The New Teen Titans

The Teen Titans began when Kid Flash, Robin, and Aqualad banded together top save the town of Happy Harbor from a villain calling himself “Mr. Twister.” Shortly afterward, the three of them met again, along with Wonder Girl and Speedy, battling an alien called the Antithesis who had taken control of various JLA members. They decided to make the team permanent, and became known as the Teen Titans.

Speedy himself did not immediately join, but worked with them occasionally, and the team gained additional members. During a dark chapter of their history, in which they inadvertently allowed an important man to die, they abandoned their costumes for grey uniforms while working for a wealthy man named Loren Jupiter. Eventually, of course, they were back in costume. Yet the pressures of growing up tore the team apart, and as members began heading off for college, the team disbanded.

Some time later, a woman named Raven appeared, attempting to gather together a new group of Titans. She convinced Robin to start recruiting, and they collected Wonder Girl, Changeling, and the cyborg Vic Stone. Kid Flash declined, trying to be Wally West instead. Raven, an empath, needed him on the team, and so she interfered with his emotions, made him feel that he loved her, to convince him to join. On their first case they met the final member of the team, the alien princess Starfire. With all of them assembled, they were able to face the threat Raven had discovered: her own father, the greatest evil of an alternate dimension, was coming here. They elected to keep the team going, making their headquarters in New York.

The golden age of the Titans ended when they brought in a new member, Terra. The pressures of “real” life continued to wear on some of the members; Dick Grayson decided to abandon being Robin and find a new identity, and Wally West decided to give up heroics forever. Uncomfortable with what Raven had done, still unsure whether he was really Wally West or Kid Flash, and faced with his super-speed killing him, he retired. Two members down, the Titans were then captured by Deathstroke the Terminator and turned over the the H.I.V.E, where they learned that Terra had actually been a double agent. In the ensuing battle Terra died, the Titans recruited Deathstroke’s son Jericho as a new member, and Dick Grayson took on the identity of Nightwing.

Eventually, Raven lost control of the evil within herself, and Trigon was able to reach Earth. The Titans faced their own inner demons (literally), and they were able to force Trigon back, but at the apparent cost of Raven’s life. Then Starfire was called back to her homeworld Tamaran for an arranged marriage, and the team fell apart. It took a major battle with Brother Blood and his entire church, the return of Raven, and a coalition of former Titans (including Wally, now the Flash) before the team returned to anything resembling normal.

On the team’s third anniversary, all the Titans (and many former Titans) were captured by the Wildebeest, except for Nightwing, who managed to subdue his attacker, and discovered something astonishing: there was more than one Wildebeest! Together with Deathstroke (whose contract to destroy the Titans had long since expired), Raven’s mother, and a few unfamiliar faces (and eventually Troia, who had been lucky enough to be on vacation during this whole fiasco), they tracked down their former teammates only to discover that Jericho had been possessed—some time back—and had taken over the Wildebeest organization. Deathstroke was forced to kill his son, Raven died (again), Cyborg was left catatonic in a remote-controlled robot body, the Titans were discredited and targeted as menaces by the city of New York, and everything just sort of generally went to hell.

Then they got worse. First a team of future Titans came to the present to kill Troia, since her son would be born with godlike powers and take over the world. When Donna gave up her powers to prevent that future, they found themselves unable to return to their own time, and settled in the present... ironically, under the guardianship of the now-powerless Donna. Cyborg was revived by an alien computer sentience, but was only able to stay aware within it, and so left to explore the universe.

Then there was Raven. Since she had always had the ability to separate her soul from her body for short periods of time, her soul was able to remain on earth. The evil in her freed, she took possession of a new body and began recruiting allies, implanting seeds of Trigon’s soul in various captives—including Changeling and Frances Kane, who had finally begun to turn her life around. She interrupted the wedding of Nightwing and Starfire, implanting a seed in Kory—one which her alien biology appeared to fight off, but which eventually turned out to contain all the good in Raven’s soul. It led her to return to her homeworld once again, leaving a drastically reduced team of Titans. Troia had given up her powers, Raven was evil, Starfire and Cyborg were both in space, and Nightwing was going solo.

Roy Harper (formerly Speedy, later a government agent, and now Arsenal) stepped in to fill the leadership gap Nightwing had left. He made a deal with Sarge Steel of Checkmate to solve the Titans’ credibility problems, which ended up with them essentially working for the government. Unhappy with the deal, nearly everyone from the previous team left. He was left with the two Teamers who had survived Zero Hour, Damage (who had been remanded into the Titans’ custody), and Impulse. Fortunately by this time Donna had joined the Darkstars, and they were able to add the latest Green Lantern, Supergirl (the Matrix/Earth Angel version), and an alien with a powerful morphing battlesuit (the Omegadrome) calling himself Minion.

This team was a disaster. While they managed to succeed against Raven and other threats, the internal dynamics were... turbulent, to say the least. Kyle was still learning the ropes, Terra was facing an identity crisis, Damage’s temper was at its worst, Donna was dealing with her divorce, Mirage was secretly pregnant, no one could stand Impulse, and Arsenal—who has always had a problem with authority—found himself having problems exercising it.

The return of Cyborg (now Cyberion) from his exile in space led the Titans to head for Tamaran, seeking out Starfire as Raven began recollecting the pieces of Trigon’s soul. This left Changeling freed, and in the final confrontation, the piece of Raven’s soul that Starfire had carried was able to destroy Trigon’s soul forever (for the third time, mind you), leaving Raven a disembodied, but pure, spirit. Raven, Changeling, and Cyberion remained for a time on New Tamaran to help the survivors of the world’s destruction rebuild, while the rest returned to Earth and disbanded.