"The End" Week: Team Titans #24!

This was purchased specifically for "The End" week, but also seems to be a great example of this year's unintended theme: it's a Zero Hour crossover, basically an invitation for new readers to check out the title, which is now cancelled, sorry. From 1994, Team Titans #24, "All Good Things..." Written by Jeffrey Jensen and Phil Jimenez, pencils by Nigel Tully, inks by Andrew Pepoy, Rus Sever, and Dan Davis. Cover by the series' previous regular artist, Terry Dodson, who I had hoped to see here. And some stones using that title, just a few months after the Next Generation finale did!

Going into this one, about the only thing I knew about Team Titans was its first issue had five variants, with a different back-up story and cover for each, but the same lead story. That crossed a line from 'gimmick' to 'scam.' Anyway, the Team's deal was they were from a possible future, ruled by Lord Chaos, and had travelled back in time to try and stop him from getting power. (Chaos was Donna Troy and Terry Long's son, so of course he was an abomination...) Or were they? A shadowy figure does a lot of monologuing and evil laughing; it's Hank Hall again, Monarch! This issue would continue in Zero Hour, where the Team Titans' possible future was erased or never formed, so the last twenty-some issues are kind of moot, then.

There may have been a few, regular Teen Titans in this issue, though; like Bumblebee, Malcolm, and Aqualad. The Terra here I think was from the alternate future, but she has turned up here and there since. Along with the usual Team Titans, there were a ton of others like the Human Mystery, Hellebore, Murder Master, and Green. Good luck finding anything on them anywhere! A lot of them seemed like the usual 90's pick-a-noun-that-hadn't-been-used-before heroes--there's a Battalion in here somewhere--but Human Mystery almost feels like a Golden Age oddball trying for a revival.

Anyway, there's a Studio 54 cameo, and a particularly hapless hero gets eaten by a pterodactyl off of the Space Needle, neither of which are as fun as you'd hope.