H.I.V.E. has been experimenting on teens with superhuman abilities, and Kori Anders is next on their list. Dick Grayson, Rachel “Raven” Roth, Garfield Logan, Max Navarro and Damian Wayne got to Los Angeles to save her before Slade Wilson found her, but should she trust these strangers? After all, they’ve accused her mom’s fiancé of abduction, experimentation and torture! And Kori’s new friend, Victor Stone, has a summer internship designing next-level prosthetics at Edge Labs, a company funding H.I.V.E.
To make matters worse, Kori’s sister Kira is working with the organization and singing its praises. H.I.V.E. has a plan for taking down Raven’s demon father, Trigon. It’s got a plan for training the next generation of superheroes. It’s got plans for everything.
Lines blur as the teens struggle to decide what to do. H.I.V.E. might be their greatest ally, but at what cost? Can the Teen Titans pull together a plan before they fall apart?
Teen Titans: Together is written by Kami Garcia, drawn by Gabriel Picolo, colored by David Calderon and lettered by Wes Abbott for DC Comics.
I’ve been reading Kami Garcia and Gabriel Picolo’s Teen Titans graphic novel series since the release of Teen Titans: Raven in 2019. After five more books and seven years, the series’ conclusion is here with Titans Together.
Before we get into the review, I want to take a moment and address the lack of a Teen Titans: Cyborg book. Since Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s New Teen Titans comic book run, Cyborg has been featured as a major character in subsequent comics and various adaptations like the Titans’ 2000s animated series. He has been depicted as a hero, a leader, a tech genius and then some. As a result, I was disappointed that Cyborg didn’t get his own book in this graphic novel series.
According to a Comics Frontier interview with Garcia:
“Initially, when I pitched the series, he wasn’t in my series because I wasn’t sure if other creators were working in this new kids’ space with DC. And I wasn’t sure that there wasn’t going to be another person, preferably always for me, who would have been a Black creator/writer, to take him on and do kind of a first-person story of his. But since that didn’t happen, as our series was going on, there was no way I was going to leave him out. I didn’t want to write a first-person POV, where he was the entire star of the book. I feel like there are Black writers who could do a better and more legitimate job of that. But also, I wasn’t going to have the one Black hero in the Teen Titans not get to be in the group. He’s one of my favorites. So I was like, we can’t leave him out.”
Apparently, DC didn’t think to give Black writers in the graphic novel line a heads up about the option of doing a Cyborg book. Before you say there weren’t any Black writers, there were at least three of them: L.L. McKinney (who wrote Nubia: Real One), Lamar Giles (who wrote Static: Up All Night) and Varian Johnson (who wrote Mister Miracle: The Great Escape). Personally, I think Giles would’ve written a great Cyborg graphic novel.
Although Garcia wrote Cyborg respectfully and showed him as a capable hacker, promising inventor and fun-loving gamer, I wanted more than that. I wanted to see the backstory that made him take the internship at Edge Labs before running into Starfire. Cyborg was still included, but he deserved more as a character.
Despite my hangups about Cyborg, Titans Together was still worth the wait. One of the best things Garcia has done is combine everyday-life moments with superhero action. From seeing Damian Wayne and Dick Grayson spar to seeing Raven and Max have girl talk as foster sisters, this book showed down-to-earth teens trying to work as a team while hanging out and dealing with personal problems.
Of course, Picolo’s artwork enhances Garcia’s writing. In particular, I like how his character and background designs incorporate little Easter eggs from other incarnations of the characters. One thing I noticed is how the penthouse that the teens make their hideout almost resembles Titans Tower from the Teens Titans animated series. David Calderon’s colors are a combination of ink and airbrush that make environments like Raven’s mind vivid and immersive.
Wes Abbott’s lettering makes certain characters’ speech bubbles pop and provide contrast. For instance, both Damian and Dick speak differently to others and each other. This is made more apparent when the lettering puts emphasis on each character’s words and the emotion behind them.
Although it is not certain whether we will see this incarnation of the Titans again, I did enjoy my time with this book and the series overall. Given that Garcia and Picolo have a Young Justice graphic novel line in the works, maybe both teams could cross over one day.
Buy Teen Titans: Together here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
Latonya "Penn" Pennington is a freelance contributor whose comics criticism can be found at Women Write About Comics, Comic Book Herald, Newsarama and Shelfdust, among others. Follow them @wordsfromapenn.com on Bluesky.
