Mild spoilers for Absolute Flash #20 follow.
The Teen Titans have been rebooted, relaunched, renumbered and re-teened more often than a Saturday morning cartoon, and now they are heading for DC’s Absolute Universe. Over the weekend, Absolute Flash writer Jeff Lemire said the Absolute Teen Titans are on the way and will debut in Absolute Flash #25. DC hasn’t solicited that issue yet, but if the book keeps to its monthly schedule, with #20 out on 21 October, the arithmetic points to around March 2027.
This was not entirely a bolt from the blue. At San Diego Comic-Con in July, Lemire told the Absolute Universe panel that the plan was to bring in more teenage heroes, unveiled a design for Absolute Cyborg and hinted that Vic Stone would not be the only Titan turning up. Last week’s Absolute Flash #20, drawn by Haining with a cover by Nick Robles, delivered on the first part of that. Wally West, Linda Park and Grodd are whisked into the subatomic realm of Ray Palmer, this universe’s Atom, and Linda goes poking around Palmer’s lab and discovers that he has a certain Victor Stone locked up. This Cyborg is less shiny Justice Leaguer and more Tetsuo in Akira, all spiky robotic limbs and cybernetics that look as if they hurt, which seems about right for a universe where everything has been put through the mangle.
Lemire knows the Titans well, having rebuilt them once already with Terry Dodson in the Teen Titans: Earth One graphic novels. His Absolute Flash is a 15-year-old Wally West without the Speed Force, without mentors and without the cosy Flash family to fall back on, so a gang of equally damaged teenagers is a natural fit. It also suits the Absolute line’s division of labour. If Absolute Batman is the horror book and Absolute Wonder Woman the dark fantasy, then Absolute Flash has become the line’s science fiction title, and Atom and Cyborg are very much science heroes.
Who else will join is anyone’s guess. Starfire, Raven and Beast Boy are the line-up most readers grew up with, thanks to Marv Wolfman and George Pérez’s New Teen Titans and a fair bit of after-school television, but Lemire has a habit of rummaging deep in the toy box. Popverse reported over the summer that Absolute versions of Firestorm, Abra Kadabra and even Rainbow Rider were also being lined up for the book. If the Absolute Universe can produce a terrifying Rainbow Rider, a man whose original superpower was painting rainbows on roller skates, then truly anything is possible.
Here at SFcrowsnest we suspect issue #25 will be quite the party, given that AIPT’s reviewer reckons Lemire is building everything up to a head in that issue. With the Absolute Justice crossover also due in 2027, the kids had better learn to work as a team quickly.
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