Since Mark Waid launched his “World’s Finest” corner of the DC Universe, there’s been one constant in the stories: balance. Waid’s stories thread the needle between giving readers that dopamine rush of their favorite characters in their early days while also deepening and expanding their characters in new and unexpected ways. “World’s Finest: Teen Titans” #2 spends time with Donna Troy and Garth and, though they’ve been in comics for 60ish years now, we are still learning more about who they are in ways that feel additive and not retroactive.
Written by Mark WaidCover by Chris Samnee and Matheus Lopes
Illustrated by Emanuela Lupacchino
Colored by Jordie Bellaire
Lettered by Steve WandsDONNA TROY JOINS THE TEAM! Welcome to Metropolis, Wonder Girl! Hoping to reconnect with her human roots, Donna Troy leaves Themyscira for the City of Tomorrow. There she meets Mal Duncan, a young man with the makings of a true hero. And just in time, too—the Titans will need all the help they can get as they investigate a cry for help that leads them to a haunted house that is not what it seems!
This issue continues the overarching narrative from last issue – the Titans are a viral sensation but there are lots of internal tensions – but does so almost entirely in the background. There’s one remark that Robin makes to Speedy that references their spat from last issue and we see a few instances of the Titans being celebrities of a sort, but the heart of this issue is about Wonder Girl, Aqualad, and their relationship.
Waid lays a lot of ground here to make room for some of the other Teen Titans of this era without making the book seem overcrowded. Lilith and Gnarrk, two Titans that get trotted out every ten years or so for a story set in the past, are used as ‘advance scouts’ for the team, which gives them a purpose that allows them to remain in the background, but adds a really smart element to the storytelling, allowing Waid to use their actions to drive where the ‘main’ Titans go.
It is also nice to see this iteration of the Teen Titans get the spotlight. While it is easy to heap praise on the Wolfman/Perez “New Teen Titans,” that run wouldn’t be possible without this team and their decade plus adventures. But because so many of these characters have moved on to stories outside of the Titans banner while the likes of Starfire and Raven haven’t, they tend to be the default iteration of the team. And while there may not be people quoting Gnarrk like they do Teen Titans GO!, it’s nice to see Waid, someone who deeply cares about DC history, respecting the legacy.
Emanuela Lupacchino is a really sympathetic collaborator for Waid here, as she is able to do so much within just a few panels to get across a subtlety of Waid’s script, allowing the book to remain uncluttered by extraneous dialogue. In the sequence where Donna, Garth, Mal, and Karen are bopping around Metropolis, Lupacchino shows Donna’s childlike wonder at all she’s seeing, while also highlighting Garth’s reluctance to indulge in these activities. Those panels are somewhat played for laughs, but even taken straight, they are incredibly expressive and telling about the characters.
Lupacchino also does a great job of adapting her style for the character she’s focused on in the moment when Aqualad, Speedy, and Wonder Girl all enter the house looking for Dalisay. Each of their experiences is tailored to their particular fear, and yet it all hangs together nicely. She also doesn’t forget that these are young characters, but doesn’t draw them as little kids, either. These are people who are beautiful and unencumbered by the stresses of life, and so they walk around with an airiness to them that would ring false for most older heroes.
But even this is used in creative ways. Garth’s tension is in direct conflict to his teammates’ exuberance; Mal’s perfect posture is heroic, but it seems like he’s adopting more of a stiff nature because of his (implied) attraction to Karen and his intimidation of being friends with the Titans. All of that allows the characters a depth that would be totally lost in the hands of a lesser artist.
Continued belowThere is an odd piece of both “World’s Finest” books when it comes to technology and the DC timeline. This series seems to imply that the Titans are social media stars, but also seem like they should’ve been around at least a few years longer than that timeline makes sense. Obviously, there’s no belief that these characters were teenagers in the 1960s and so, in current continuity are pushing 80, but even with the sliding scale of DC ages, it would seem like these characters are, at the youngest, probably in their late 20s/early 30s in current continuity, with the ‘older’ generation of Batman and Superman being in their late 30s/early 40s, but these stories feature iPads, hashtags, and other anachronisms that seem at least 5 years too early for this scale. Is this a part of some Hypertime weirdness to be explored later? Possibly, and it really doesn’t matter for the story itself, but is an interesting choice, especially because Waid is such a careful and precise writer that it seems like it would not be a mistake he would make.
The only reason it merits a mention is because of how much technology is a part of these stories. I do think that the setup for the series – the Titans are out there to help other kids – is smart. And, by setting the story in the social media era, it allows a different kind of interaction with the average person in the DC Universe. But there must be a reason for the anachronistic elements that hasn’t been revealed just yet.
Regardless of the reason, Waid and Lupacchino are delivering a book that feels relevant to today and also revelatory about the characters in it, which is not typically something you get from a series set in the past. Whether its Donna Troy’s naiveté, Garth’s reluctance to let loose, or Robin’s struggles with leadership, this book is giving a really insightful peek into the past of the Titans, whenever that is.
Final Verdict: 8.1 – A really lovely, solid tale.
