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Could Teen Titans GO! Be The Most Amoral Comic That DC Publishes?

Published Sat, 07 Sep 2013 09:00:47 -0500

DC Comics are publishing a Teen Titans Go! comic in December, based on the animated series, and written by Merrill Hagan and Sholly Fisch.

Both writers say that the tone of the Teen Titans Go! comic book — which will be released monthly digitally, with a print edition reprinting two digital adventures per issue following on a bi-monthly schedule — will match that of the cartoon, and show even more of what the team gets up to when they're not fighting bad guys and saving the world.

Adi Tantimedh lays down how the cartoon works, for Bleeding Cool, and what that might mean for the comic.

It's a Mad Magazine comedy treatment of the Titans mixed with cute anime Chibi style art so they seem to be able to get away with anything. It's actually quite vicious and surreal, often ending with all the Titans dead or permanently maimed. Storylines include one where Beast Boy teaches Starfire it's okay to lie and she goes nuts with it to the point where she has set the Titans trying to kill each other because they believed what she told them. Or where Starfire's cuddly little pet wanders into Mexico and gets involved in a telenovella plot where a gangster's girlfiend falls in love with it and incurs the gangster's murderous wrath. Or where Starfire wants to have a Girl's Night Out matching the boys', drags Raven along, breaks Jinx out of jail and they wreck half the city with the cops chasing after them.

The most subversive episode is one where Robin decides he's sick of being the only one without superpowers on the team because he has to work harder than everyone else. They tell him that superpowers are a curse. A CURSE! He will be forever a stranger, an outsider.

He insists he wants powers, so Raven gives him the gamut of powers, warning him he'll live to regret it. NOPE. He goes off and solves all crime, ends world hunger and everything's great. Except that means superheroes are out of a job. The team disbands. Robin has to find a crappy, boring 9 to 5 job. He toils at this job for the next 50 years until he falls over and ends up in the hospital on his death bed.

He laments where it all went wrong, when he lost his purpose – when he got his powers. The rest of the Titans comes out from behind a curtain, all old and infirm and go "HA! SEE? TOLD YA!" "It's a curse," says Old Raven in granny glasses. "Cuuuuuuurse."

Robin flatlines.

The end.

The sheer amorality of the characters throughout the series is brilliant. It is frequently hysterically funny.

Apparently Mike Carlin runs that show in LA, and he's more than happy to let the team go nuts and seems to be expressing his homicidal rage towards DC.

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