Teen Titans #1

For some reason, Scott Lobdell is writing three of the "New 52" titles for DC. Keep in mind, Scott Lobdell hasn't written anything significant since he was a big-shot X-Men writer in the 1990's. Apparently Dan DiDio is a big fan, and Lobdell is a man who can work fast.

And frankly, his first two titles did not knock it out of the park. Both frankly were average books, not anything to write home about, and Red Hood and the Outlaws created such an unnecessary hubbubbub about feminism and sexism and what-not that it distracted from the enjoyable parts of the story.

But Teen Titans is where he gets it all right. One can tell this book is the one he's had the greatest vision on and has thought out the most. This book seemingly wipes the slate clean of all Teen Titans stories post the Marv Wolfmann and George Perez era. Tim Drake is our protagonist (glad he's not calling himself Tim Wayne anymore personally), worried about a secret organization called N.O.W.H.E.R.E. trying to round up all metahumans and use them for their own purposes.

Scott Lobdell clearly knows these characters, as Bart Allen and Tim Drake's personas are spot on (I'm not sure about who Cassie is, I've only read her in about a dozen issues of J.T. Krul's Teen Titans run, and her character was never established to the point where I got a good hold on who she was). Tim's back to being the Tim from pre-Batman R.I.P. days (aka not the desperate, angry loner on Chris Yost's run as he searched for Bruce Wayne, or the brooding mini-Bruce that Fabian Nicieza created). There's a sense of youthfulness and optimism to him that's been missing, so kudos to Lobdell for returning him to his roots. One would assume that he also put in the effort to learn Cassie and Connor Kent, but that's never a given.

By wiping the slate clean of their past history together, this does provide a very different environment for all of these characters to bond together. When Bart, Conner, and Tim originally came together during the late 90's in "Young Justice," they were younger, more inexperienced and new to the superhero gig. Now it's unclear how long Bart, Cassie, and Conner have been in operation (seemingly Superboy's comic is tying directly into this, so obviously not very long for Conner) but Tim's experience as Bruce's sidekick Robin is mostly intact (though his adventures as a Titan erased).

Part of this makes me think that there's just a secret conspiracy between Jim Lee, Geoff Johns, and Dan DiDio to make Scott Lobdell the fall guy for if this whole relaunch doesn't work. From what I can tell, only his titles directly erase major chunks of continuity from the old universe. So if this "relaunch" fails, they can point the major problems stemming from changes necessary to make Lobdell's titles possible. (Far fetched and probably completely wrong, but you never know).

Teen Titans #1 sets up a legitimate crisis, providing a legitimate reason for Tim drake to bond this group of super-teens together, instead of something cheesy and coincidental. We seem Tim actively seeking these team members out, and not some serendipitous meeting.

What I enjoyed: Scott Lobdell handles the characters well, and seems to have a knack for writing youths (not surprising considering his success with "Generation X." Also, Bret Booth totally wins for this art. This issue is beautiful and the costumes look awesome, particularly the Red Robin one. Scott Lobdell is fortunate that he has two great pencillers on his team books.

What I didn't: There's six team members shown on the cover, and the two I haven't seen before and are presumably new don't show up in the issue. That's just odd. Also, because of all the set-up, the plot doesn't advance as fast as one would like, but that's a common problem with many of these new #1's.

Conclusion: This is Lobdell's best work of all three number ones. I will definitely be reading this beyond issue #1. 8.2/10 (B-).