Without the “Teen” in their name, the Titans have lost the best part of themselves and it’s leading them to make the worst decisions.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Teen Titans Academy ##10, on sale now from DC Comics.
The Titans have always been the next generation of DC’s heroes. Though characters like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman are the best of the best, they’ve always known that one day they will be replaced by their proteges. Over the years, these younger heroes have started to grow up. However, it seems that may have been a big mistake.
The Titans had a grave decision to make in Teen Titans Academy #10 (by Tim Sheridan, Mike Norton, Tom Derenick and Rob Leigh). Faced with the threat of a literal apocalypse, the heroes considered killing one of their own students. This absolutely shocked the only person in the room who wasn’t one of the grown-up staff members of the veteran Titans. They had quite a bit to say about the team’s murderous decision-making and, frankly, they have a point.
Stitch believes the reason the Titans even considered this course of action in the first place is that they grew up. Their experiences as heroes, putting them through more and more tragedy year after year, took away their hopeful attitudes and ideals and replaced them with more jaded ones.
The Titans have been through a lot, even just recently. Roy Harper has only just returned after the Titans believed he was accidentally killed by one of their other friends. Add in the continuous turmoil Slade puts them through, the various Crisis events they’ve experienced and their time in the Justice League, and they’ve seen a lot. Now that they face another extinction-level event, the idea of killing one kid to save everyone else doesn’t seem so bad.
Of course, they shouldn’t even be considering killing a kid. That’s Stitch’s point here. The Titans want to move the line or suggest it’s been blurred by this latest threat. The truth is, there shouldn’t be a line to move. Killing should be out of the question. Right now, Stitch is the one who embodies everything the Titans stand for, not their teachers.
Two of the staff even recognize this and side with Stitch. However, it doesn’t bode well for the next generation of heroes if they can’t get by without guidance from their own students. In fact, it seems that the Titans keep making mistake after mistake lately, especially when it comes to their Academy. They’ve been lying to their students for one, to the point those students don’t even trust them anymore. They also have no clue what’s going on with the large number of kids under their care either. That’s how they missed what’s been going on with Dane, which got out of control and led to them considering killing him here.
Perhaps what the Titans really need, as they do here, is a younger voice. Right now, they can’t even be called the Teen Titans. The teen members of the team seem to have gradually been phased out as the series has gone on, to the point that they’ve totally disappeared now. The older generation is living in an echo chamber and, as a result, is making terrible decisions.
If the Titans keep going as they are, then they could make a fatal mistake. Having lost what made them the heroes they are, now they’re missing every opportunity to get it back. Beast Boy and Starfire seem to realize this but the same can’t be said for the rest of the team. If the Titans don’t reclaim their lost youth soon, the next generation of DC’s heroes will be doomed to go down a dark path they can’t come back from.
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