Graphic Novels - Teen Titans Vol. 5: Life and Death - Part One

Hello and hello. It’s arw1985, and I’m back with another installment of our favorite teenage heroes: The Teen Titans. Today, I will be going over a part of Volume five of the Teen Titans series, Life and Death. Why? ‘Cause I felt like it. Plus, this volume kind of flowed along with Infinite Crisis, so I decided to split it up. Now the creative team for volume five is…kinda big, so I’ll just list the creative team for each part I come out with. The creative team for part Uno of vol. 5 is:

• Geoff Johns – I think I’m catching on to a trend here.
• Tony Daniel –He’s ends up becoming the new head penciler for the book after this volume.
• Todd Nanuck- I don’t know anything about this guy. He does a couple of pages here and there.

Now that I’ve have gotten that out of the way, let’s get on with it!

Issue 29
I’ll note that this issue starts right before Infinite Crisis #1. We start out at Titans Tower on a Sunday night. Cyborg and Beast Boy have received a message from Donna Troy about that little space adventure. Cyborg decides to go and leaves Gar in charge of the Titans (All right Beast Boy!). As they walk off, an unknown figure talks about how there always together and proceeds to tranquilize them. This figure then sneaks into Raven’s room, who sleeping at the moment. He treats Raven a bit nicer and gives her some sleeping dust to keep her sleeping for a little while longer. He then mentions that Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, and Speedy have all left for Monday, so now he has no one in his way as he goes to meet Tim Drake.

In his room, Tim talks to Batman about the Martian Manhunter missing and tells him he’ll get a ride from Cyborg. When he hangs up, the unknown figure reveals himself to Tim. He calls himself the Red Hood, who’s also known as Jason Todd, the second Robin. If you want to know more about Jason Todd, check out Death in the Family and Under the Hood for more info.

Meanwhile, away from all of the good stuff, Cassie (Wonder Girl) is in her room at home. Her mom comes in. Apparently, she’s not speaking to her mom because she just found out that her father is …Zeus (Yes, the ZEUS). Apparently, that’s one thing Zeus always did in mythology, sleep with random Earth women. Anyway, this means that Ares is Cassie’s half-brother, which makes those stares from earlier either creepier or less creepy, I don’t know yet. Cassie’s worried about a lot of stuff, mostly about Conner, and says that her life feels out of control. At that moment, the TV shows Wonder Woman killing Max Lord.

At the tower, Jason introduces himself to Tim. As he does this, he takes off his Red Hood suit to reveal (Ha ha) another Robin Costume, and they then fight. As they fight, Jason talks about how Tim figured out Batman’s identity (see out A Lonely Place of Dying, nice story) and pretty much berates Tim. When Tim is knocked down by Jason, Jason grabs Tim’s staff and tells him that he’s going to show him what the Joker did to him. If you’ve read Death in the Family, then you know that Tim is going to get.

Apparently Tim has more taste than you do. Yellow pants? Please.

Oh Crude.

We then cut to Smallville, where news of Max Lord’s murder has reached the Kent Farm. The Kents wonder what may have happened and Conner is still sulking. That’s all.

Back at the Tower, we see Tim, bruised and bleeding, get knocked into the Hall of Dead Titans. As Jason looks at the statues, he get peeved when he doesn’t see a statue of his own (He was a Titan, briefly). He smashes Donna Troy’s statue (had to come down anyway, lol) as Tim get his second wind. Tim then unleashes all he has left on Jason. Unfortunately, Jason gets the better of him and wins. When Tim says he’s better than Jason, Jason rips off Tim’s ‘R’ and then knocks him out. A few minutes later, the knocked out Titans (along with Donna, Hearld, Starfire, and BumbleBee) find Tim. As they talk about how Jason got into the Tower, as well as the land of the living, they notice that he left a calling card.

This reminds me of my yearbooks but without the blood.

It’s Monday morning and Raven and Beast Boy clean the hall as well as talk about death and the fact that all of these people keep coming back. Suddenly, the essence of Green Speedo Man (lol, the Spectre guys) raises from Raven's soul self and opens the doorways to the land of the dead. A face familiar to Gar comes out and attacks him. It turns out to be Lilith, a former, dead Titan. We then hear the word ‘Mother’ (Oh crap). The next person who comes out of Raven is the Momma’s boy himself, Brother Blood. ...duh duh duh. The last page is of the Red Hood wondering if he would have been a better person if he had friends like the Titans.

Issue 30We start out in Burbank where a kid named Eddie gets fired for basically being lazy and reading a comic book about a rabbit. He goes to the cemetery to see his aunt and through this it turns out he is Red Devil, former sidekick to Blue Devil (the wanna-be Nightcrawler dude from Shadowpact). Suddenly, the portal to hell opens and those Trigon demons from volume 2 start raging havoc on LA. At the Tower, Brother Blood attacks Raven and drains some of her blood to get her power. Beast Boy turns into a T-Rex and charges him, but the zombified Lilith Clay uses her hypnosis powers to make Beast Boy to fall asleep. Grabbing Raven, he forces her to teleport them all to LA, where it’s gotten bad. While Blood helps tear the city apart, Raven is able to get Gar and teleport them away to a morgue (that sucks-ish). While they’re there, Gar starts to contact the rest of the Titans, but before this, Raven decides to kiss our green temp leader.

oooOOOOOOOOOoooooooo!!!!!

Cassie, who gets peeved at her classmates for dissing the Amazons, gets contacted by the rest and she leaves. Mia (Speedy) gets contacted by Kid Flash while she is trying to find out what that blue emergency arrow was. Later, they all meet up at the morgue. Raven clues them in on the fact that the doorway between the land of the living and the land of the dead has been forced open, causing people like Superman and Green Arrow to come back to the land of the living. They need to close the door, but they don’t know how. Suddenly, Blood and his forces attack the Morgue, causing the Titans to take the fight to Blood and friends. They fight with all that they have. Suddenly, Blood pulls out some more allies – more dead Titans. These are Hawk, Dove, Kole, Phantasm, and someone else. Uh-oh. I hope these guys don’t start dancing and this kinda looks like….Nah! It can’t be!

Issue 31The issue starts out with Brother Blood and his zombie Titans continuing to destroy LA. They try to kick the TT’s butts, but our team of teens hold strong. Wonder Girl punches out Dove, while Kole tries to encase Kid Flash in a prison of crystal. While Kid Flash uses his powers to break free, Speedy takes down Phantasm.

Raven realizes that the only way to stop this nuttiness (?) is to travel to the crossroads between the land of the living and the land of the dead and close the doorway. Beast Boy volunteers to accompany her for moral support, plus the chick kissed him and well, if someone like her kissed me all of the sudden, I’s make sure they home safe from after saving the world too. He leaves Wonder Girl in charge to fight off the demons and they go to the Afterlife, which apparently has some humor with it.

We then catch up with Conner in Smallville. It basically the same scene from Infinite Crisis #1, where he is talking to Martha.

Ha!

When they arrive at the funny doorway of the afterlife, they find that it’s being kept open by Kid Eternity. For a more detailed back-story on this sorta cool character, go here. Anyway, Brother Blood found him, got his blood to bring back the dead, and left him chained to keep the doorway open. Eternity warns them that the doorway has been open for a while now, and it was open when Superman came back from the dead (which explains why so many people came back at this time).As BB Raven try to free Eternity, they are attacked by the zombie versions of Gizmo, Madam Masque, and Ravager (Grant Wilson, the first one). Suddenly the zombified remains of Gizmo, Ravager (Grant Wilson) and They fight back the villains and free Kid Eternity from his bonds.

Meanwhile, in the land of the living, Wonder Girl’s powers start fluctuating for some reason, which leaves her vulnerable to Blood. The rest of the team is getting their butts handed to them. Fortunately, Kid Eternity accompanies Lucy and Ricky (I had to say something!) back to Earth and helps them against Brother Blood's zombie Titans. He uses his powers to send all of the deceased back to the land of the dead. In another twist, he then summons the spirits of all of the previous Brother Bloods and tells them to attack Sebastian. They swarm Blood and tear him to pieces(YAY!!!). As he dies, the Trigon demons go back to hell.

He's gone! He's finally gone!

Kid Eternity tells someone that Sebastian's spirit belongs to Kid him now. After the fight ends, Kid Eternity says goodbye to the Titans and tells them to enjoy all the time they have in the land of the living.

We then skip to Smallville, where Conner is with the Kents. Watching him from afar is Superboy-Prime (aka PRIME). As you can tell here, it’s apparent that PRIME doesn’t like Conner and wants to take him out on a date of PAIN. Will he do it? Find out next time!

… … … … … … … .. . . . . . . . . . ..

This is a decent three issues. The writing’s not too bad, and the art is pretty good. I loved the fight between Jason and Tim in the first issue. I think that this was the first time they met. Unfortunately, Tim got his butt handed to him by Jason, but Tim will get him back…oh well, what do I have here?

Boom!!

The rest of this part of the volume is also good. We finally get a resolution to Blood, and from what I can tell, it’s a final resolution. I will say though that even though I didn’t like the character, he was actually used well here. We also get a small glimpse of who some new Titans may be for future issues. Who are they? Well, come back when (and if) I talk about One Year Later. It's also interesting that something is blossoming between Gar and Raven. Will it last? I don't know.

The next post will get back to “that Crisis” with Infinite Crisis #4. Until then, hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband because PRIME is going to mess up everybody!!

NEXT TIME: A BLOODY MASSACRE IN THE DC UNIVERSE!!!