Teen Titans: Titans of Tomorrow


By Sean McKeever, Geoff Johns, George Pérez & others (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-899-7

This slim volume of frantic Fights ‘n’ Tights teen angst follows on from an earlier saga when the constantly changing team of junior heroes arrived a decade into their own future and were aghast to find that their adult selves had conquered America in the name of peace and security. Forearmed with the knowledge of this dystopian tomorrow the kids came back to now (see Teen Titans: The Future is Now) and resolved to counter those events…

Superhero lives are fairly chaotic and in the interim a number of Crises occurred which seemed to guarantee that Tomorrow would never come true. This volume, collecting issues #50-54, opens with a memorial for Superboy and Kid Flash (both recently deceased) as Robin, Wonder Girl, Ravager, Kid Devil, Miss Martian and Supergirl share their grief and memories with previous members.

‘Passage’ (team written by Sean McKeever, Geoff Johns, Marv Wolfman & Todd Dezago and illustrated by Randy Green, Mike McKone, George Pérez, Todd Nauck, Andy Lanning, Sandra Hope, Marlo Alquiza & Larry Stucker) finds the survivors reminiscing in ‘Friday Night Lights’ and ‘Dear Barry…’ whilst including a neat, entertaining digression that provides the other side of a team-up with the new Blue Beetle against Biker-Berserker Lobo (the main part of that saga is collected in the superb Blue Beetle: Reach For the Stars).

Meanwhile a mysterious gang are systematically defeating the Justice League and replacing them…

The four-part epic ‘The Titans of Tomorrow… Today!’ begins with ‘Futures of the Past’ (McKeever, Alé Garza, Derek Fridolfs, Rob Hunter & Marlo Alquiza) as the future Titans – including versions of the dead Superboy and Kid Flash – arrive in contemporary times to ensure their own existence by forcing their younger selves to comply with their draconian counterparts continually re-editing memories.

Simple, no? Perhaps not, as wild card Blue Beetle has inexplicably re-entered the mix…

Selecting a key moment when the alien invader Starro nearly conquered Earth, the future Titans substitute themselves for the JLA and attempt to seduce, demoralise and even thrash their teen incarnations into becoming the fascist monsters they are, but youth is always rebellious and plans go very wrong indeed in ‘Beat Yourself Up’ (art by Jamal Igle, Alquiza, Jesse Delperdang & Hunter) as Robin finds a uniquely dramatic way to stymie his tomorrow tormentor and Blue Beetle leads a counterattack…

The temporally fluid situation shifts again as the future Luthor materializes with a battalion of tomorrow’s corrupted superheroes in ‘Combine and Conquer’ (illustrated by Eddy Barrows & Rob Hunter) to finish the battle and save his own timeline, but his Titan’s Army has overlooked the mind-controlling power of Starro who (which?) simply takes them all over.

The action spectacularly concludes in ‘Fight the Future’ (Barrows, Joe Prado, Greg Tocchini, Hunter, Julio Ferreira & Oclair Albert) as allegiances shift and the future dies forever in an explosive battle and simple resignation…

Fast, furious, this extremely twisty-turny, time-travel extravaganza is better than most of its ilk, and on the whole this is a genuinely fun-filled action romp; but once again I can only remark that for the less well-informed reader or DC newcomer, the bits without hitting and explosions might be very confusing. As always, the choice is yours. The future is not immutable…

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