This week from DC comics we get another chapter in the Future State saga with Teen Titans 1. I was really curious how they would handle Teen Titans given the size of the roster. Almost every single young DC superhero belonged to the Teen Titans at some point. The characters that could appear are quite impressive, but again the name of the game is Future State. Could this roster bring us an entirely new set of young superheroes?

Sadly this title ends up reading like a convoluted mess. Perhaps die-hard Teen Titan fans can follow things better, but between the story and the cast, the story never focuses on anything specific. It even contradicts another Future State title. Normally, we could say every comic belongs in its own little pocket, but the Future State titles so far go out of their way to link all the titles together to provide a larger picture. Given this series only runs two months, one would think DC would keep all the titles in concert with each other.

Teen Titans 1 – Who’s on the Team?

DC told us Future State would jump into the future and introduce us to new heroes wearing old mantles. While this mostly holds true, the time jump really only feels like a catastrophic decade later in most cases. Yes, we see plenty of new faces, but many of the stories contain the regulars as well.

With the Future Titans, we start off with Red Arrow and Nightwing. Emiko now wears the Red mask (so new face), but Nightwing is still Dick Grayson. My only issue with this comes from Robin Eternal 1 where Tim says Dick went crazy and now calls Arkham home. Do we chalk this up to a continuity error or bad information from Tim?

When we meet the rest of the team, Kori runs the team, and she really seems to hold some grudge against Dick. Somehow Beast Boy and Cyborg fused into one entity now called Cybeast. No real explanation ever surfaces. Raven trains with a mysterious being in a cell, but we never find out who or why. After that, we see bunches of faces and names I never saw before. In the end, we see faces we do not know or faces we do know that contain no backstory.

Teen Titans 1 – What Is Their Purpose Again?

After reading the entire issue, the final pages reveal some plan to retrieve the Spear of Destiny, but half the Titans don’t even know that’s the mission. There several flashbacks that do nothing to advance the story or explain anything that happens. They thought the spear might kill the four horsemen, but instead, it only brings the four together. At what point did the four horsemen become the enemy? It makes no sense.

Then on top of it, Dick gets tired of losing, goes down to the cell Raven visited earlier, and apparently commits treason. The true identity of the person in the cell I do not know, but he dons the Red X mask while Nightwing wears a two-eyed mask that looks like Slade Wilson’s Deathstroke mask. Why? Because he is tired of losing. WTF?!

Not the Nightwing I remember.

Maybe, die-hard Teen Titans fans will understand more of what actually happens, but for the average reader, this title does not warrant picking up as it is a scrambled mess.

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