Teen Titans (Comic Book)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • And the Fandom Rejoiced:
    • The announcement of Static joining the roster in 2008.
    • The announcement that JT Krul would be replacing Felicia Henderson.
    • Roy Harper getting his other arm back, and the implication that Cry for Justice is being retconned out.
      • Of course that disappeared when it was announced that Lian Harper will no longer exist, and chances are Roy won't be known for abusing heroin. Which, at this point only leaves him with the rejected sidekick and anti-hero angles of his character.
  • Base Breaker: Fandom is split between Cheshire and whether or not she's an assassin who loves her children, or a total sociopath who loves them so long as it's useful to her. Word of God from Gail Simone has it that she is indeed a Complete Monster due to the bombing of Qurac, though some fans point to her characterization not handled by Simone as the true Cheshire. Though the Qurac bombing was written in the early 1980s long before Gail Simone ever used her, which essentially means Cheshire has been a Complete Monster since then.
  • Complete Monster: Trigon, obviously.
  • Creator's Pet:
    • Danny Chase. No other character in Titans history has been so despised by the fans and beloved of the writer. He was smart-mouthed, ignorant and obnoxious, yet was always shown to be right, and often effectively handled villains.
    • Cassie, aka Wonder Girl, has officially picked up the reigns of being the series' Creator's Pet. The common complaint against her is that there are too many writers on board who want to give their own interpretation of her character.
  • Die for Our Ship: Beast Boy (Changeling)/Raven vs. Beast Boy/Terra (or Terra II). Fans of the former hated there being a second Terra so much that they actively wished death on the character (they got their wish). Fans of the latter still cling to the hope that Raven will be deep-sixed for even the third Terra, citing that she would make "more sense".
  • Dork Age: A couple of eras qualify. Particularly the Atom-led new team of H'sann Natall hybrid teenagers. And the late 90s version. And the late 2000s version.
    • None have been yet so reviled as Deathstroke's team of mercenaries, under Eric Wallace and Fabrizio Fiorentino. Compared to the levels of Wangst and Gorn any previous book may have had, Wallace somehow managed to turn it Up to Eleven.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • Beast Boy, Kid Devil, Miss Martian and Ravager, especially in the 2000s books.
    • Bunker is slowly but surely becoming this for the reboot Titans.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Cinder of Deathstroke's team dies in order to destroy the Methuselah Device. Subverted in that she was already suicidal but couldn't die because of her power to turn into molten magma, and that she destroyed the device because given the option to bring her dead family back, she'd rather they stayed dead because she believed the world is a horrible place. It's hard to feel that sorry for her, or awed by her, when she'd been portrayed as such an utterly flat character, the circumstances of her powers revealed a month before she died, and the reminder that she burned off a man's reproductive organs using her own.
  • Idiot Ball: Is handled by Cyborg and Dick Grayson in Rise of Arsenal. In Cyborg's case, designing a hideously gaudy removable prosthetic that in fact increases the pain Roy already felt in his arm, and is aware of that flaw. Notwithstanding his engineering capabilities, did giving something like that to a man who had just recently learned his daughter was dead seem like a good idea? Wouldn't it have made more sense to wait, or at least give him a more standard strap-on prosthetic made from wood or plastic? Did a grieving father honestly need the pain in his missing limb amplified at that time? Cyborg even states that Roy is "good as new" once he's outfitted with it, and then quickly apologizes for said statement.
  • Internet Backdraft:
    • The controversial "Titans: Villains For Hire" one-shot has been the subject of a great deal of (mostly negative) attention over it's ending, where Ryan Choi, one of DC's few Asian superheroes, is violently slaughtered by the new team of Titans. It has even prompted a number of debates and editorials across the web over DC's handling of non-white superheroes.
    • On that same note, the removal of all of the minorities from the Teen Titans (including the fan-favorites Static and Blue Beetle) by incoming writer JT Krul has also prompted a sizable amount of discussion on message boards, and was even mentioned by Racialicious.com, a website which deals with racially-charged issues in politics and pop culture.
    • Since it's inception back in 2003, there has been a small but vocal number of fans who have stated their hatred for the current Teen Titans book, as the cult-classic series Young Justice was cancelled so that it's characters could be "graduated" to Titan status.
      • There have also been a small but vocal number of fans who dislike the current book because the Young Justice characters were added and developed at the expense of older established Titans.
    • Rise of Arsenal. Enough said.
    • Bunker has caused some minor fuss. Many critics (gay and straight alike) consider him to be a little too gay.
  • It Was His Sled: Terra being The Mole, and her general sociopathic nature. That arc is one of the most well-remembered arcs in the comics run, one of the most influential arcs in comic book history, and it helped make the series so popular in the 80s. When a kids comic spoils this in the characters first appearance, you know that its his sled. The cartoon adaptation helped renew this spoiler, thanks to Terra's popularity (though that Terra was vastly different from the original Terra.)
  • My Real Daddy: It's widely agreed that Devin Grayson is the only writer in recent years who ever really understood not just Roy's character, but Lian's as well.
  • Relationship Sue: Terry Long, who looked a fair bit like Marv Wolfman, and was the helpless but kind older man who was sleeping with the gorgeous Donna Troy.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Yes, Harper murdered a supervillain, turned his back on his friends, went back on heroin, and joined Deathstroke's mercenary team for the chance to kill Deathstroke. But considering that his right arm had been hacked off, was given a prosthetic which actually causes more pain and impairs his abilities as an archer, and his daughter, Lian, died, it's hard not to feel sorry for him. This is magnified by how out-of-character his friends and family acted during Rise of Arsenal, and by how his joining Deathstroke's Titans was mainly due to Cheshire, Lian's mother, guilt tripping him into joining by saying that he "owed" her for Lian's death.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Heroes: Roy Harper's descent into anti-heroism can be attributed to how out-of-character his family and friends acted during Rise of Arsenal. Bare in mind, this man's right arm was hacked off and his daughter was killed. He's an archer, and he was a good father towards Lian. Individually:
    • Black Canary, the closest thing to a mother he ever had and the woman who helped him beat his addiction the first time, pretty much washed her hands of him and considered him a lost cause. She should've known that being alone was not helping matters. It was with her support that Roy beat his addiction the first time. And when she had the opportunity to fully give that support again after Roy had been pushing her away, she chose not to.
    • Cyborg designed him a prosthetic arm that wasn't a "proper" prosthetic because Roy's arm is still infected. The arm is removable, but increases the pain in his stump, greatly hinders his ability as an archer, and he can't wear normal clothes over it.
    • Doctor Mid-Nite was completely oblivious to the fact that Roy had been taking pain killers from his supply of medication, never mind how easily Roy was able to take them.
    • Donna Troy, Wally West, and Dick Grayson, supposedly his closest friends, did nothing to help. Granted, Roy called Donna a whore and said she was a bad mother, but if Donna truly understood the pain Roy was in as she claimed, she'd know people say things that don't mean when they've lost a loved one (and have suffered a horrible injury). She might have wound up the same way he did after her son died, only she had the support of her friends and family. Dick was the one who came up with the idea of having Roy temporarily committed at Virgil House, as if strapping him down in a room alone would've made things better instead of bringing him to his friends for support. This isn't helped by how coldly he knocked Roy out claiming "I'm your friend". And Wally, he did absolutely nothing at all.
  • Ruined FOREVER: The status of Roy and Lian Harper. His arm was cut off and she was killed all to make Roy more "interesting" by turning him into a drug-fueled anti-hero, who was later emotionally blackmailed into joining Deathstroke's Titans by Cheshire in an attempt to kill Slade. Fans were looking towards the reboot in the hopes that Lian would be alive. Then it was announced that Roy would be too young to have children, so Lian will have never existed, leaving Roy as "Green Arrow's rejected sidekick, Arsenal", a soldier for hire in a group of anti-heroes containing Jason Todd and Starfire.
    • Mind you, this hasn't stopped a number of devoted fans in the "Bring Back Lian Harper" fan group, on Facebook and Deviantart, from trying to get the father-daughter duo fixed since 2010.
    • DC retconning "The New Titans" from existence in the recent New52 reboot.
  • The Scrappy:
    • The Team Titans and other characters from the '90s are mostly considered to be Scrappies, though Flamebird and the female Hawk are other notable examples. Huge portions of the team have been this at various times, though Baby Wildebeest is a big stand-out. When you're an infant and they graphically murder you on-panel, you know the fans hate you.
    • Cassie and Bombshell basically fall under this trope for Felicia Henderson's run, though it doesn't help that Henderson has VERY different ideas for all of the characters personalities, even if they're not "in character".
    • Fringe of Dan Jurgens' Teen Titans is one of the most unpopular Titans ever created. Even Minion, an equally ignored Titan, has been depicted in more convention sketches than Fringe has.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Titans becoming a villain-driven book about a team of mercenaries led by Deathstroke. The reviews for the series before the change had already been poor, but after Eric Wallace and Fabrizio Fiorentino took over, the book found its way on many "Worst Comics of 2010" lists. Two common complaints are the death of Ryan Choi and the continuation of Roy Harper's character derailment.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Krul's run slimmed down the team to get a more focused lineup. "Slimming down the team" consisted of removing all the minority characters.
    • In the older series, whenever the characters called out Kid Flash for his hatred of Russians, he claimed it was because of his "Midwestern conservative values," rather awkwardly conflating conservatism and the Midwest with bigotry.
  • Wangst: A staple since the eighties.
  • The Woobie: Kid Devil of the current[when?] generation. He has the most pathetic back story prior to joining the team, and ends up getting the worst treatment after.
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