World’s Finest – Teen Titans #2: Listen to your heart when it’s calling to you…

Guess who’s back in the house? It’s everyone’s teen team supreme! That’s right, you guessed it. It’s World’s Finest: the Teen Titans #2 by comics legend Mark Waid, and superstar artist Emanuela Lupacchino! Second verse, same as the first. Waid and ELup continue this romp through time back to the Bronze Age era of the book, this time using Donna as the narrator of this story, and letting the fans see her point of view. We also see some titans from around this era that we didn’t see before, so let’s get things started. 

First let me say, I love Mark Waid, and his voice for these characters. They feel well rounded, and while not exactly on point with everyone, they feel like they have a truly affectionate relationship with each other. The biggest slip up was Waid’s handling of Donna and Garth, which was kinda expected. As someone who was buying Waid’s run on the JLA run as it came out in 2000, the two characters that Waid had the least to say with were Diana and Arthur. Hopefully as the series moves on, he’ll have a better feeling for these two instrumental parts of the cast. 

The real star of this book is clearly Bumblebee. She’s full of so much personality and spirit, she can’t help but be the center of everything. We also get introduced to Mal Duncan. For those who aren’t well versed in Titans lore, Mal Duncan is one of the Titans who was introduced in the 1970, came during the time that DC didn’t really know what to do with this teen team, so it became a sorta hodgepodge, adding more and more disparate members, like the original Hawk & Dove, Golden Eagle, creating a West Coast team (Teen Titans West), up until Marv Wolfman, the creator for Blade the Vampire Hunter, and an up and coming artist George Perez, to take the reigns and build a franchise that at one point went toe to toe with Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men. But with Mal, he was DC’s first black superhero, showing up a year before Green Lantern’s John Stewart, so his place in comics history is pretty monumental. I can’t wait to see Waid’s further development of Mal and Karen in this mini. 

Ema Lupacchino is on art duties here, and she’s one of the artists in DC’s stable of artists that can literally do no wrong for me. She’s been one of the artists who has been instrumental in handling Wonder Woman in the Rebirth era, so her depiction of Donna here is sublime. The rest of the cast is magical, but Donna is so striking, warm, and it adds a depth to her here that’s kinda missing from the storyline. She fills the rest of the story with some wonderful visuals that’s building a universe that’s vibrant and lush. She really ups the enjoyment of the issue immeasurably.