Teen Titans #14

            Teen Titans, by its nature, has to navigate a great deal of obstacles that the majority of other comic books don’t have to pay much mind, but the biggest one presently is how, exactly, to lead in to the Death of the Family arc without sacrificing too much space, as there’s a lot of other stuff going on in the Teen Titans’ world right now.

            Scott Lobdell’s answer to that question: really, really lazily.

            Teen Titans is not a Batman family comic book, no matter how much DC wants people to think that it is. Yes, Red Robin is the de facto leader of the group, but Lobdell has spent about an even amount of time on Red Robin as he has any of the other Titans, which is one of the few things that I think the guy has managed to get really right in the New 52, but certainly makes me pause when trying to figure out how the Teen Titans really fit into the Death of the Family landscape.

            But, thankfully for Lobdell, his laziness in tying Titans in meant that he only dedicated about two pages to it. Unfortunately, that meant that he had to figure out what to fill the rest of the book with, and that didn't necesarilly go well for him.

            The opening page is one of the best pages in this run, showcasing Superboy, Wonder Girl and Red Robin arguing and joking like regular teenagers. It had a heart to it that hasn’t really been there.

            But of course, in typical Lobdell fashion, things disintegrate, and pretty quickly. Wonder Girl goes on and on about love and love lost and it went far past any reasonable point. The way she talks to Diesel (her apparent former “true love”) is dripping with ignorance and it gets the point where it’s near nauseating.

            The biggest problem with this issue, however, is back at the Teen Titans apartment where Kid Flash and Bunker spend the issue after being sidelined by the time Wonder Girl went ape shit (it’s really just easiest to leave it at that). The way that Bart and Miguel talk to one another, and what they talk about, gives me the impression that Lobdell never has and has no plans ever to actually meet or speak with a teenager. It is also unclear if he ever was one himself, but that seems like a conspiracy that isn’t worth starting.

            I’ve said it before (I think), but I read Teen Titans because I love the Teen Titans to death, but with Lobdell’s work on the book, that feels like exactly where it’s all headed.