I would like to truly glom on to something that Mark Waid’s doing in his return to DC, given Waid’s original tenure was fundamental to my formative comics years and produced material I enjoy to this day. But of late, I’ve yet to be blown away; I had hopes (perhaps knowingly too high) that his World’s Finest: Teen Titans would be as powerful and defining as his smash JLA: Year One, but unfortunately it’s just not the case.

It goes wrong in a variety of ways. Inasmuch as the “World’s Finest” brand has seemed to be about delivering 1980s stories between 2025 covers, Waid attempts to update the classic Titans' interests and sensibilities here, with disastrous “How do you do, fellow kids” results. The story turns on conflicts among the Titans that feel awful familiar, such that I’m not sure Waid brings much new to this new incarnation. Continuity updates and simple gaffes both abound, which might not bother as much if the rest of the book held up better.

If we actually need a new Titans origin, this one doesn’t feel definitive.

[Review contains spoilers]

World’s Finest: Teen Titans unfolds about how you think it would, which means Waid succeeds in hewing to popular portrayals of the characters, but also fails to deliver surprises. Robin Dick Grayson is the maniacally in-control team leader, while Speedy Roy Harper is the blowhard cut-up. Robin nearly loses the team for his keeping secrets and inability to bend, until he wins them back by revealing his secret identity against Batman’s wishes. It’s appropriate that Waid should hew to flashbacks from series like the early 2000s Titans and Dan Abnett’s Titans Hunt in his characterizations, but equally the gnashing over secret identities was a plot point for Robin Tim Drake in Peter David’s Young Justice, too.

I appreciate Waid enhancing Bumblebee Karen Beecher and Mal Duncan’s roles in the formation of the Titans, and also bringing back to continuity (insofar as this is continuity) Mal’s identity as the Guardian. But, as with Batman/Superman World’s Finest Vol. 5: Secret Origins, I wonder at Waid’s decision to recreate history whole cloth instead of penning new narratives within the original events. Which is to say, here Karen is the original Titan who brings Mal reluctantly into the fold, whereas historically Mal had been a Titan first and Karen later.

Between Karen’s more leading role in the Young Justice cartoon and also appearing in DC Super Hero Girls, I am sure she is the better-known character now; also Karen preceding Mal matches the Young Justice cartoon. But Waid equally offers no origin for the “new” Bumblebee (there is a minor nod in Secret Origins), so we get change without anything emotional to attach to as a replacement, and for me that wasn’t terribly effective.

More problematic, however, was that Waid stages an emotional scene in the third issue where Karen is adamant, almost to the point of panic, that her secret identity never, ever be revealed. Kid Flash notes, “There is definitely a story here,” but then Waid never gives it to us. Maybe Waid perceives a sequel, but it seemed an opportunity for real depth in this book — the concerns of the only woman of color on the team, who already has a villainous stalker — that’s simply left unaddressed.

And yet, none of the creators consider the irony that, when Karen is in public, artist Emanuela Lupacchino almost always depicts her wearing a variation of her Bumblebee costume and metallic armbands, easily recognizable. Gaffes like that abound; there’s supposed to be a joke in the first pages about Kid Flash not being called “Speedy,” but it’s rendered nonsensical by an interruption about Aqualad and Wonder Girl’s “situationship.”

Robin outlines an elaborate plan at the conclusion that’s supposed to utilize that some of the team doesn’t wear masks, as if that makes them less recognizable and not more recognizable. Also, it was Waid himself who once established Kid Flash Wally West’s family life as strained, so seeing Wally here among normal, caring parents also seems dissonant — it is, again, very much an aspect of the Young Justice cartoon grafted on to the “World’s Finest” continuity.

Waid’s Titans talk in hashtags, with former Golden Eagle Charley Parker as their social media whiz. It feels a bit trying too hard, when DC has never quite tried to decouple their characters from historical events the way Marvel has. But it becomes egregious when Speedy, for instance, refers to Aqualad as “Left Shark,” as if the 2023 Titans talk in 2015 memes. It is (to jump on the bandwagon) “cringy” when Waid’s Kid Flash refers to a conquering alien as an “edgelord”; another villain’s supposed biting retort is, “Drone-film this, Spielberg” (“drone-film”?!). In this way, Titans is failing at many of its goals, neither being a compelling “year one” Titans story nor updating them in any way that reads authentic.

With the Titans in the spotlight as of the Dawn of DC era, appetite for defining the Titans' origins seems high — see Tales of the Titans and World’s Finest: Teen Titans, published about the same time (and both with covers by Chris Samnee). But these leave more questions than answers; add Bumblebee now to questions of where Donna Troy and Raven each came from. If this is your first Teen Titans origin, and especially if you’re coming straight from the Young Justice cartoon, there might be plenty to like here. But for this seasoned fan, I’m ready for something far less surface.

[Includes original and variant covers]