The Night After Axemas Annotated 4
Kids these days (meaning: people younger than me) love to fence over which is better, Teen Titans the animated show ranging from goofy to pretty dark or the broad farce Teen Titans Go. And there are some partisans for the streaming Titans. But I’m old enough to have imprinted on the 1980s version of the team, still not the first one, but the first to feature the cast who’ve been mainstays in their various incarnations since. And its range included some extremes that even the first cartoon wasn’t going to attempt, like the witness tampering-slash-forced prostitution that the Titans are breaking up here.
Robin’s dialogue in this scene probably over-explains it by today’s standards, but he’s right: big damn heroes’ default state is to fight villains who operate on grand or melodramatic scales, not cracking down on the little stuff that feels real. This kind of thing can be awkward or overdone, but it can also be really powerful, a reminder of why we want to imagine heroes in the first place. So the Cultists here are exaggerated, but not that exaggerated, from real-life horrors. They’re close enough, at least, that I could pour my rage about another school shooting or sex-slavery kidnapping into panel 2, just so panel 3 can hit back with a NOT THIS TIME, YOU FUCKERS.
That’s worth a deliberate break in the rhythm.
I really need to reread the Wolfman/Perez run. It was quite literally the title that got me buying comics on a regular basis.
“By G’Quan, I don’t remember the last time I was in a fight like that. No moral ambiguities. No hopeless fight against ancient and overwhelming forces. They were the bad guys, as you say. We were the good guys. And they made a very agreeable thump when they hit the floor”
-G’Kar, Babylon 5