DCU Comic Book Reviews

TEEN TITANS #51

Futures Of The Past

November 2007

Written by Sean McKeever

Pencils by Ale Garza

Inks by Derek Fridolfs, Rob Hunter, Marlo Alquiza

Cover by Ale Garza & Scott Williams

Synopsis

Nine years from now...Kon-el feels his reality slipping away because the Teen Titans refuse to become who they might be.  Kon-el’s father, Lex Luthor, tells him they will fight.  Now...Blue Beetle flies to Titans Tower, but finds the place empty.  In Gotham County, future versions of the Teen Titans tell the current Titans that they need to step in for the Justice League to stop simultaneous attacks around the world by Starro.  In California, Wonder Girl and Supergirl battle the Druid King and Brimstone.  In Gotham City, Robin and Miss Martian battle Scorch and Prometheus.  In Chicago, Ravager and Kid Devil battle Livewire and Rampage.  Just as Kid Devil is about to jump into the fight, his future self tells him that once he turns 20 and comes into Neron’s service, Kid Devil will become stronger and better.  Kid Devil decides to wait.  In Gotham, Robin is having difficulty defeating Prometheus.  His future self suggests using a gun.  Robin takes it and then holds it to his head.

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

There are few sequels than can match the quality of the original story and McKeever’s addition to Geoff Johns first Titans of Tomorrow suffers from that rule.  This was a good story and I like the way McKeever continues to build upon the foundation set by Johns, but it just didn’t have the impact the first story did.  It took me a while to figure out why:  Infinite Crisis.  I am not going to get into a debate regarding the quality of the Crisis or whether it was a success or not, but I will say the Johns did a remarkable job of taking the Titans Tomorrow story and weaving it into the Crisis, using the story to delve deeper into the character of Superboy.  Remember, Superboy had just learned he was cloned from Lex Luthor, so seeing his future, near-evil self was a shock to his system.  This small portion of the story gave it weight and added poignancy especially when combined with Robin’s battle to avoid becoming like Batman.  For McKeever’s story, there is no anchor for the characters, other than a lot of action and a re-hash of Robin’s character arc (gun or no gun, kill or no kill).  The future version of Miss Martian and Kid Devil don’t resonate as much, if only because they have not been around that long (either in the DCU or Teen Titans). 

Another problem is that McKeever doesn’t really give a clear indication how and why the scheme to defeat Starro will help achieve their goals.  It just seems like the Titans travel back in time and want their counterparts to fight Starro.  And why exactly and how does this benefit them?  How does this change Tim to become a gun wielder?  The original story had the Titans going to the future to see what they had become.  A good story idea would be for the Titans to come to the past, pretend they are like their old selves and then subtly manipulate the Titans to become evil.  But that just be me. 

And the whole bit about the clones?  If you’re evil and you just told a supposed hero that he successfully cloned you, essentially creating a villain, does that seem like a good idea?  There is also the issue of characters whose histories should’ve been erased, which gives me a headache similar to a lot of time travel stories.

 

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