Teen Titans #30

This looks fucking awful.

The issue begins by reminding me that Gar Logan is in love with Raven McTrigon because Scott Lobdell declared it was so. I suppose we're supposed to just remember the Preboot history between these two characters. Unless I'm thinking of the PreCrisis history of Gar and Tara? Oh, who the fuck cares. Lobdell writes romances like an Algebra equation. X + Y = LOVE! Where X is Beast Boy and the plus sign is Raven and the Y is lack of romantic detail across time and the equals sign is being used incorrectly.

I just told you! Her last name is McTrigon!

As you can see, Beast Boy is making no sense. Beast Boy usually makes no sense. That's because he thinks every situation can be made better by shouting a pun based on his current animal appearance. He did that on the first page but he made less sense this page, so here we are discussing his idiocy. Is he saying Raven is not a cool code name? Because even though her costume is a piece of shit, her name is aces! Batman would have done well (or even weller!) had a Raven smashed through his parlor window. I've always thought that if Batman really wanted to inspire fear, he should have made a whole bunch of gadgets that tended to get caught up in people's hair. Let's be true to the actual source of our fear of bats, Bats! Number One: they will get stuck in our hair. Number Two: they might poo in our hair. Number Three: rabies.

Dammit, Red Robin! Stop thinking like me! It's fucking embarrassing to comment on this comic book and then have something Scott Lobdell wrote echo my sentiments!

Fuck. I wish I could begin this paragraph saying, "I'd forgotten that the antagonists were called The Light and The Way," but I cannot because I did remember. It haunted my wet dreams for weeks. First off, you should never base your Super Villain name on somebody else's Super Villain name. You're just asking for trouble. You create all of this branding to go with The Light and The Way, build up this incredible religious theme to your antics, and then one of you winds up dead or in jail. Now what the fuck are you going to do? Your branding message has just gone down the shitter and you have to start over from the bottom! Remember Lime and Light? I know Adam Glass killed Lime but just imagine if he had killed Light (something I've imagined since it happened. I only refer to Light as Lime now. Such a spectacularly missed opportunity)? What the fuck do you do now if your Super Villain name is Lime?! I suppose you find some jerk that named themselves Lemon and rob a bank. I hope The Way is killed and The Light teams up with Light. "Look out! It's Light and The Light!" Although Lime and The Way would have been brilliant.

I'm pretty sure, judging by this adorable smile and Beast Boy's word balloon, that Tyler Kirkham doesn't actually read the script while drawing the panels. Fuck it. I don't blame him.

Yesterday I watched the Unions episode of Morgan Spurlock's Inside Man on Netflix. A bunch of Walmart employees are striking and explaining their grievances against Walmart so the masses can empathize with them and, if not help their struggle, at least passively support it. I'm all for better conditions for workers (I've also explained the exact reasons behind America's current problems with economic inequality in a past commentary of Batman and Robin. It's a pretty solid interpretation of the facts and the most objective analysis by anybody ever) but one of the guys that kind of takes on the role as one of the spokespeople for the employees is wearing a Washington Redskins cap while arguing for people to empathize with his position. Sorry, kid. I can't take you seriously when you're ignoring another group of downtrodden people's grievances against corporate bullshit and lack of respect of your fellow human beings. I know, in this case, one really doesn't have anything to do with the other. But you really need to understand how you're representing yourself when you're trying to get other people to care about your problems. It's hard to do that when the image on your head says you seem to only give a shit about your own issues.

Also, I saw a coyote last night crossing a freeway offramp. He stopped and looked back at me, watching as I passed. So fucking cute! And probably vicious! But only because it's in his nature to eat things when it's hungry! We would look pretty vicious too if our food wasn't so thoroughly processed before we stick it in our gobs! Especially the meat eaters, amirite? Hell, just watching people eat chicken on the bone is halfway to being a scene from a nature documentary.

Magically (unless it's so scientifically complex that I can only perceive it as magic), Raven has lost the influence of Trigon during their time travel escapades! In just a few panels, we learn that Lobdell has dropped all of his scary subplot for the team being betrayed by Raven because this comic book has been cancelled! No need to keep the Raven Bomb primed when DC has told you to get the fuck away from the Teen Titans! That was a pretty stupid, boring, cliche subplot anyway.

Where are Beast Boy's other six tentacles?

See what just happened in that panel above? Also what has been happening is Bunker telling a joke and Red Robin doing whatever he did in that panel I scanned earlier. That's all that has happened so far! Happiness, joking, and a leader getting his crew in line. So it would make sense that The Light would assess the situation thusly:

Unless this is The Way. Oh! If The Light is killed, The Way can always find some partner named The Curds.

I guess just because Lobdell thinks this comic book should be about Teen Angst (just like The X-Men probably was!) and Lobdell thinks he can adequately write teen angst (he can't!), The Light categorizes everything he saw as Teen Angst. Even when it wasn't even close. But that's not the worst bit of writing on the page! We also have this confusing little gem that is making me question my intellect and my reading comprehension skills!

Nobody called them people! Nowhere! Not in any word balloon on any previous page ever in the existence of humans across all space and time! I don't think the editors read the script either. Fuck it. I don't blame them.

Instead of battling The Light and The Way with soulselves and punning gorillas and Lassos of Truthiness and Purple Bricks, Red Robin seems to imply they should sit back on their heels and defend against The Light and The Way. Then Beast Boy says something sarcastic. Then Beast Boy says something to let us know that he was being sarcastic. Then I stopped reading for a moment to catch my breath.

Holy shit God fuck me. I hate Scott Lobdell's writing so much! But I'm sure it's just me, right? He's actually really competent, right?

By "about a century" is probably the worst guesstimating I've ever seen.

I'm not sure why I read Ann Nocenti's Catwoman followed by Scott Lobdell's Teen Titans each month. I suppose I'm trying to strengthen my brain against the chance of a stroke.

While the Teen Titans struggle under their sudden ineptitude and inability to go on the offensive, The Light (or The Way?) is sliced open. This causes The Way (or The Light?) to fade from existence. The person doing the slicing and the saving and possibly the killing?

Skitters! She finally figured out how to be useful!

Along with Skitters comes the woman that I thought was Amanda Waller way back in some horrible issue of this comic book. She comes riding in standing on a tank. It's also revealed she's Skitters' mom. She packs up The Light and The Way, lets Skitters stay with her friends, and leaves through a portal. Is that another shitty subplot wrapped up?

Then Skitters recounts her Secret Origin and her Metamorphosis into a Super Hero that might actually be of some use to the Teen Titans. Before, she was either a raging monster or a silky bean bag. Now she's always Skitters but she gets to be in control. Also, she's the smartest person ever or something.

Next shitty subplot to wrap up! The idiot known as Grymm!

Instead of letting Grymm have the dignity of remaining on the loose to possibly wind up battling Batman or Nightwing or Spider-Man, Lobdell has to drag him back into this comic book to take the worst, half-hearted revenge of any character ever. "Aw shit! Did I just hear you say you might not be the Teen Titans (quote at least not in the current incarnation unquote) anymore? But I was going to blow you all up? I suppose if you're not going by that name anymore, why should I bother? That makes you different people from the people that didn't even know I existed previously! Shucks! I'll just be on my way."

Gar knocks him out and then the Teen Titans' Yacht blows up. The Narrator says, "Curious to see who lived--and who died? Don't dare miss the Teen Titans Annual #3 by Scott Lobdell and Kenneth Rocafort!" The image above the Narration Box shows the yacht exploding and everyone hiding behind Bunker's Purple Bricks. So nobody dies, you stupid blurb. Also, nobody is going to buy your stupid Annual if you advertise that it's written by Scott Lobdell! Except for me. I'll be buying it.

I hate myself so much.

Too bad that's not the end of the comic book. But I'll keep the Solstice and Kid Flash stuff short. Let's just see how it begins!

Get ready, kids! Earth is going to be a destroyed prison planet called Takron-Galtos in merely 100 years! Also, it will somehow wind up on the other side of the galaxy! In 100 years! A century. 100 years. One. Hundred. Years. One Century. One.

Let's review what we've learned about Scott Lobdell in the last two and a half years of his writing the Teen Titans. He doesn't know the difference between a century and a millennium. He doesn't know the difference between The Arctic and Antarctica. He sucks at writing words and stuff. The end!

Kid Flash and Solstice hug and declare they will do something or other. Who fucking cares?

This comic book has already gone on long enough so I don't think I'm going to comment on the Bunker and Beast Boy story that concludes the issue. Even if the first group of Narration Boxes have serious errors in them. I will use all of my willpower to refrain from pointing out the errors!

Teen Titans #30 Rating: As if I need to go on any further about how much I hate this comic book.