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Thursday, August 28, 2008

In This Issue...Wendy And Marvin DIE!

Uh...spoilers?

Remember Wendy and Marvin from the old Superfriends cartoon?


So they are characters in the current Teen Titans book, and they find Wonder Dog, and, long story short, Wonder Dog tears them into gory pieces:


Just in case you were fooled by the cover --

-- and had any intention of purchasing the book for your child.

Comic By Comic writes:
"Remember when the Teen Titans book was supposed to be about hope for the future? That time's long gone. This just felt unnecessary. It's not even as if the characters in question were that well developed - it's just shoddy writing, shock for shock's sake. And it's not for me. I'm done with the book."
It's official: Teen Titans is not a book for actual young people. Kids can read the comic where the big-footed action-figure superheroes who smile all the time fight dinosaurs.


Because there's no in-between. Right?

DC's comics were dark even before The Dark Knight -- but I have to sincerely wonder if, in the wake of new WB dictates that DC movies have to be dark, if this will become the new editorial rule.

It's like the GWB presidency, I just can't wait for this era to be over.

66 comments:

  1. ... What the hell?

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  2. So let me guess. The dog was possessed by an evil entity and it had to kill the kids/teens to protect its secret. or no wait, I got it. The dog needed to be grim and gritty to be kewl to the young folks.

    What happened to Teen Titans? It used to be good, right?

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  3. Is that Wendy on the right in that cover pic? Where did she get those panties that have a belt and pocket lines drawn on them? Are those Underoos?

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  4. Personally, I think some characters should be dark and/or angsty: Batman, Punisher, Daredevil, Wolverine. I hate the wholesale "dark-ification" of a lot of comics. I felt we left that behind us when the 90s were over. Some characters need to be up-beat. Spider-man, Superman, Flash, the Fantastic Four--these folks keep smiling despite the odds that fate constantly heaps upon them. That's why they're heroes.

    I stopped reading Teen Titans after the One Year Later jump...the team just wasn't the same without Connor, Bart and Gar.

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  5. damn it. I'm not going to enjoy this issue am i? Then again, I leik tragedy, so maybe I'll love it. who can tell?

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  6. "damn it. I'm not going to enjoy this issue am i?"

    then again, if you hate Wendy and Marvin, you might love this issue.

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  7. Amen. I just commented similarly somewhere else. I loved New Teen Titans as a kid. I enjoyed finding back issues of the original teen titans as well. There was a definite point at which Titans related books became unreadable for anyone who actually liked the Teen Titans.

    I loved the Teen Titans cartoon, I love Tiny Titans, I mostly loved the Year One mini that just ended. It's sad when you love a comic based on a refreshing lack of sexualization of it's TEEN characters. If you viewed just those titles and the cartoon you might think that other Teen Titans related things might be appropriate for a younger audience. Sadly... They aren't even right for an older audience.

    I am 38 and the Teen Titans related books I like are the ones that seem to be written for a young audience and contain humor and emotion (the wonder girl date issue of the mini was very emotional and real, but still age appropriate).

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  8. Watch as they become Black Lanterns.

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  9. Jeebus. That's effed up.

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  10. I, too, have given up on Teen Titans after this issue.

    And bear in mind, I'm the guy who got into comics because of Devin Grayson's Titans run, so the group has always been close to my heart. I'll be posting a blog post giving some more exact thoughts on this, but more or less this shock tactic pissed me off. I wasn't particularly fond of the two, but McKeever has mentioned in interviews how much this artist, Eddie Barrows, likes to draw blood and gore and frankly it shows... and I don't want it. Even ignoring how ugly the art itself is, this should not be a book that's featuring this level of violence. And even if one could make the argument that this book is meant to be read by adults, I don't go to a comic store on wednesdays to watch a teenage girl get hunted in her home while she desperately cries out for help until she's slaughtered. That's the stuff of slasher movies, not what's supposed to be my favorite comic.

    And McKeever CAN write good Teen Titans stories. The previous issue showed us that. But now as we can see, apparently he prefers a hack story to one that's actually entertaining.

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  11. Anonymous12:53 PM

    Is it supposed to mean something that a copy of "52" is sitting there?

    Feel the same way I felt when Speedball became Penance: disappointed.

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  12. Wait, I thought of something a little while ago: since the book's been on the edge of the Final Crisis/Dark Side Club storyline, maybe Wonderdog was actually a Parademon?

    In any case, I'm gonna enjoy watching that thing's ass get shredded by Krypto. Or, Rex the Wonder Dog.

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  13. ????
    after they were introduced by johns one year later were they ever in another book?

    the new titans book was great till they saw their future evil selves.

    after wards it has been abysmal and has been given up on by me early in the one year later phase.

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  14. This just proves what a mess DC is right now. It seems like they're trying to do two opposing tasks at once: bring back all the goofy kid stuff from the fanboys' childhood (the Super Friends references, Krypto the bloody Super-Dog) and "go dark" and make the books adult-oriented (because apparently when a person hits 21, they want every story to resemble No Country for Old Men. When you made the comment about the "Dark Plastic Man" movie, that pretty much summed it up for me.

    I also can't wait for the current zeitgeist to pass. The sheer amount of bad decisions being made of late is mind-boggling.

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  15. I miss Young Justice. Even Li'l Lobo wasn't this dark.

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  16. I'm definitely not a fan of the McKeever run--I've actually dropped it. However, as a parent, I'd like to point out that DC has an entire kid-friendly Teen Titans line that is far more age appropriate. At least two, actually, that are different levels of age appropriateness.

    Teen Titans has never been appropriate for smaller children and discussing it like it ever was is very misguided.

    Lots of far more relevant issues to pick on here with the McKeever TT run, choosing child appropriateness is not just wrong, but a little silly.

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  17. [Shakes head] Funny how I told the guy at my LCS that I'd give TT one more try this month, w/o having any knowledge of this.

    This franchise is almost like Legion for me (i.e., I buy it year-in, year-out regardless of the relative quality). However, unlike Legion, I've learned to drop this one during lesser periods. Looks like it's time to say so long again for awhile.

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  18. Sorry, but I call double-standard here. People always talk about how fantastic Johns was on this book (and is on all of his books in general) but he pulled/pulls the exact same type of thing in his stories that Mckeever did here. Or is it okay to see Bart Allen to get kneecapped by Deathstroke on the page but not for Marvin and Wendy to be killed off-panel by Wonder Dog? And why would that be? Because M, W, & WD were childhood icons while Bart wasn't?

    Hell, look at Marvin's feet...a copy of 52, where Sobek pulled the same thing on Osiris. McKeever is pretty much just saying "same-old, same-old" as far as the Teen Titans not being for teens anymore with that one panel.

    Not saying I'm a fan of stuff like this...I'm not...but I don't like it in any of the books I read that aren't geared towards this kind of thing. The creator and characters involved shouldn't matter.

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  19. "Teen Titans has never been appropriate for smaller children and discussing it like it ever was is very misguided."

    And assuming nobody new to comics ever goes into a comic shop while not being aware of the history of Teen Titans as "dumping ground for slaughter" is also very misguided.

    I could imagine a parent wandering into the shop, seeing the cover, seeing the title name and thinking its kid friendly without bothering to look inside. Its not like its got "mature content" or even "super fun happy disemboweling" on the front. Hence, the general note of caution might not be entirely amiss.

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  20. "Sorry, but I call double-standard here."

    How can you possibly know that the commentators here *haven't* also called out Johns on the same sort of thing on forums, their blogs and in day to day comics conversation? Quite a few may well have, unless you surveyed everybody beforehand.

    "Or is it okay to see Bart Allen to get kneecapped by Deathstroke on the page but not for Marvin and Wendy to be killed off-panel by Wonder Dog?"

    Just because we're not seeing the dog chewing on him, I'd hardly call it "off panel" considering you're presented with his freshly torn out throat. It's pretty graphic with or without seeing him being munched on.

    "Hell, look at Marvin's feet...a copy of 52, where Sobek pulled the same thing on Osiris. McKeever is pretty much just saying "same-old, same-old" as far as the Teen Titans not being for teens anymore with that one panel."

    Just seems like a terrible in-joke for the other writers to giggle over, more than anything else. I don't even want to get into the continuity oddness of there being an actual, physical issue of 52 appearing in the DCU. I guess everyone is now going to try and ape Morrisons fourth-world breaking antics, only nowhere near as interesting.

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  21. When Wonder Dog got huge did his cape grow with him? Or did someone tie a new cape to this now gigantic mutant of an animal? Perhaps I'm focusing on the wrong aspect of this story.

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  22. Jaded,

    Didn't the incident between Deathstroke and Bart happened during a fight between Wilson and the Titans? Not to mention that the injury spurred Impulse on to become Kid Flash. So it was part of a larger story. The jury's still out on what the Wonderkillings will lead to.

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  23. You know, I hate Marvin and Wendy with a fiery passion, but snuffing them with their own dog is just messed up. If you don’t like the characters you inherited from your predecessors run, you write them off so someone can use them again later. You kill characters you like, so you can either bring them back or get the story mileage out of your other characters reactions.

    And Jaded Devil, I’m not pleased that Bart is dead, but at least he got capped by a longstanding villain.

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  24. Anonymous3:20 PM

    Sorry, but I call double-standard here. People always talk about how fantastic Johns was on this book (and is on all of his books in general) but he pulled/pulls the exact same type of thing in his stories that Mckeever did here. Or is it okay to see Bart Allen to get kneecapped by Deathstroke on the page but not for Marvin and Wendy to be killed off-panel by Wonder Dog? And why would that be? Because M, W, & WD were childhood icons while Bart wasn't?

    I'm going to try to post the differences, here, before someone else beats me to it (doubt I'll make it).

    1) Bart was knee-capped...he didn't have his throat ripped out.

    2) Bart was 100% better in the very next issue. The incident was used as a jumping-off point. Because of it, he moved to another stage in his maturity. Now, you could make the argument that this incident will result in a similar metamorphosis, but it's difficult to see since...um...the characters were ripped to pieces.

    3. The menace inherent in the scene with Bart is tempered by Deathstroke/Jericho's monologue. He's saying he isn't going to kill him. The shot is immediate and Bart's found shortly after before being brought to the hospital. In this, Marvin has been mauled without aid. It doesn't look like any help is coming.

    Also, this is how this issue is being sold. In contrast, the cover to issue where Bart got 'capped says "Targetted for Termination" in big letters. Context is different. We weren't led into the issue thinking it was some heart-warming "downtime" issue and then saw instead it was a throat-ripping death.

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  25. I'm just curious as to when people think Teen Titans was for kids. Because there was some pretty dark stuff in the New Teen Titans, back in the day.

    Brother Blood swimming around in a pool of same.

    Terra, an underage girl, sleeping with Deathstroke.

    The Trigon stuff.

    Hell, Cyborg's origin was pretty gruesome.

    Also, I think you could easily argue that a whole lot of teens would be all over a book where a seemingly innocuous pet turns into a monster and devours somebody.

    Or do folks forget that the slasher films of the '80s (and on until today) are aimed at the teen audience?

    I'm not suggesting anyone should like it. I'm just saying that some of the reactions I'm seeing are ignoring what's come before.

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  26. Sean McKeever wrote this?

    Sean "Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane" McKeever?

    Sean "Gravity" McKeever?

    Sean "Sentinel" McKeever?

    Sean "Marvel Adventures" McKeever?

    When he was announced as the writer for Teen Titans, I was hoping he'd imbue the book with some of that wholesome storytelling magic. What's the word? Oh yeah: Fun.

    There's just something about that book. It's cursed or something. Geoff Johns is one of the best writers in comics today, but his writing on Teen Titans was joyless. He killed Superboy and Bart Allen long before they actually died.

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  27. @bic

    is it not fairly obvious that the cape was what made this puppy grow insane and chomp (i assume he ate the twins) down.

    he is obviously a villain and as valerie so aptly stated earlier today, they are black and white bad. even the animals.

    hell especially the animals

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  28. Sorry, but I call double-standard here... Or is it okay to see Bart Allen to get kneecapped by Deathstroke on the page but not for Marvin and Wendy to be killed off-panel by Wonder Dog? And why would that be?

    Ah yes that awful double standard between characters getting shot non-fatally and murdered horrifically. Oh the savage unfairness of our fickle, irrational hearts.

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  29. And in those cases, jaded, Johns received just as much criticism for the amount of gore on display, in particular for Sobek's death, which apparently required a full-page spread of him getting chomped into. But the storyline itself around it was still compelling enough to keep reading despite the heavy criticism.

    And in the case of the bullet in Bart's kneecap, bear in mind he didn't die from that injury, though I admit I was put off by the gore on that scene, as well. In this case, killing these two characters off like this was just... terrible.

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  30. Val, I seem to remember that you had expressed great hopes for McKeever's run on the book. Sorry (for both of us) that your hopes weren't met.

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  31. Wow. Glad I already dropped the book. Down to Nightwing and Usagi Yojimbo, now.

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  32. I know it's wrong, but I laughed when I scrolled from the old picture of Marvin and Wendy to the new picture and your description of the scene. McKeever may have been attempting humor (though I haven't read it so I can't say).

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  33. i don't follow teen titans but i was shocked when browsing through the images on scans_daily.
    then again wasn't this the series with the porn mouth kiss months back?

    i grew up reading dark 90's comics... although those do seem almost tame compared this.
    i don't know it depends on how mature the kid is, and how the parents wants to raise them. i don't think spawn and rated r movies warped me as a kid.

    i feel at the point when you're enough of a brat to think you're too old for the super friends comic (which is actually surprisingly hilarious and fun) that you'd probably be into something as dark and "grown up" as this.

    at twenty-three though, i'd much rather read super friends than this teen titans.
    comics are supposed to be fun after all.

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  34. I know people always leap in to say "but Teen Titans was always embarassingly dark and creepy" and that's true, but that's why I didn't read it as a kid. Or as a teen. Or as an adult. What's wrong with the idea of writing a book about super teens as something other than super snuff and lolita fantasies? When I was a kid I used to read the hell out of New Mutants, and that had plenty of "dark" moments without falling into this kind of nonsense (well, usually).

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  35. "And assuming nobody new to comics ever goes into a comic shop while not being aware of the history of Teen Titans as "dumping ground for slaughter" is also very misguided."

    Could you imagine it, really? All the parents I know, and knowing myself, a good chunk of all of thirty seconds gets spent to flip through something we'll buy for our kids to read. And not even just to check its age appropriateness, but to see what we're spending hard-earned money on and whether or not it's worth it.

    Also, as a comic shop employee, I've seen lots of newbie customer parents walk up, grab something and then either flip through it to check it out or had them ask me. I'm not making a huge stretch here.

    Not allowing room for a few idiot parents isn't misguided, it's assuming basic intelligence of the masses.

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  36. "It's like the GWB presidency, I just can't wait for this era to be over."

    Where oh where is DC's Barack Obama?

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  37. Anonymous7:22 AM

    And yet somewhere, a fanboy is complaining that Wonderdog also needed to rape Krypto and Ace to really make it work.

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  38. "Also, as a comic shop employee, I've seen lots of newbie customer parents walk up, grab something and then either flip through it to check it out or had them ask me. I'm not making a huge stretch here."

    ...and I've seen plenty who did the same as you describe, and *also* plenty who did the exact opposite (the whole pick it up then buy it without looking inside thing).

    However, I'm not about to start questioning their "basic intelligence" because they happen to see a cover that practically bursts with "kid friendly", is called "Teen Titans" and doesn't have a mature rating (or *something*, at least) on the front and so simply assumed it was kid safe.

    Is it really so much to ask of a comics maker? Especially when the cover is so blatantly misleading with regards the actual contents.

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  39. Anonymous10:03 AM

    New Titans in the 80's had dark stories, but they were the kind of dark stories you read in stereotypical comic books. People died and sacrificed themselves and all of that...until Titans Hunt, which I didn't particularly like.

    The stuff in the 90's was horrible. It wasn't horrible because it was dark, it was horrible because it was senseless. "Dark" stories were written poorly, but were written under the deluded assumption that "horrible shit happening to people" = "complex and mature writing."

    This is not to say that you can't have horrible shit happening to people in a complex and mature story (Transmetropolitan and Preacher are great examples), but you can't just throw in some gore and assume it's good writing. Honestly, I haven't read any of the Titans stuff since OYL. It just hasn't interested me enough. Now? Couldn't pay me to pick it up.

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  40. To quote Grant Morrison in Grant Morrison's Animal Man by Grant Morrison:

    "Why does blood and torture and anguish still excite us? ... We thought that by making your world more violent, we would make it more 'realistic,' more 'adult.' God help us if that's what it means."

    --Grant Morrison

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  41. Anonymous10:51 AM

    What the hell? Who's flying this plane?

    This is ridiculous. IMO, ever since Superboy died, things have been going down the toilet with the Titans, fictionally and editorially.

    This is ridiculous, and it's something I intend to rectify when I'm in charge of DC (after kicking Marvel into shape, of course).

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  42. Anonymous10:56 AM

    Whoa! Sean McKeever?! The guy who wrote Gravity, the single most light-hearted hero who ever came out of the Marvel Next promotions?

    Man, that's nuts...

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  43. When was Teen Titans appropriate for kids? How about when Bob Haney and Nick Cardy were on the book?

    Me .. I still like The Ant and Ding Dong Daddy, daddy-o!

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  44. I just showed this to my 12-year-old daughter and she immediately exclaimed, "COOL!"

    "Why cool?" I ask.

    "Because they were so annoying."

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  45. Damn, it's dumb shit likes this that makes it hard to defend DC Comics. Or Rap Music.

    till the sweat drips from my balls,

    Snow

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  46. Don't give me this "Titans have never been for kids!" crap. I got into comics when I was 11 years old BECAUSE of Devin Grayson's Titans, which had a perfectly fine balance of humor, a teensy bit of darkness, and engaging storylines (well, until the DEO kids fiasco, but that's another story and wasn't in Devin Grayson's run).

    Hell, my favorite issues of that era, the "Survival" two-parter featured the original five Titans bickering and being pissed off at each other... but it was in context to the story because a supervillain was mucking around with their feelings.

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  47. Anonymous3:53 PM

    Someone mentioned Bart getting shot in the kneecap, but don't forget the Infinite Crisis issue with Pantha getting her head punched off and Bushido getting cut in half. So it's been like this for a while.

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  48. Anonymous6:23 PM

    I never liked Wendy & Marvin. They were walking reminders of the worst parts of the Superfriends cartoon to me, and nothing else.

    Until this issue, when McKeever made them intersting to me - right before he turns Wonder Dog into fricking Marveldog for cheap shock value. I loved Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane more than I can adequately put into words, but from now on McKeever's name being on a book is an argument to me that this is a title best avoided.

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  49. Way bigger spoilers would have been nice! Not something half-hearted to begs to be ignored.

    (Okay, I would have read it anyway, but I would have been better prepared.)

    Why are we blaming McKeever here. Editor on the book is Dan "Screw the Super Buddies" Didio. Whether intentional or not, an awful lot of well-liked characters have died on his watch. And if he can rip through 80s characters, the epitome of "these 70s characters were instrumental in me liking comics" were prime targets.

    (Of course, Legion fans will tell you this is nothing new. We remember Blok blown to pieces, Dawnstar's wings ripped off, and a Wildfire bait-n-switch.)

    I've been thinking I might be done with Teen Titans for a while -- was only sticking around because of Blue Beetle and Kid Devil, really. Looks like this may be the final issue for me.

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  50. I second Greyman24's comment. While I love mature storytelling- hello Love & Rockets and Lady Snowblood- and comics where bad things happen to the characters- looking at you, Nana- I think this "dark for the sake of dark sells" storytelling is really missing the mark.

    This comes off as cheap shock tactics, and gore substituting for having something to say with the story.

    But hey, I don't know. I haven't read the issue in question and wouldn't if you handed it to me for free while we were both wearing anti-pathogen environmental suits in an isolation ward. This is exactly the kind of stuff that made me quit reading DC altogether earlier this year.

    Valerie, I also like your dig at the false dichotomy where it seems people think there should be no choice between this kind of dreck and strictly kiddie comics. Yeah, why does it have to be one or the other with no middle ground? Or rather, why do fans sometimes insist it should be?

    There must be some decent mainstream DC comics for actual adults out there. I just don't feel comfortable supporting the company financially until this era of "Darkness for Darkness' Sake" era ends.

    Once again, The Dark Knight wasn't good because it was dark, it was just a good movie with dark elements. And none of them involved ludicrously pumped-up demon dogs in green capes eating their owners. I know that much for certain!

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  51. to kristina wright: I just wanted to address what you said about there being two Titans books children could read and that Teen Titans itself is not "for" children. Actually Teen Titans Go! has been cancelled as of a month or two ago so there's only Tiny Titans. Plus, in the letters page of the last issue of Teen Titans Go!, in a response to a reader letter asking not to cancel the series, the editor pointed to BOTH Tiny Titans and Teen Titans as alternatives for readers to get their Titans fix. So on some level DC has TOLD children it's "ok" to read Teen Titans.

    Not to say that I don't think some children could handle this story, but it's perfectly fiesable for children to be reading Teen Titans, and therefore for some to be freaked out or messed up by this.

    Myself, I hated the issue. Made me sad, disappointed, and kind of angry. Hell, Wendy struggling so hard to get away only to fail and die even made me a little depressed.

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  52. Someone failed their Grant Morrison roll.

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  53. greyman24:

    I see that in the link you gave that story of a boy and girl being devoured by their dog is marketed as "heartwarming". Apparently ever since OMD which (in Marvel's publicity for OMD and BND reprints) is also sold as "heart-warming", that word has an entirely new meaning.

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  54. I work at the home office of Barnes & Noble. Every Wednesday morning, the magazine department puts out that week's shipment of periodicals free for anyone who shows up.

    One Wednesday, I got there a bit late, and someone's mother was looking through a big stack of DC Comics. She was pulling them for her son, but couldn't take most of them because of the content. I explained to her about Johnny DC (and I'm really sorry about Jonni DC, hope Ambush Bug gets her killer) and then took the regular stuff she couldn't show her son.

    I scanned this issue at the LCS. Didn't feel anything about it. (Aside from the fact that I had read a previous issue showing Miss Martian in some jail, and in this issue she shows no sign of her torment.) Instead I bought Superman/Batman #51 (go. buy. now.), and the Brave and the Bold with Superman and Catwoman, and Ambush Bug #2.

    Well, at least they still exist in the Kingdom Come universe (with the Cosby Kids). And Jan and Zayna are still around somewhere, unless Lobo's found them...

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  55. I can't believe the level of outrage over the death of these two Poochie characters, honestly.

    They were throwaway character who got thrown away.

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  56. Anonymous12:23 AM

    That was gory bits?

    In some weird way after checking out various forums and blogs, I can't help but wonder when it became okay for Marvel to have gore, extreme violence and rape that it gets passed over and if DC is trying to reach that level.

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  57. ...to be honest, I kinda expected the writer credit here to be Judd Winick's.

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  58. I posted this elsewhere, but it hasn't been mentioned here so I figure I'll throw it into the mix:

    With regards the "give it a flickthrough first" method, it certainly isn't foolproof - considering most "oh my god, the shock horror!" type comics such as this rely on just one or two pages to deploy the payoff, when you're flicking through a comic its easy to miss a page, or the pages could be stuck together, or you miss them because of a stupid cardboard inlay (or whatever useless advertising gimmick happens to be in the comic this particular week).

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  59. Anonymous9:45 PM

    Interesting. Isis, then Wendy and Marvin . . . man, any other old Saturday morning TV characters better think twice before breaking into the DCU.

    Apache Chief, Black Vulcan, seriously, you're better off with Harvey Birdman. If you even pass through a JLA title or something, you'll end up disemboweled by Gleek. Mark my words.

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  60. This book has been in serious trouble since Geoff Johns left it. It really needs a new writer, and this was the last issue I'll be buying until that happens. It was shocking and jarring and that's fine as long as there's a point to it. Really bad issue.

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  61. To be honest - I really can find something amusing about this whole thing: Geoff Johns introducing supporting characters from an old campy cartoon show (typical fanboyish move by a writer from his generation - no offense there), McKeever ridiciously killing them off by the dog. Com'on, you gotta admit that's worth quite a laugh.

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  62. Anonymous12:38 PM

    Good gravy. Hadn't even considered the new definition of "heart-warming." Perhaps that should actually be "heart ripping out of chest and warming in a stew of blood."

    ...to be more accurate...has anyone checked the definition on Wikipedia, lately? Has someone radically redefined it? ;-)

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  63. I miss Geoff Johns.

    Everything that has happened has been YAWN with the exception of Ravager vs. The Terror Titans on her own totally busting down in true fashion of the character.

    Other than that, I miss Geoff Johns.

    It was pretty fucked up to say the least.

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  64. The fact that the last time Prime went up against a team of heroes and end up doing a gorefest is exactly why I'm scared to death of the Legion of Three Worlds series. The temptation to axe duplicate characters has got to be huge, but multiple Saturn Girl heads bouncing down the street.

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  65. You know, I really like McKeever as a person (from what Internet contact we've shared), and I was a BIG fan of some of his earlier writings.

    But he has taken Teen Titans in the complete opposite direction of what I expected him to do. Instead of fixing my least favorite aspects of the book - the angst and violence - he has put them at its center.

    So yeah, I am gone from this title.

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  66. Isn't this a co-edited by Dan Didio, the man behind the equally oh-so-not-unfunny comic where avatars for a grown-up Charlie Brown and Linus blood sacrifice Snoopy to bring the Great Pumpkin. DC editorial became Billy Friday from Alan Moore's Supreme ages ago.

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