of the team and their duty to try and stop Harvest. This was the #1 thing lacking from Lobdell’s Teen Titans: real, human interaction. Had this series regularly contained even an iota of what we see in this issue, maybe it would have been good. Of course, this is still Lobdell’s Teen Titans, and we quickly leave that human stuff behind, but while it’s there, it’s enjoyable. I can say that with conviction.

We also get our first look at what Kenneth Rocafort will be like on art duties. There are times it looks good and times it looks bad, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what he really brings to the table.

Teen Titans Annual #3 finally brings to an end Scott Lobdell’s horrendous comic. It was all mostly bad, but in his final issue, he wraps the comic up nicely, fixes a few mistakes and hopefully hands the thing off to some much better creators. Join me after the jump to finally put a cork in this sucker.

We open with one of those stupid ‘flash-forward’ teaser tropes, where Red Robin sits among the fallen bodies of his teammates 8 hours into the future and records a message to some unseen recipient about how the Teen Titans tried their best. Believe me when I say this is just a dumb tease and Tim’s dialogue doesn’t line up at all to the actual scene later in the issue.

What a whiner

It lasts a couple pages, with Tim talking about trusting someone he shouldn’t have, while speaking to a mysterious man in the shadows. It’s dumb, just dumb. This trope has overstayed its welcome in all of fiction, as far as I’m concerned.

Eventually, we get to the present, where Tim is lamenting the loss of the Titan’s yacht after it blew up at the end of last issue. He hopes Bruce Wayne doesn’t mind that it blew up, but they probably both knew it would happen. Though if I’m remembering correctly, I’m pretty sure the Titans lived on that yacht for less than a week, so it’s no big loss, really. It was a cool idea at the time, but Lobdell never had the Titans spend any time on the darn thing.

Cassie shows up and she and Tim share an actual scene of human interaction, one of only a handful of such scenes in the entire length of the series. It’s well-written and well-drawn. This is one of those pages that I like from Rocafort. Though this is also indicative of my biggest complaint about Rocafort: see the background? Yeah, there is none. That’ll be happening a lot.

Do kids dress like that? Being 30, I have no idea…

The two of them share a nice moment thinking about the successes and failures of the Teen Titans, and really, overall, this issue does kind of a nice job of summing up this version of the team as a whole. Though they don’t do or really say anything about their budding relationship, the one thing I actually liked from Lobdell’s Teen Titans.  Of course, this is still Lobdell, so their pleasant conversation is interrupted by Skittles delivering the plot. Robin had her searching the wreckage of the yacht for anything that survived, and she found a computer that just happened to be tuned into any mention of Harvest and N.O.W.H.E.R.E. out in the world. Tim sees that it has found Harvest again, so it looks like they’ll need the Teen Titans for one last mission!

An hour later, everyone is meeting at a Chinese restaurant to discuss this matter. Raven is one of the last to arrive, and she stands outside the restaurant looking in and wondering if she really belongs. It’s real, legitimate human drama stuff, especially when Bunker finds her and they chat a bit more. Bunker reveals that he, Robin and pretty much everybody had already figured out that Raven only joined the team at Trigon’s request to take over the world. They made their peace with it and were kind of just keeping an eye on her. Raven is touched that her friends would forgive her intentions so readily, and she gladly joins Bunker inside.

At the table, Tim tells everyone that Harvest has set up a new Culling in Africa and is being so blatant about it that Red Robin figures it’s a trap. Harvest wanted to be found and wants the Titans to come.

Bunker mostly looks bored

Look at that picture for a moment. Study it. Let your eyes gaze across the various characters who make up the Teen Titans, one of the most popular superhero teams in all entertainment. Do they look like teenagers? Do they look like young superheroes who may be in a little over their heads, but are willing to fight anyway? Do they look like a cast of diverse, potentially interesting characters?

A thousand times yes!

This may be one of my favorite panels in this entire accursed series. This is a good cast. Some of these are great characters. A great comic book could be made from these people.

Fortunately, character was the one thing lacking from Lobdell’s series, so most of these characters are more or less intact. They are not yet lost. Hope remains.

Moving on, the Titans suit up and prepare to head for Africa. They teleport there thanks to the return of Danny the Street, the sentient, transgendered street.

Like all sentient beings, Danny likes dragons

Danny the Street is an invention of Grant Morrison’s, so ’nuff said. He was a Titan way back at the beginning before Lobdell sidelined him. Now he’s back to provide convenient teleportation.

Danny brings the Titans to the new, idyllic Culling sanctuary.

Yep, Harvest totally has the resources to build this in a matter of weeks

The Titans are confused when a bunch of former dead kids from the original Culling show up alive and well, including Omen and Artemis – so thank God Lobdell cleaned up that mistake. Do you remember when he introduced and then killed Artemis in only a few pages in the first Teen Titans Annual? Remember how Artemis was a main character on the popular Young Justice cartoon at the time? Only to be killed off in her first New 52 appearance? I still don’t know what kind of blatant insanity allowed that to happen. But Lobdell brings her back…long after Young Justice was taken off the air.

Because to hell with logic.

Artemis and a few other previously dead kids tell the Titans that someone named ‘The Colonel’ had the technology to heal them and remove their powers. Now they’re all living nice, wonderful lives here in this place. The Titans head inside and Red Robin is brought in to see the Colonel, who turns out to be a really old, decrepit man, who turns out to be Harvest.

Who turns out to be Tek Jansen

And herein is where Lobdell tries to add some depth to Harvest’s character, even though, in my opinion, someone with a costume like that is incapable of handling any sort of depth. He looks like a bad ’90s X-treme character, the sort of character who would appear in the background of a Lady Death comic, when that series’ only selling point was ‘boobs’.

Harvest looks ridiculous, but out of costume he’s an old man who tells Robin that he’s changed his mind. He no longer wants to save the future from metahumans by killing the younglings, he wants to use future technology to simply take away their powers so that they never become a threat. He set up this new place to take their powers and give them somewhere nice to live. He wants to offer the Titans the same paradise, free of super-powers.

Red Robin then delivers a brief summary of his superhero career, so pay attention Tim Drake fans, this is kind of an important puzzle piece in figuring out his New 52 backstory.

Behold your New 52

Not sure why Robin thinks he has blood on his hands, but whatever.

I hope I’m not the only one disappointed by the fact that apparently Tim stopped being Batman’s partner in order to track Harvest and N.O.W.H.E.R.E. These are terrible characters and concepts, and to think that they now hold such an important place in the history of the Teen Titans leaves a bad taste in my mouth…and some kind of grumbling diarrhea vomit in my stomach. How this now lines up with the original history of how Tim stopped being Batman’s partner is beyond me. Did Bruce Wayne still get Omega-Sanctioned in the New 52? Do we know?

Anyway, the Titans meet up later to try and decide if Harvest is telling the truth. Some think he is, and some think he’s lying through his teeth. Raven is monitoring the situation and teleports the Titans into one of Harvest’s labs, where they find a giant, glowing DNA helix.

Because why not

Could it be all of the collected super-powered DNA of the resurrected kids? Probably!

The DNA helix suddenly turns into a set of hands and starts attacking the Titans.

At which point, Skittles engages in the most hideous form of comic book storytelling imaginable: narrating her powers.

That’s just gross

Ugh. This is a hideous stain on an otherwise alright issue. This type of narrating – where characters bluntly just say what they’re doing with their powers – went out of style in the 80s and 90s. Nobody does it anymore. Nobody except Christ Claremont and apparently Scott Lobdell. It’s like running into a brick wall. Also, if she’s spitting out that webbing, how is she able to produce such an eloquent monologue about said webbing? It’s best not to think about.

The massive hands grab some of the Titans and Beast Boy turns into a T-Rex, smashing his way through them and the nearby wall.

And it’s here that the teaser from the beginning picks up. Beast Boy has smashed through a wall and the Titans are strewn about…but I hardly think they’re in a position for Red Robin to declare them all sacrificed, praying that whoever gets his message can pick up where they failed. They all just got knocked out. Way to be overly fatalistic Red Robin.

Anyway, Harvest is revealed to be the shadowy figure from the start of the issue. He put his ugly demon costume on again, and he monologues about how he and Red Robin are the same, how they both want to control metahuman powers. But Red Robin tells him that the Teen Titans were never about control, and how Harvest is an idiot, because his attempts to stop teenage metahumans led to them forming a whole team of them.

Harvest then proceeds to throw a big hissy fit.

And I didn’t think he could get any lower

Then his armor promptly explodes in a flash of pink, and Robin again awkwardly and bluntly just narrates how a character used their powers.

Not that the art is all that clear

Elsewhere, Raven is using her soulself to defeat the giant green DNA helix, because why not. Then the Titans beat feet and the place blows up for some unexplained reason, with old man Harvest caught in the blast.

The Titans then stand around and hope that this is the end of Harvest, and by all that is holy in this universe, I hope they are right. I know comic books are all about bringing back villains even when it appears they’ve died, but if we never see Harvest again it will be too soon.

Though Lobdell also takes a moment to try to sum up what he was trying to do with Harvest, basically having the Titans explain that Harvest really did think he was doing the right thing.

He was a swell guy all along

Yeah, sorry Lobdell, but all of that is too little too late. Harvest is no Magneto. He has zero sympathy. And I’m fairly certain you are the only human being on the planet who likes him. Lobdell was clearly in a rush to get all of this Harvest stuff out before the end, and clearly nobody cares.

After that, we begin a little epilogue where the not-so-dead Superboy narrates what happened to each Titan after the battle with Harvest. Apparently Superboy isn’t dead, but is serving as a herald for some kind of cosmic being. I have no clue. It comes out of nowhere. There’s no reason why Superboy should even narrate this segment other than, I guess, wanting to squeeze him into the final issue.

The epilogue isn’t really that great, and it doesn’t contain any surprises for any of the characters. Cassie went back to being a thief, and is now both roommates and BFFs with Raven. I’m not sure what Bunker and Beast Boy do, but it involves taking the money offered to them by the Green Team to start something called ‘Spectacular Internationale’. Your guess is as good as mine. The single panel they show offers no clues, just Bunker pointing to a blank screen while Beast Boy and a few shadowed figures look on. We also get another quick look at Kid Flash and Solstice, who are still doomed to a life in prison on some far away planet. She murdered a judge, so that’s probably where they belong. And Skittles went to work for S.T.A.R. Labs in Metropolis.

Also for Tim Drake fans, he apparently went back to join Batman…even though though Batman is kind of a dick about it.

Holy passive aggression, Batman!

Also, this scene is the exact opposite of how the two characters interact in the pages of Batman Eternal this week. So take that as you will.

The issue ends with a montage of the team’s greatest hits, and a few wrap-up statements from Superboy, ending with a one-age spread of the team standing together declaring, “We were Titans.” You know, the good stuff like that.

And with that, we close this comic forever.

What is there to say about the New 52 Teen Titans? This issue, for one, was pretty good. I liked the real, human interaction that Lobdell injected into the start of the issue, and I liked how his lack of space forced him to focus down on the rest of the story, keeping it light and tight. Harvest is a particularly bad character, and everything he did in this issue was generally terrible, but the Titans saw a problem, took care of it and the day was saved in the end. Lobdell also fixed a few wrongs, like bringing back Artemis and Danny the Street, and overall I think he managed to at least sum up why his version of the team got together and what they mean to one another. I know I’ve been hating on this series pretty hard over the past nearly three years, and it deserves it, but at least the final issue wasn’t so bad. That’s worth something…right?

Well the series as a whole was worth nothing. Teen Titans has been a mess in the New 52. It’s a stain that should quickly be forgotten. The team stands for nothing and has amounted to nothing because Lobdell favored frantic action scenes over even the most basic human interaction. The Titans were always rushing off to the next villain or the next conflict, never taking a moment to just slow down, relax and talk to one another like real people. These characters were never real people. They were never friends, teenagers or anything other than short superheroes stuck in a 90s-esque rush to action. That sort of storytelling just doesn’t fly in modern comics. In this day and age, we want depth, we want meaningful relationships. We want to read about people, not cartoon characters.

The biggest sin of the New 52 Teen Titans was that it treated the characters in its comic book as only characters in a comic book.

Very little effort was ever made to strengthen any familiarity or bonds between the characters, be they friendships or relationships. Lobdell tried to throw in some depth here and there, but it was only ever done with flashbacks and backstory, never in the moment. And most of the cast had very little reason to come together or stay together. From issue #1, it always felt like this was the chosen roster for the New 52 Teen Titans, so this was who was going to show up in the book and be Titans. Very little effort was ever made to bring this group of kids together naturally. And in a reboot like this, where all of the characters’ histories were wiped clean (essentially), there needed to be a bigger effort at making this team into a family. There was a lot of potential to explore these kids coming together to form the Titans in the New 52 landscape, but that potential was never seized.

Lobdell was too busy sending the Titans up against ludicrously lame one-off villains like Grimm or whoever the heck that garbage-looking guy was in issue #2…or was it #3?

Lobdell’s Titans had so many weird quirks. Random villains was one of them, with bad guys just thrown into issues here and there as if he thought we didn’t have attention spans and couldn’t handle a talking heads issue. Why write meaningful dialogue between Red Robin and Bunker when you could have them fight some random super-villain? Lobdell also had a terrible habit of cutting away to one-page teases for future villains, most of which will now amount to nothing since the series has been cancelled. He would just stop the action and show us a completely unrelated scene, with the promise of some future appearance, but now they’ll never come to pass…which is probably for the best.

Teen Titans was also burdened by storylines cutting away to other comics, also seemingly at random. Superboy’s presence was always determined by his solo series, so he would pop in and out of this comic at random, depending on what he was doing over in Superboy at the time. And remember that guy Lance? Was his name Lance? The mercenary-type who somehow had the power to turn Solstice back into a normal girl? He showed up in Teen Titans just to tease her before being literally called away in panel to appear in Birds of Prey…THEN HE NEVER RETURNED TO TEEN TITANS! What the hell was that about? The series was plagued with that sort of insanity! There were editors’ notes by the truckload telling us to go read some other comic, but I had zero interest in touching any of those other comics because the New 52 is largely toxic.

And finally, Teen Titans suffered from just bad writing. The art was usually OK, but the writing was just flat most of the time. Lobdell brought a bald, blunt sense of spouting exposition to most characters’ lines, be it through stated dialogue, thought bubbles or random narration boxes. The series never could decide which it wanted to focus on. Characters would explain what they were doing while they were doing it, a practice, like I said, that ended decades ago. Lobdell would constantly have the Titans recite the plot or their motivations in the moment. It was all dull as doorknobs. When he did put focus on the Titans as people, like he did at the start of this issue, those scenes were actually good! The problem is that I can count the number of those scenes in one hand across 30+ issues.

I could spend all day ranting about the flaws of the New 52 Teen Titans, but I don’t have to. This volume is over. In a few months, a new writer will come along and try to polish up this turd of a comic. Will he succeed? I don’t know. I could also rant all day about the intrinsic problems within the New 52 as a whole that might never lead to a good Teen Titans comic. But ain’t nobody got time for that. And thankfully, we never have to put aside time for this comic anymore.

Thanks for reading.

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