OTHER REVIEWS IN THIS SERIES: Raven | Beast Boy | Beast Boy Loves Raven | Robin | Starfire

Beast Boy is the second installment in Kami Garcia's interlocking origin stories of the Teen Titans. If you're not a Titans aficionado, Beast Boy (a.k.a. Garfield "Gar" Logan) is one of the original Titan members. Gar contracted a rare illness called Sakutia as a child. His scientist parents cured him using an experimental serum extracted from a rare green monkey. The serum both saved Gar's life and gave him the ability to change into any animal form and create strong psychic bonds with animals of all kinds.

As the book opens, these facts are unknown to Gar. All he knows, as a semi-insecure teenage boy, is that his parents are making him take an amino acid supplement every day which he's convinced has kept him from growing taller or bulking up. (In reality, the supplement is suppressing his superpowers.) Despite a ravenous appetite and lots of working out, poor Gar can't put on any weight and his small size makes him feel unseen among his peers and invisible to the popular girl he adores. 

In desperation, Gar decides to stop taking the supplement... and weird things begin to happen. Not only does he begin growing physically, but his confidence and impulsiveness balloon out of proportion. When he rashly decides to accept a local restaurant's challenge to eat a Carolina Reaper chili pepper, the pepper strangely has no serious effect on him — similar to a tree shew who can eat the peppers freely. Later, he shows almost catlike reflexes during dodgeball. Finally, he decides to pull an Instagram stunt by breaking into a laboratory and photographing himself with a local sport team's mascot — a massive ball python. In the process, the snake seems to form an attachment to Gar who feels compelled to free it and the laboratory's other captive animals. 

With a little experimentation, Gar discovers that not only can he communicate with animals as he did with the python and the other lab animals — he can transform into them. His parents have hidden this from him all his life, but now that the, uh, cat's out of the bag, Gar wants answers. 

Yet the answers (or the promise of them) don't come from Gar's parents, but rather a mysterious stranger called Slade Wilson. (Wilson was also a player in Raven and his true purpose remains unknown but seems nefarious.)

As with Raven, author Kami Garcia and illustrator Gabriel Piccolo do an amazing job of capturing teenage angst — even when it arises from the discovery of superpowers. Gar is a delightful underdog (no pun intended), whose false bravado turns out not to be so false after all. By the end of the book, Gar departs his home to meet Slade Wilson in Nashville... and something tells me Raven will be nearby. 

RELATED: Comics Collections | Teen Titans Fans Collection

OTHER REVIEWS IN THIS SERIES: Raven | Beast Boy | Beast Boy Loves Raven | Robin | Starfire

With Teen Titans: Starfire now available, I thought I'd take a look at the entire series written by Kami Garcia and illustrated by Gabriel Picolo.  We'll start with book one, Teen Titans: Raven. 

As some background, the series is new look at DC's Teen Titans, a group of young superheroes, most of whom began their careers as the sidekicks of Justice League members. The comic book series premiered in 1964 and was led by Dick Grayson (Robin), Wally West (Kid Flash) and Garth (Aqualad). The group was formed partly because the Titans were frustrated about operating in the shadow of their older and more famous mentors. 

Garcia's take is one that provides a decidedly modern young adult aesthetic to the story. The synopsis reads:

When a tragic accident takes the life of seventeen-year-old Raven Roth's foster mom — and Raven's memory — she moves to New Orleans to recover and finish her senior year in high school.

Starting over isn't easy. Raven remembers everyday stuff like how to solve math equations and make pass, but she can't remember her favorite song or who she was before the accident. And when impossible things start happening, Raven begins to think it might even be better not to know who she was before.

But as she grows closer to her new friends, her foster sister, Max, and Tommy Torres, a guy who accepts her for who she is now, Raven has to decide if she's ready to face what's buried in her past... and the darkness building inside her. 

Having the story take place in New Orleans is a great choice, as the city's literally built on supernatural lore and Raven appears to have some latent supernatural powers. She has disturbing dreams about being overwhelmed by a large, raven-shaped shadow and menaced by a multi-eyed demon whose voice frequently invades her thoughts. Even more disconcerting, sometimes her thoughts, especially when she's angry or vengeful, appear to come true. On several occasions, she's unintentionally humiliated the school's resident "mean girl." Since she has no memory of her past, she has no context for these experiences... and they scare her. 

​Fortunately, her new foster mom and sister, Natalia and Max,  have some helpful abilities.  They have the  power to summon and manipulate spirits and Natalia uses these abilities to understand Raven's mysterious past,  Meanwhile, Max trains her on how to create a psychic shield so she's not constantly bombarded by the thoughts and feelings of others. This ability makes her reluctant to connect to others — even handsome Tommy Torres — who seems unusually interested in her. 

Garcia is great at infusing humor and authentic characters into her drama. The expressive artwork by Picolo, with a limited color palette emphasizing Raven's black-and-purple brand, is perfect. (The books get visually brighter in future editions, but the colors always reflect the mood and primary characters.)

All in all, Raven is a great first installment and reboot to the Teen Titans lore, setting the stage for a much longer and more complex story arc.

RELATED: Comics Collections | Teen Titans Fans Collection

As the year winds down, so does the comic book series I looked forward to the most in 2024 — Death in the Family: Robin Lives! The October edition concluded the four-part limited run.

The series is based on 1988's Batman: Death in the Family, in which fans made a seminal choice to kill off Jason Todd’s Robin. Robin Lives! is a reimagining of that storyline where we find out what would have happened if fans had voted to let Jason live. (See my previous entries on this series here  and here.)

​In Issue #3, Jason was transformed (thanks to some illicit pharmaceuticals) into The Joker's sidekick, Jokey, The Boy Lackey. As #4 opens, The Joker insists that Jokey beat a former psychiatrist to death. But Jason hesitates... he still has a moral compass, after all . He's subsequently discarded by The Joker — another humiliation on top of another humiliation. 

Pursuing the supervillain, Jason discovers that The Joker plans to poison Gotham with the same toxin he used on him. In order to stop the mass killing, Jason puts a bullet through the supervillain's skull. In doing so, he performs the one act Batman never could — ending The Joker for good.

​Bruce is initially appalled by the murder, but later he and Dick Grayson decide to cover it up. They decide that The Joker's death did indeed serve a greater good and would allow Jason to finally escape his tormentor. We see that this works. Jason goes onto college, earning advanced degrees in sociology, psychology and psychiatry. 

The narrator (Dr. Dev) tells us: "We were so proud of [Jason]. He'd faced so much, come so far — and we knew, beyond a doubt, that Jason Todd had a good, a valuable, life ahead of him. That like Bruce and Dick... he'd leave a positive imprint on this world."

​That's good new, right? Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there.

​In an M. Night Shyamalan-type twist, we witness Jason putting on clown makeup and changing his clothes... only to reveal himself as The Joker reborn.  As with most M. Night Shyamalan-type twists, this one was both ineffectual and irritating. It was also completely unneeded.  

Jason's story has already addressed — and continues to address —  his suffering at the hands of The Joker. If the idea behind Robin Lives! was to give Jason a different, less tragic ending, then maybe it was okay to let him recover and thrive?

​RELATED FEATURES: Jason Todd / Red Hood Fans  |  Batman Collection  |  Nightwing Collection  |  Jason Todd's Empty Grave