Following the events of DC K.O, the Titans have a new writer, a new title, and a new roster. Tate Brombal, writer of Batgirl and Everything Dead & Dying, continues his exciting new run with New Titans #34, an issue in which all is not as it appears to be, and familiar faces are not who they seem to be. Brombal tells Sami DeMonster in an interview for DC that New Titans is “a brand-new jumping on point for all readers with any interest in the characters and team.” It is clear from both issues #33 and #34 that this run will be exactly as Brombal promised, as both issues are very new-reader-friendly and require very little prior knowledge of Titans lore beforehand in order to follow the story unfolding. It truly is a perfect jumping-on point for new readers.
SPOILERS AHEAD for New Titans #34!
Last issue, in New Titans #33, the team settled back into a comfortable, if somewhat predictable routine. Fighting supervillains, saving the world, and drinking lots and lots of coffee. Yep. Just a typical day in the life of a superhero team. While this routine should feel familiar and totally ordinary, Dick Grayson aka Nightwing begins to feel unsettled by the monotony. Dick’s suspicions are proven correct when a disembodied voice speaks to him through the coffee maker, warning him to stop drinking the coffee. After this strange encounter, Nightwing chooses to abstain from his morning brew while continuing to serve the coffee to the rest of the team.
Amongst the tedious and repetitive superhero battles, there is a really great moment in issue #33 where Brombal pauses the action to give us a meaningful moment between Nightwing and Starfire, aka Koriand’r, where he expresses to her feelings of dissatisfaction. In the issue, Dick tells Kory, “Every day we have the same morning. We face the same villains, the same schemes and betrayals…and at nighttime the moon is always full. Nothing ever changes, and so nothing ever grows, and I feel trapped.” Dick also tells Kory that he feels that there should be more to life than this endless parade of super villains that they fight and defeat before repeating it all again the next day.
This moment between Dick and Kory speaks to the repetitive nature of superhero comics. With characters that are never allowed to age and titles that never reach a definitive endpoint, it can often feel like superhero comics are trapped in an endless cycle of repetition with no evolution. Dick also expresses frustration with the never-ending resurrections that inevitably follow whenever a superhero is killed or dies in a tragic manner. It’s a conversation that speaks to Dick Grayson’s dissatisfaction with life, but it is also a self-aware moment in which the comic holds a mirror up to itself by calling out the absurdity of the formulaic nature of superhero comics.
The Titans vs the “New Titans”. (Credit: DC Comics)
New Titans #34 picks up right where the previous issue leaves off, shortly after Donna Troy, aka Wonder Girl, and Roy Harper, aka Arsenal, are seemingly killed, and a group calling themselves the “New Titans” arrives, declaring that they have come to set the Titans “free”. The “New Titans” consists of Stephanie Brown, formerly the Spoiler and now Batgirl, Yara Flor, who, like Donna Troy, uses the moniker Wonder Girl, Jon Kent, typically known as Superboy, and finally Eddie Bloomberg, aka Red Devil. It’s an interesting lineup of characters that have all been sidekicks at one point in time, but have not been prominently featured on the Teen Titans; only Red Devil has previously served as a member of the team.
Early in the issue, we find out from Stephanie that the Donna and Roy that we saw “die” are not the real Donna and Roy, shortly before Raven and Beast Boy mysteriously die in the same way at the hand of an unseen and unidentified person named “Eva”. Claiming to only be there to help, the “New Titans” try to convince the Titans that they mean them no harm. A battle breaks out between the two factions when Victor Stone, aka the Titan known as Cyborg, initiates a fight with the “New Titans”. After the fight ends, Dick and Kory are both stunned when a totally human Victor Stone arrives, causing confusion over who the “real” Vic is and why there is more than one of him.
The “evil” Victor Stone reveals himself, and shockingly, it is the Cyborg Victor Stone, who is now 100% a Cyborg, with no human parts. After Jon Kent temporarily dispatches Cyborg, we learn from the other Victor why there is more than one of him. During the events of DC K.O. #5, Victor came into contact with something called Alpha Energy, which “supercharged” Victor, tearing him in two halves, creating one fully human Victor Stone and one machine-self half more powerful than ever. Human Victor also tells the Titans that his machine-self was the one who kidnapped the Titans and placed them in a “mecha-world” of his own creation out of a desire to keep the Titans safe. He also created hard-light projections of the other Titans to help maintain the fantasy he was creating for them. We also learn that the coffee they were served was synthesized in such a way to help the Titans accept the false reality that they were trapped in.
A thread throughout this issue is the narration we get from Tara Markhov, aka Terra, a character who has had a long and complicated history with the Titans. Terra was once a member of the Teen Titans, but betrayed the group after it was revealed that she was secretly working as a double agent for the Teen Titans’ archfoe Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke. Because of Terra’s previous betrayal, the Titans have been reluctant and hesitant to trust Terra, even when she has not been overly antagonistic toward the heroes who were once her teammates.
The issue opens with Terra questioning her loyalty to the Titans, with her narration boxes saying, “The Titans were only ever another stupid gig. One that got me killed. So what the ever-loving hell am I still doing here?” This continues throughout the issue, as Terra carries on with the facade that she doesn’t care all that much about the Titans or their fate. She acts like being with the Titans was just a bad phase of her life, one that got her killed twice, as she tells us. Who is she trying to convince of her indifference, we the readers or Terra herself? If there truly is no love lost with the Titans, then there should be nothing compelling her to stay with them, and yet she has chosen to remain with them. Perhaps she is not being 100% honest when she says that the Titans were nothing more than “another stupid gig”. In the end, Terra will make a bold decision that will reveal her true feelings for the Titans and reaffirm her commitment to her former teammates.
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