Teen Titans #28-29 - Back to the Future

[perletwo]

Hi ho, gang! Yes, i'm still alive. I got ill in February and was either in hospital or recovering and not allowed to drive til recently, and so missed the last couple issues of Teen Titans. But! Now I have both the ones I missed and the latest in hand! So I figure i'll do one post on the back issues and a separate post for the new. I have here six pages each from Teen Titans #28 and #29 - sounds like a lot, but there's at least one double-page splash from each ish.

You'll recall that when we left our merry band, the remaining Titans had joined Kid Flash and Solstice in the 31st century, where Bart was apprehended and put on trial. Being in the future enabled Bart to break through his Echo-created "witness protection" personality and become the evil revolutionary Bar Torr again, and submitting to the trial was part of his scheme - with all his world's power brokers gathered to watch him hang, his forces were able to strike at all of them at once, to the Titans' dismay.





Remember, unbeknownst to the gang, that's actually Harvest's boy Jon Lane Kent, not our Kon-El.

Suddenly!



Yes, that IS Bart's baby sister commanding the Functionary ship. Yes, she's supposed to have died in Bar's first big strike against the Functionary. How is she alive? Who knows? Who cares?

What does matter is that she talks Bar down from his high horse with reminiscences of their parents, and somehow this talk flips him back to his Bart Allen persona. Riddled with guilt, he stands meekly for the tribunal's judgment, which is predictable: Revocation of his Echo parole and life on the 31st-century prison planet Takron-Galtos.







Issue 29 opens with Kiran and Bart talking through the bars of holding cells aboard ship bound for Takron-Galtos.



Of course he's leading her into a trap, a kill box manned by his gang in the Culling.



That's also the first time Kiran went all Dark Solstice. She thought she was doomed forever, spiritually speaking, to be Harvest's creature. Bart is sorry, but tells her he's not worth life imprisonment in a strange future world.



Red Robin shows up and bids them a sad goodbye, and the ship jettisons them to the surface of the prison planet.

Raven expresses her sympathy and makes a subtle play for Red Robin, but he's all about finding Cassie, who's in a rage. He calms her down and they decide to try coupledom - yes, it's as dull a scene as it sounds.

The team gets the local Echo representative to send them back to their own time, where...





Well, not all of them - they have a use for Solstice, since these are the light-absorbing twins who've been after Kiran since all the way back in #17.



Stay tuned, gentle readers! Same Titan time, same Titan channel!

Comments

[donnblake]

That's an awfully accommodating criminal court. "Oh, you killed one of us? Sure, we'll give you exactly the sentence you were angling for, and not say, sentence you to a different prison. Nope, you got us, fair and square."

[perletwo]

Well, they do claim to make sure their people have everything they could ever possibly want....

[writeofway]

I have to say I agree. If they murdered a colleague of mine, I wouldn't be inclined to give his murderer exactly what she wants. There really isn't any good reason why they should keep her and Bar together from the perspective of the generic council of folks in funny robes and/or silly hats. This is like sending a misanthropic emo teen to their room, which is where they said they wanted to go in the first place. Not much in ways of a punishment, guys.

[darkknightjrk]

"Takron-Galtos?" Heh, I'm thinking that's the same prison planet that's in Justice League 3000--which turns out to be Earth.

Anyway--what do you think of the upcoming relaunch? I'm a fan of it--I think Lobdell had a lot of interesting ideas that just wasn't executed right, but Pfiefer is more consistent as a writer and can make them work; and despite the recent controversy, which I can see both ways of, I still love Rocafort's work overall.

[perletwo]

Haven't been following JL3K, but in LOSH there was T-G and Earth, where the Legion had its HQ. So maybe Earthers repopulated to a colony world which then became the main "Earth"?

One thing I neglected to mention - besides being a Darwinian crucible for the abandoned prison population, Takron-Galtos also boasts incredibly hostile terrain, such as razor-sharp grasses. That's one of the aspects in which I meant it resembles the Hunger Games. So, maybe Earth as mutated by an ecological disaster or radiation poisoning or something?

As for the relaunch, I reserve judgment until I see the execution. I'm definitely excited about Teen Titans: Earth One though.

[darkknightjrk]

Over in JL3K, Earth did basically become almost unlivable due to ecological disaster, and I believe it's been implied that humankind is an endangered species because of "The Five." It feels like Giffen is basically doing what his idea of what his last Legion storyline with Levitz would have been if the Legion wasn't there to stop it.

I definitely recommend giving it a read--it's a different, somewhat bleaker take on the 31st century, but it's very inventive and it is funny, though a bit of a twisted, gallows sense of humor. Plus, while the Legion doesn't exist right now in that world, I'm certain it will in a year or two.

[perletwo]

Damn, another title I'm gonna have to give a shot to...

In my head I've been playing with an idea for a Legion Dark story a la JLD. Since we now know Raven can with difficulty time-travel - in this case using Bart and Kiran as anchors in the Legion universe - I had her bringing the Losties home to find the entire collapse of civilization and the Legion. Raven and a new character deduce something is very wrong with the fabric of reality there on a mystical level and they form the nucleus of an underground, HQ'd in the Batcave (Gotham having been swallowed up by Metropolis) to unravel the mystery. Oh, and I want to give the Helmet of Fate to Dr. Gym'll, because I think it'd be hilarious.

[darkknightjrk]

The Legion Lost guys would throw that theory off--though I suppose they did imply that the old Retroboot Legion is on Earth 2.

The Dark Legion sounds interesting, though I wonder if the prime Earth would have a Helmet of Fate, since that's over on Earth 2.

[perletwo]

The plan I had for the helmet was this: Raven falls unconscious from the strain of time travel and is taken to Gym'll, they become fast friends in mutual crankiness, and while she's there a bad guy attacks. He's after Raven's chakra (she having acquired the jewel at some point in between now and then) because he's stealing a bunch of mystic artifacts from different worlds. In the course of the fight the helmet comes loose from his bag o'loot, Raven knocks it over to Gym'll and tells him to put it on. Game changer!

Stories that are just complicated don't mean interesting...

[silverzeo]

So... is that it? Are done with the bastardization of Bart Allen, the impulsive reckless youth with this no-fun pants in thisdumb DUMB over arching story that would put ANY of the Smallville season arcs (like the hype when Bizzarro, Kara, or Conner showed up) to shame?

Also, how is the Superboy thing going on now? First he got switch in the not too distant future where Kon fought the guy he was a clone of, who is also the clone of the original son of Superman all thanks to Harvest to make as an ultimate againist MetaHumans for some stupid plan that makes no sense in way you look at but the writers are BSing the whole thing, then the fake Kon was sent to the past and then to the more distant future while the real Kon is in the not too distant future trying to stop fake Kon's plans in the past-present...

Whats worse, I saw issue 30th of Superboy in the comic shop the other day... and it looks like they're bring in what could be the new 52 of Project Cadmus... the thing that was almost ignored or retcon before the big reboot overall... don't know if I should be happy to seeing the things in my very first comic coming back... or worried that it will be all like Countdown to FInal Crisis again...

Re: Stories that are just complicated don't mean interesting...

[shadowpsykie]

.... i like Smallville....

Re: Stories that are just complicated don't mean interesting...

[silverzeo]

I'm not saying it is bad. It has some faults but it is not bad.... but when they had like 3 episodes to have Clark and Lana to break up within the same season, first when Lana realize that if Bizarro Clark was into her that means the real Clark wasn't, and when she found out she can't kill Lex and have Clark at the same time, and only then do they permanently break up when Lana went Super-Nanite and had to absorb the energy from a Kryptonite Bomb, making her almost like a Kryptonite rock herself "forever" so she and Clark can never be close again... yeah, they're soap-opreaing it too much...

[jaybee3]

So Bart is getting the Helena Bertinelli treatment (with a new Wally one the way)? Not that it matters I suppose since this version of Bart Allen had none of the charm or the funniness (or the origin) of the old version. I just read this and as much as I have no idea why Lobdell is still referencing the Culling all I could think was that someone at DC really hates these characters - all of them. Maybe its a Titans thing?

[perletwo]

I assume the Culling references are because the series' Big Finish (in the annual, I guess?) is going to be the Final Showdown with Harvest. But I really, really wish DC would make Lobdell take that beaten-down horse of a plotline out back and put it out of its misery already. The only good aspect I could see in it was the Titans meeting the Legion Lost crew, a development they proceeded to do absolutely nothing with. :(

[silverzeo]

Is anyone a bit annoyed that Solstice, a practically new character before the reboot (which reminds me, did YJ Aqualad made an appearance in the new 52 yet, or was his short preReboot tenure was foreshadowing to the Young Justice show), and her, one her big moments in the Nu52... is brutally killing some space judge that she, or anyone else, barely knows all for the true love of a ruthless killer's other, nicer, persona?

[perletwo]

Yes, the whole "oops, I forgot to mention I'm a mass murderer and I'm perfectly happy to kill again" thing is just bizarre. At least with Bart we had an endless supply of clue anvils to let us know he was going to turn out to be a bad seed.

[silverzeo]

Yeah... having a bunch of other future dudes talking about how "Bart" is "the greatest criminal ever" through out almost every story arc were the very true paradigm of subtle foreshadowing...

[espanolbot]

...I miss the preboot version of Solstice.

[ficticons]

Having read just these scans from this issue, and the other Teen Titans scans posted to s_d...

...I agree. Wholeheartedly. :(

Kiran...

[big_daddy_d]

....Good god WHY?!!!

[espanolbot]

Also where's this religious stuff people have been talking about in regards to Bart's dialogue?

[perletwo]

On pages I didn't post, mostly in the talk the sister has with him. It heavily references their parents, who worshiped a "dead God" the Functionary outlawed.

[espanolbot]

Aah, right. I'd read that people said that Bart is meant to be Christian or something and that somehow fueled his revolutionary behaviour.

Which admittedly makes Kiran's decision to follow his cause a touch strange, considering she's powered by Hindu gods (with a Sikh last name, I believe).