I never thought I’d be happy to see the regular Teen Titans again. But after the horrors of the Teen Titans Villain Month comics, I say bring on the regularly scheduled programming, as awful as it may be! And Teen Titans #24 is pretty awful. Not terribly awful, I suppose, but pretty darn awful, nonetheless. This week, Teen Titans focuses on its horrible, stilted expositional dialogue, with an overabundance of thought balloons, because writer Scott Lobdell isn’t aware that those went out of style with fanny packs and the word ‘radical’.

Teen Titans #24

Teen Titans #24 kicks off a time travel adventure for our teen heroes, because why not? It is decidedly not radical.

Comic Rating: 4/10 – Pretty Bad.

For those of you who aren’t reading Forever Evil, the Teen Titans almost had a moment of awesomeness. Almost. Written by Geoff Johns, arguably DC’s best writer, the Teen Titans were some of the few heroes who hadn’t been killed or de-masked by the Crime Syndicate. So Red Robin told his team to gear up! They were going to have to save the world and take on the Crime Syndicate themselves! It was legitimately awesome. But when the Titans actually attacked the Crime Syndicate, they came up against Johnny Quick (Evil Flash) and lasted all of three minutes. The Teen Titans, everybody. Rather than some glorious fight, Quick simply unraveled Kid Flash from time and sent the whole team hurtling into the time stream.

Because that’s how things work, obviously.

So that’s where we are: the Teen Titans are lost in the time stream, bouncing wildly through different points in time. Don’t worry if you don’t understand it, Lobdell freely makes up a bunch of jibber jabber to explain it and then promptly has all of his characters spout his explanations, as well as every important facet of their personalities and back story. Lobdell gets everyone up to speed on Teen Titans in the most hamfisted, achingly dull way possible. But such is the modern Teen Titans. Despite all of the creative shakeups and changes the New 52 has seen in the past two years, Scott Lobdell on Teen Titans remains steadfast. J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman walked off Batwoman, but Lobdell still holds Teen Titans in his icy death grip. Sometimes the universe just isn’t fair.

Also, if you haven’t heard, DC is going to randomly kill of Superboy in a few months. So sorry if you were in any way invested in the New 52 Superboy.

With a helpful editor’s note telling us to go read Forever Evil #2, Lobdell kicks things off with Red Robin magically and improbably figuring out exactly how he and his team are bouncing around the time stream. On the one hand, how could any character possibly understand how the time stream works? On the other hand, Red Robin was trained by Batman (and is arguably his greatest pupil), so of course Batman knows how the time stream works. Duh.

Red Robin explains his theory to a past version of Bunker, in a time period shortly after Bunker’s boyfriend fell into a coma. So I guess Bunker does get to stay in the book…technically.

Robin is kind of a jerk while time-traveling

Lobdell also takes the time to tie up the (apparent) loose end of why Bunker randomly jumped onto the same train car that Red Robin was riding all the way back in Teen Titans #2. Because apparently that needed explaining, and only time travel could explain it.

God…or Scott Lobdell, I suppose

OK, so, see if you can follow along here. Red Robin has been lost in the time stream for who knows how long. He randomly comes out in Mexico face-to-face with Bunker five days before they first met. Red Robin is able to figure out that the Titans are landing on time “touchstones”, as if that were a real thing, and that in this instance, he has to tell Bunker to meet him on that train. I know Tim Drake is super smart, but he was really able to figure all of this out in the five seconds he was in that church with Bunker? Also, did Bunker’s arrival on that train really have to be explained? I’ll admit it was hardly the cleanest introduction of a character, but did Lobdell really need to explain it with a time-traveling sidekick?

I’m not in any sort of mood to go back and read Teen Titans #2, but if Bunker in any way acknowledges this scene in that issue, I may have to take back some of the mean things I’ve said about Scott Lobdell.

But ain’t no one got time for dat! We have to go to Ancient Egypt, where the queen of the Sunturians is speaking to her invasion army composed of both tanks and Sunturian Centurions! It seems they want to conquer Earth! But Red Robin is already there and he looks at his watch, somehow able to predict/know that Superboy and Wonder Girl are about to land in that time as well. How does he know this? Nobody knows! But he quickly tells his teammates that they have to defeat this army before they are sucked back into the time stream, since obviously the Sunturians didn’t take over the world 2,300 years ago. Then Robin is pulled back into the time stream separate from them.

Superboy and Wonder Girl get to work beating up soldiers they just met while explaining their back story to each other.

When Red Robin says “Punch random people!”, they answer, “How hard?”

And on the next page, that’s apparently over! The battle lasts all of those two panels before we are taken to a grand view of all the Titans floating through the time stream, which is represented by dozens of floating squares/monitors showing off moments from their history. The narration politely explains that they are lost in time, basically letting everyone know what’s happening, because they really, really hope you understand.

Lost in the time stream, randomly popping into important events in history; we got it.

Next, Kid Flash and Solstice pop onto a spaceship sometime in the far future. Kid Flash instantly recognizes the ship from his own past and rushes off to find the past version of himself. If you don’t understand, don’t worry. Kid Flash’s thought bubbles fill us in!

Worst. Super speed. Ever.

While we’re here, the art by Angel Unzueta is mostly fine in this issue, except for that really awkward shot of Kid Flash running. He looks like he’s power-walking with a sprained back.

Kid Flash eventually finds his former self, and for some strange reason, he’s blonde and doesn’t look anything like Bart Allen.

So does this mean Kid Flash dyes his hair?

Weird. But beyond that, we also learn Kid Flash’s great crime: he sabotaged a ship full of soldiers, killing them all, in order to save/liberate his people. Sounds kind of heroic, but he’s also kind of an asshole about it when Kid Flash and Solstice try to stop him. Kid Flash doesn’t want Blonde Bart to go through with it, specifically because if he does, then Kid Flash says will never see Solstice again – but that doesn’t make any sense. I assume Bart only ends up in the past, where he meets Solstice, because of the crime he commits. So Blonde Bart has to commit this crime to ensure that Kid Flash exists in the past, right? Shouldn’t that be how it works? What does Bart think will happen if he stops Blonde Bart from killing all these soldiers? It doesn’t matter, though, because they get sucked back into the time vortex and we leave Blonde Blonde for another day.

Speaking of other days, it’s back in time for us, to Raven fighting Etrigan in the middle ages. Then Wonder Girl shows up and snaps the Demon’s neck like it ain’t no thang.

It doesn’t matter, his series was cancelled

Wonder Girl then explains to Raven that Red Robin has figured out a plan how to stop this time kerblooey: he wants Raven to grab onto teach of the Titans with her soul-self and act as an anchor. While Wonder Girl is explaining this, we get a glimpse of Superboy visiting a Teen Titans team in the future. This would be a cool opportunity to look at a future version of the Titans, but artist Unzueta really flubs it up with uninspired, uninteresting character designs.

Behold the creativity of slightly different costumes!

And no explanation for why they are attacking Superboy. This could have been a cool moment, because everybody likes alternate future versions of their favorite characters, but absolutely nothing of note comes from this scene. Maybe the fact that they’re hanging out on an old oil rig? But really, that’s nothing. Total wasted opportunity.

Anyway, so Raven grabs onto the Titans, which is exactly what she and Trigon wanted. So basically Lobdell came up with a Deus ex Machina that solved the time stream problem that also helpfully set up the next part of his Raven/Trigon storyline. How convenient.

And apparently, to further confuse the flow of Teen Titans, this story is going to conclude in next week’s Teen Titans Annual #2, rather than in Teen Titan #25. It’s more than a little confusing, but I’m going to stick with it because I’m just that sort of dedicated kind of guy.

I’m also the kind of guy that likes modern day comic book writing. I like decompression, I like characters being treated as people first, superheroes second. I like logic and grounded stories. Teen Titans is none of these things. Teen Titans spends no time whatsoever building up its characters into people. They’re just comic book characters who go on weird comic book adventures, which they explain to themselves and to the reader every chance they get. Lodbell rose to prominence in the 90s, and his style is still very reminiscence of the 90s. Teen Titans has no heart.

Twenty-four issues into the series, has anything noteworthy or memorable even happened to this team? Do any of them have personalities to speak of? Or relationships that are worth reading about? Is there any drama whatsoever within the team itself?

Or are they all just colorful superheroes moving from one uninspired adventure to the next? Hey! Let’s send them bouncing around time and popping up in various uninteresting places! Throw in a pointless Bunker cameo, a random alien invasion in Ancient Egypt, and a tease for the upcoming Kid Flash storyline, and you’ve got your comic!

In the scene with Blonde Bart, Kid Flash says that his time with the Teen Titans has taught him that there is always another way, that Blonde Bart doesn’t have to kill all these soldiers. But really? Has Kid Flash really learned that in these 24+ issues of Teen Titans? Has he learned anything at all?

Have we learned anything?