Wednesday, 28 August 2024

Tales of the Teen Titans #45-50

Tales of the Teen Titans #45-50

Originally released in 1984

Written by Marv Wolfman

Art by George Perez



Picking up in the aftermath of the Judas Contract, Beast Boy/Changeling/Gar Logan is not doing well.  He's roaming the dimly-lit warehouses, interrupting arms deals while being on the verge of the arms dealers that he finds there and clearly projecting his issues onto them.



It's tough to see Beast Boy so broken up over Terra, with the character who is normally the comedic relief becoming downright homicidal.  Unfortunately, most of the Titans are too busy to help him sort things out - Donna is particularly busy, as she's preparing for her upcoming wedding to Terry Long.  Having a thirty year old marry a nineteen year old still comes across as creepy, and the issues haven't really sold me on why they're even in a relationship, let alone why they're getting married.



Meanwhile, Aqualad, one of the original Titans, arrives at their headquarters with Aquagirl, both of them barely clinging to life.  The two need to get to another source of water since the ocean waters don't work for them for some reason, and while trying to drag himself and Aquagirl to the pool, Aqualad notices that Aquagirl's heart had stopped.  Not knowing much about Aquaman's supporting cast, I seriously felt like Aquagirl was going to die here.



Fortunately, that's not the case.  Other Titans arrive just in time, and Nightwing figures out what the problem is that keeps them from being in water.  As Aqualad explains once he regains consciousness, the two of them found an underwater HIVE base before being attacked by its soldiers.



HIVE comes across as an organization like SPECTRE in James Bond, and in these issues, we meet a character who seems to be its Blofeld equivalent, the HIVE Mistress.  As the Titans close in on her base of operations, Raven continues to struggle with her dark side inherited from her father Trigon.



Issue 47 is advertised as the end of HIVE, and while I doubt that's the case in the long run, the Titans are gradually closing in on the HIVE Mistress.  Feeling like she only has one escape route, she calls together the Council of Seven that consists of HIVE's mysterious higher-ups and turns them, and herself, into a top-notch suicide squad.



As the rest of the Titans return to New York, Cyborg's grandparents come to visit.  These bits where he's talking to them are really effective, and it gets heartwarming at a few points.  Given how much life tends to kick Cyborg when he's down, it's nice to see him having some interactions with family and friends outside of the Titans.



While most of the Titans are preparing for Donna's wedding, Wally West is in Central City with his girlfriend Frankie Kane, who has magnetic powers.  Wally's powers seem to be slowly killing him, so he's trying to avoid using them as much as possible.  This makes Doctor Light's arrival in Central City a bit of a problem.



Doctor Light has really gone downhill since he became a supervillain.  He started out as someone who could take on the entire Justice League (back when it was the original seven members) before becoming a Teen Titans foe, and now Wally and Frankie can beat him on their own while not even in costume.  Even his ambitions have fallen quite a bit.



Issue 50 is a major milestone for a book, and what better way to celebrate it than a wedding?  It's time for the wedding of Donna Troy and Terry Long; Beast Boy's in charge of organizing it at his adoptive father's estate, since his adoptive father Steve Dayton is obscenely wealthy.  It clearly stresses him out, but it helps to keep his mind off of Terra, making him feel more like himself.



It does well at capturing the stressful set-up of a wedding, along with the relief of everyone involved when it goes off without a hitch.  It's relatively low-key compared to supervillain battles and infiltrating bases, but after the events of the Judas Contract, it's something that the Titans would almost certainly need.



It's a big celebration with people invited from all corners of the DC universe, which allows plenty of time for characters to catch up.  Much like The Other History of the DC Universe implied, the marriage between Guardian (Mal Duncan) and Bumblebee (Karen Beecher) seemed to happen off-screen.



Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson have a nice heart-to-heart.  Given how cold Batman can be in some series, particularly towards the rest of the Bat-Family, it feels great to see Batman outright tell Dick how proud he is of the man that he's become.



There were signs of someone lurking in the background, and my first thought was that a supervillain attack is going to ruin the wedding.  Instead, it turned out to be Hippolyta, who was granted permission to leave Paradise Island in order to witness the wedding of her adoptive daughter.  It's a sweet moment between the two of them, even if Hippolyta's feet can't touch the ground or else she'll lose her immortality.



Even if I had a tough time buying into the relationship that it's based around, this wedding issue felt like a good way to cap off fifty issues of Wolfman and Perez's run on the Teen Titans.  I think a big part of what makes this run so effective is the relationships, both romantic and platonic, between the various characters.  It does a good job about making you care about them, and making you interested in what happens to them.



Whether it's Beast Boy and Cyborg's friendship, the love between Starfire and Nightwing, or the drama going on in the lives of characters like Wally West or Raven, it all plays a part in why I've covered over forty issues for this blog at this point. (which seems crazy, looking back on it)  I'm hoping to cover more of this series, though looking into future issues, it seems like this one marks the departure of George Perez as the artist and co-plotter, which might have a major impact on the series going forward.  Still, I'm optimistic, and I'm going to come back to the Teen Titans at a later date.

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