We are off the rails here, people. We are through the Danger Zone. Forget everything you thought you knew about Teen Titans and prepare yourselves for ultimate dissatisfaction. Everything I have ever complained about with Teen Titans has come home to roost. We are through the looking glass so hard that my hyperbole machine is going to crash. Wow. This is a terrible comic book, but it almost feels par for the course for Teen Titans. Not since the horrors of Harvest and N.O.W.H.E.R.E. has this series been so bad.

Teen Titans #19

Everything I have hated about this comic is here in this issue. Terrible characterization, clunky, obvious exposition, characters and villains who come out of nowhere, an almost painful lack of subtlety; this one is off the chain.

Comic Rating: 1/5: Terrible!

This comic is bad from page one. It’s one of the most chaotic and leaden comics I have ever read. This is supposed to be the big, New 52 introduction of Trigon, but I couldn’t have imagined it being more mishandled. Trigon was one of the big bads in the pre-reboot continuity. He was one of the Teen Titans’ biggest enemies. But now he’s just pathetically wasted. There’s nothing new or interesting about this rebooted version of Trigon. Any mystique he used to have has been stripped away. The new Raven had a bit of mystery as well, but that is cruelly torn from her with this new issue.

There’s maybe one or two good things about this comic, and I’ll mentioned them in the synopsis, but they seem like flukes. Or they have more to do with different comics, which doesn’t help the Teen Titans much at all.

This is the worst possible version of the Teen Titans I could have imagined going into the New 52. The characters are poorly defined, their relationships are underdeveloped, they spend 90% of their time in costume playing superhero, the villains are terrible, and the comic has little to nothing to do with the DC Universe as a whole. I’m probably most disappointed in that.

But we might as well get to it. Join me after the jump for a full synopsis of this crapshoot.

We open with a smash cut back to the end of last issue. You’ll remember that Evil Red Robin made some kind of deal with Amanda Waller, then he and the Titans just sort of walked away from Bell Reve prison. They apparently wait until they are back on their yacht before Wonder Girl gets angry enough to confront Red Robin for setting them up against the Suicide Squad.

And while she attacks Red Robin, the rest of the Titans gather around to deliver the clunkiest exposition imaginable.

So how many recent plot points did they cover?

What do you have to say about all of this, Bunker?

Thank you for clearing that up. He should change his name to Captain Bunker Obvious…or something more witty.

So the Titans demand Red Robin give them answers, but he’s evil now, so he tells them that he doesn’t owe them any explanation. He saved them, he put this team together, and if they don’t like it, they can just leave. He doesn’t care about them, and he storms off. I think Evil Tim Drake is my least favorite Titan out of all of them.

Before the Titans can follow him or even bother with this storyline anymore, they notice that the sky has turned red. Then Wonder Girl’s armor freaks out, and she realizes that this means Trigon has appeared on Earth. But how does…oh right…she got her armor from an ancient ruin that bore Trigon’s name, back when I thought Trigon was going to be quietly seeded into Teen Titans and built into something amazing. I didn’t put it together at the time that Wonder Girl’s armor would be linked to Trigon.

So you got me there, Teen Titans. You can have that one. On me.

Superboy awkwardly tells Solstice what he knows about Trigon before we cut to the big bad himself, attacking New York City in a scene that is much more badass than he got last issue.

Why can’t all horses have three heads?

And then the issue actually surprises me. I mentioned earlier that there are a few good parts to this comic, and here’s one of them. Do you remember that white-haired moron who has spent the past two issues using his brain to kill people? Well it turns out this guy is Psimon, from the Fearsome Five! I did not see that coming!

That’s two.

Granted, he’s still a douchenozzle with few redeeming qualities at this point. But here is an instance where Lobdell actually does a good job creating a villain. Rather than just throw the entire Fearsome Five at us one day, it looks like he might actually be taking the time to build them up. We’ve seen Psimon walking around for two issues now. I thought he was just one of those stupid, one-off new villains Lobdell has vomited throughout his Teen Titans run. Instead, it looks like he might actually be building to something more!

I am legitimately interested to see how else Lobdell might build up the Fearsome Five. Though if I’ve learned anything from reading all 19 issues of Teen Titans, it’s that he’ll probably mess it up in the end.

So Wonder Girl shows up and she knocks Trigon around for a bit, and then the issue gets it’s second good moment. Trigon seems to have the power to look into the pasts of our heroes, and we learn that Wonder Girl never knew her father. And who is her father?

It’s freakin’ Lennox! From Wonder Woman! Holy crap!

Now that’s a twist. We’ve been wondering all along if Wonder Girl would have any connection to Wonder Woman, and here it is. Kind of an offhand way to reveal the twist, but I’ll take it! Lennox is a pretty cool dude over in the pages of Wonder Woman, so I kind of like that Cassie is his long lost daughter. As I wrote earlier this week, Wonder Woman is one of my favorite DC comics these days, so this would actually be kind of awesome. Plus it makes Cassie Wonder Woman’s niece.

But this raises one of the problems I have with Teen Titans: it doesn’t feel at all connected to the rest of the DC Universe. Here are a bunch of kids living on their own playing superhero, and some of them are blatantly stealing the names of other, more famous heroes. But nobody cares. The Justice League definitely doesn’t care.

Though now that I actually write out that thought, I realize that nothing in the New 52 really feels connected to anything else. The Wonder Woman who appears in her solo title has nothing to do with the Wonder Woman who appears in Justice League. The Tim Drake who shows up in the Batman titles has almost nothing to do with the Tim Drake of Teen Titans. This is a problem I’ve always had with the New 52: DC had this chance to design their universe how they wanted. They could have lined all of their ducks up in a row, created a real hierarchy of characters and teams from top to bottom, but instead, nothing feels connected to anything else. And that’s a damn shame.

So anyway, there’s fighting and punching, and Kid Flash is running. Red Robin shows up and asks for intel, and everybody is happy to work with him now. Wonder Girl mentions calling the Justice League for backup, but as I just said, that’s not about to happen. The fight is just getting started. There’s much more chaos to come.

For example, how about we randomly bring Beast Boy into the comic?

Why the hell not?

What does Beast Boy have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing, but let’s bring him in anyway! The Ravagers crashed and burned as a series, and we get a little awkward exposition to explain why Beast Boy is randomly unconscious and lying in rubble.  But he has very little to do with the Teen Titans, and no reason to be showing up in an issue about Trigon.

How can we make this worse? Let’s randomly drop Raven into the mix and throw away everything that’s so far been established about her mysterious character.

Weren’t they in a cartoon once?

Let’s see, so far, Raven has been the dark, mysterious daughter of Trigon living down in Hell. But now, it turns out she’s a beautiful woman, is free to travel up to Earth and, for no reason whatsoever, has an interest in Beast Boy. Why? What possible reason could there be to team up Beast Boy and Raven at this point? In this comic?

At least Raven’s mask is still awesome.

We cut back to the fight against Trigon, and he complains that the people of Earth have only sent children against him, once again pointing out how disconnected the comics are. Trigon is pretty strong, and he messes around with the Titans, which leaves Red Robin wondering why Trigon doesn’t just finish them off. Why is he toying with them? What is he really after?

Kid Flash attacks, and Trigon reaches into his memories to reveal that he was on trial at some point in the future, wearing a green and yellow Flash costume.

Hideous, hideous costume

Bart Allen being from the future does not interest me. I know that’s always been his origin, but couldn’t they have done away with that complicated origin in the rebooted universe? I guess not.

Meanwhile, Solstice tries to make friends with Psimon, but he’s all angry piss and vinegar, ready to seize power. And then Raven and Beast Boy show up, and Beast Boy turns the lower half of his body into some kind of tentacle monster, grabbing up the Teen Titans. Then some random soldiers show up for a single panel, hidden in the shadows, and tell everyone to surrender. Psimon kills the soldiers and faces off against Beast Boy and, well, it’s all pretty chaotic. And somehow, it just ends.

We go from this scene:

Notice that none of the Teen Titans are involved

To this one, instantly:

I guess they were just standing by and watching

What? Excuse me? One can turn into animals and one can control minds…how the hell did their powers cancel each other out? Their powers don’t have anything to do with one another. That should not have happened.

But it did, because the fight had to end somehow, so let’s move on. Red Robin shows up and all of a sudden he’s sad about all of the dead soldiers, who were only trying to save the city. So I guess he’s not Evil anymore? At least not in this moment. And then Superboy asks Raven if this was her father’s plan all along – EVEN THOUGH HE HAS NO IDEA WHO RAVEN IS!!! He’s never met her before, none of them have. And nobody has called her ‘Raven’ at any point in this comic. And she only once mentioned that Trigon was her father in the midst of battle, did Superboy overhear that? Why the heck is he talking to her so conversationally?

I just can’t take it anymore

Once again, Lobdell has thrown away everything he’s built with Raven so far in favor of nothing. All of a sudden, everybody knows her and everybody’s happy to just chat with her in the wake of this tragedy.

Ugh, this comic is terrible. The characters are skin-deep and they spend the issue bumbling around playing at superhero. Red Robin bounces from evil douchebag to concerned hero at the drop of a hat, and remains unlikable in both roles. Beast Boy comes out of nowhere and is randomly, pointlessly teamed up with Raven, who likewise blows all of the mystery she’s had so far. Trigon is just a big, giant evil demon, acting like every other big, giant evil demon that has ever come before him. The dialogue is weak. The exposition is clunky. Almost everything about this comic is terrible.

But by my count, there are three good things: the introduction of Psimon, even though he’s a total asshole, the reveal that Lennox is Cassie’s dad, even though I don’t think will affect the Wonder Woman comic, and the art by Eddie Barrows.

Seriously, Barrows draws the hell out of this issue!