Teen Titans #30: Inevitability

If “The Terminus Agenda” felt like it came to a sudden end by way of slamming into a brick wall, its epilogue in these pages feels not unlike reheated leftovers. The long-simmering divisions within the team that Adam Glass has been percolating since his run’s inception come to a pretty predictable boil, which is too bad because his run has been so strongly character-focused thus far. But when everything has been so clearly telegraphed for so long, it’s hard to feel any real emotional stakes in the proceedings. Of course Roundhouse feels the sting of his BFF Kid Flash’s secret-laden betrayal. Of course Djinn rejects the secret prison, of course Robin refuses to see anyone’s perspective but his own, and of course Crush overreacts in the worst way possible when Djinn is mistreated. That’s not to say it isn’t okay for what it is – teen drama at its finest or at least most stereotypical, I suppose – but everything is so choreographed it can’t help but fall flat in the end.

I’m also not a fan of how this issue ends on a cliffhanger that sets up the next arc, which inevitably will draw the sextet back together as they realize that By golly, they DO need each other after all! From a storytelling perspective, “Terminus Agenda” should have gotten full service this issue, so that it felt more functionally like a proper epilogue. Instead, the ending makes everything that occurs in the bulk of the issue feel rushed and pro forma.

The issue isn’t a complete miss by any means – Bernard Chang’s art is a lot of fun as usual, as he’s perfectly suited to drawing moody teens. He and Glass have a very strong chemistry going on. And it’s not as though any of the characters’ reactions to recent events don’t ring true – in fact, they’re almost true to a fault. In a lot of ways, Glass’s run on Teen Titans has been leading up to this issue for its entire run. It’s a shame everything plays out so predictably, because so much has been riding on it so far.