Teen Titans, Volume 2

If the Mod, Go-Go, Dig it scene of the Titans stories in volume one left you wincing in pain, fear no more. Volume two reflects a tremendous amount of maturation on behalf of both the characters and their creative talents, even while the series fails to ever achieve a firm identity. The change begins four issues in, where Wonder Girl finally reveals her origin, confesses to living (homeless) in the Titans clubhouse, and closes the issue by fashioning a new, more mature look and costume for herself. As WG changes before our very eyes, the rest of the team seems to mature along with her. Over the course of the next few issues, they genuinely begin to look and feel like teenagers. Nick Cardy's art makes the Titans look older, but a story by Bob Kanigher shortly into this volume is what really pushes the transition into early adulthood. In this story, the Titans fail to prevent the murder of an innocent victim. In a moment of clumsy heroics, they make an irreversible mistake, and that mistake continues to haunt them for several issues to come. The Titans begin to develop as thinking, feeling people in these stories, full of confusion and self-doubt as the best of us are. No longer the hip, moralizing voice of a mass-marketed generation, they are left direction-less and unsure of who they are. They even abandon their costumes and powers for a few issues, but this transformation doesn't stick. Before long, they're back to fighting crime, now aided by stronger, more expressive writing and artwork, as well as several compelling new allies. Finally, the last three issues of this volume are the beginning of my favorite stretch in the classic Titans run. In response to the sudden success of horror titles in the early 1970s, DC took the direction-less Teen Titans title into the realm of the undead. These stories of monsters, ghosts, spirits, witches, and the like are full of compelling, shadowy artwork and fun, far-out stories. The next volume will have many more of these wonderful stories, but the last three stories of Volume 2 will at least provide a nice teaser of what's to come. Overall, this content still doesn't measure up to the character-driven epics penned by Wolfman and Perez in the 1980s, but it is a strong new beginning for the Titans. Any fan interested and/or loyal enough to have pushed through the mediocrity of volume one will inevitably appreciate the strong shifts occurring in volume two.