Wednesday, June 8, 2011

The Next Degeneration of Teen Just Ass



"Tim Drake is forced to step out from behind his keyboard when an international organization seeks to capture or kill super-powered teenagers. As Red Robin, he must team up with the mysterious and belligerent powerhouse thief known as Wonder Girl and a hyperactive speedster calling himself Kid Flash in TEEN TITANS #1, by Scott Lobdell and artists Brett Booth and Norm Rapmund."

Throughout the weekend, Bleeding Cool pointed to a dissemination by Brett Booth of an illustration of rocky terrain with his and other artists' signatures. Even with Rich Johnston's assurance that it was related to a Teen Titans project, I thought that was entirely too pretentiously vague to bother fellow humans with.

Then, on seeing the full art, I wished somehow by the grace of God Almighty to unsee it, or to have it revealed that this was a photoshopped decade old Homage Studios piece that was snickered over alongside Y2K. I would rather read the adventures of Iggie, Sed-8, and Metamorphic, the Rock Type Titans.

I'm too old to have been hit in that sweet spot required for me to give a damn about Tim Drake, Connor Kent, Bart Allen or Cassie Sandsmark. That said, on reading the line "the mysterious and belligerent powerhouse thief known as Wonder Girl," I knew those poor kids were being fed the same turd sandwiches as the original Teen Titans. "You're too old for our ephebophilic audience now, so would you be so kind as to try some smack and die your way out of interfering with DC: The New Class? If you're cool about it, maybe we'll dig up a mentor role for you..."

One of the reasons that this is so terrible is probably that all of the creators are my age or older. Scott Lobdell was born the year before the original Teen Titans were created. Brett Booth made his debut as a professional artist around the same time as the Kon-El/Conner Kent Superboy was created nearly twenty years ago. There is no one and nothing fresh here, but at the very least get some creators young enough to have been introduced to these characters when they were both new to this world, and aim for some synergy with the airing Young Justice cartoon show. After twenty-two years, you've going to retroactively unmake Tim Drake as a Robin, and turn him into the kind of loser who would come out as Red Robin, a costume and concept that took years of bad decisions to develop into a cancer in the character's testicles? I'm looking at Kid Flash, and I'm seeing the red-headed Wally West. If true, that demotes Wally after decades of being The Flash, and wipes Bart out of existence entirely. I understand they're shooting for racial diversity, but is that a woman of Latin origin looking like a cockroach as she scurries across the floor, because I'm thinking that's not the kind of inclusion to shoot for. Keeping that in mind, there is a figure seemingly made of tar in the background. Oh, my.

This is such offensively bad decision making, such a full steam ahead into the iceburg, the only way you could put a cherry on top would be to include Rob Liefeld in some way. Oh, my.

This is a thing for to be screwing.

3 comments:

Count Drunkula said...

I agree; this reveal kind of terrified me by how completely outdated this book intended for today's youth seemed.

The only thing I'm kinda/sorta banking on for this series is Scott Lobdell's past writing the great "Generation X" series, which, yeah, was at least one generation ago. I'll cross my fingers and read the first issue and see.

Diabolu Frank said...

That's the thing, though. How much of this is Scott Lobdell's fault, and how much of this was plopped in his lap by some clueless editorial mandate. Lobdell hasn't exactly been prolific in recent years, and beggars can't be choosers. You don't screw up this broadly and deeply across a line without it going way up into the company. You know, the one run by one successful writer, an artist who sold out his own failing creations to DC, a terrible frustrated writer, and someone just arrived to comics from other media.

Count Drunkula said...

I think a lot of my knee-jerk aversion to this is the very '90s/Image cover and the laughable costumes, which I assume were part of Jim Lee's steady descent into... something.

The other thing is, I don't have great love for ANY of these four recognizable characters (and I believe the Kid Flash here is Bart, not Wally), so I have no vested interest in this title. But, there is so much we still don't know about any of these books, so barring some new revelations, I'll still give it a shot.