The Teen Titans is a series of graphic novels published under DC Comics' DC Young Adult, written by Kami Garcia (The Caster Chronicles) and illustrated by popular Teen Titans fan-artist Gabriel Picolo.
Based on the Teen Titans comics, the series follows five teens as struggling to fit in with society, only to discover that a mysterious party has something else in mind for them.
Books in the series include:
- Raven: After her adoptive mother is killed in a mysterious car crash that left her amnesiac, Raven is taken in by a friend of her mother in Louisiana. However, not only does Raven have to contend with her missing memories and moving to a new home, but also face the demons on her tail…
- Beast Boy
- Beast Boy Loves Raven
- Robin
- Starfire
Tropes in this series include:
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The series as a whole
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Although in general the characters maintain their relationships in the comics, such as Gar and Raven becoming romantically involved, Damin and Max's relationship is something that never happened in the comics.
- Elseworld: The story narrates the formation of the Teen Titans in an alternative universe with a lot of similarities to the one we know, the difference being that there is a Genre Graft here, which focuses on the characters' teenage drama rather than on their heroic deeds.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Slade is The Heavy, but he's a Hired Gun for Adeline and H.I.V.E., who want superpowered children so that they can experiment on them.
- Working with the Ex: Neither Slade nor Adeline are happy about it though.
Raven
- Canon Foreigner: Natalia Navarro, her deceased sister Vivian Navarro, and her daughter Maxime Navarro were created for the series.
- False Friend: Tommy was hired to keep an eye on Raven, though he came to genuinely care about her.
- Headphones Equal Isolation: For a time, Raven wears headphones to avoid talking with her classmates.
- Mysterious Benefactor: It turns out that Tommy was hired by a man named Slade Wilson…
- Official Couple: Lily and Lola.
- Social Circle Filler: Max and Raven's school friends, Lily, Lola, and Eman, are more or less just there so that the two have people to bounce off of other than each other. Eman is especially noticeable as he's set up to be a love interest to Max but in the later installment Beast Boy Loves Raven Max ends up getting Ship Tease with Damian Wayne.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: As the Navarros summon the spirit of their ancestors to help protect Raven from Trigon, Natalia declares to the enemy that Maxime's superhero moniker is Soulstorm. Maxime thinks it's a little lame and would've liked to discuss it, but doesn't argue in that moment.
Beast Boy
- Ambiguously Brown: The Logans are darker-skinned, though it's not specified what ethnicity they are. Gar later wears his dad's jacket, which has a pin of a flag with a star in the center and three horizontal stripes with possible outlines, though all the pins are colored green — the closest flag to this description is Surinam, and his dad does look Latino.
- Animal Lover:
- Stella works at the animal shelter, and at one point, she wears a shirt that reads "Rescue, Don't Buy" because the shelter is euthanizing the unadopted dogs soon. She laments that people didn't vote for the shelter to be no-kill.
- Gar is disgusted when he discovers that East Georgia State lied about not using animals in their tests, and remembering that he voiced against his parents doing the same and that Stella applied to that university because of their policy, he frees the animals.
- Atrocious Alias: After earning the approval of his classmates for easily eating a Carolina Reaper, one of the popular kids calls him a "beast", which gives Gar the idea to jokingly call himself "the Beast Boy". However, his friends are too shocked by what happened to joke along with him and he backspaces, agreeing that it might sound too silly, just like "Swamp Thing".
- Bland-Name Product:
- Garfield grabs a bag of "Chips", which looks like the design for a bag of Cheetos. He also gets a green soda, and he's later shown to have soda cans with logos similar to the 7up logo.
- Gar looks up the side effects for amino trianidol on Globalpedia, which is obviously meant to be Wikipedia.
- One video has R.J. at a college called West Kentucky State University, which has a Roman soldier as its mascot. No such university exists, though there is a West Kentucky University.
- Likewise, Gar plans to sneak into East Georgia University to take a picture with its mascot, the python. This college also doesn't exist, though there is an East Georgia State College.
- Another movie on Gar's TV is Kin Kong.
- Gar gives his monkey a bag of Fruit Loot (which appears to be fruit-flavored chips), which sounds similar to the cereal Fruit Loops.
- Brick Joke: At the beginning of the comic, Fancy's owner worries that her cat might get attacked by a bear, to which Gar assures her aren't in Georgia. At the end of the comic, Gar transforms into a bear to scare away the coyotes, and as he leaves, the park rangers comment that they didn't think Georgia had green bears.
- The Cameo:
- One of the graffiti at the school reads "Raven Was Here" and another reads "Doom Patrol".
- In a flashback, Gar's parents mention that they work for H.I.V.E.
- Slade has a phone call with Adeline, who is a scientist conducting experiments on people like Gar at H.I.V.E.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- While researching Carolina Reaper peppers, Stella learns that tree shrews can eat the peppers without suffering from the spiciness. When Gar eats the Reaper, he unconsciously activates his powers for the first time by changing his body's DNA into that of a tree shrew.
- One of the kids says that his mom compares the neighbor's cat to a bobcat. During dodgeball, Gar unconsciously uses his powers to avoid the dodgeballs like an agile bobcat.
- It's speculated by the locals that Slade is a coyote conservationist. Then comes the climax when the coyotes attack Gar's classmates.
- Commonality Connection: Gar and Stella are both Animal Lovers and avid gamers.
- Contrived Coincidence: It's mentioned that Gar was accepted into the University of Tennessee and is his college choice, though he seems to have changed his mind about going by the time of the story. Then at the end of the comic, Slade tells him that if he wants answers from him, then he'll have to meet him in Nashville, Tennessee.
- Dyslexia: Turns out Tank has dyslexia, which is the cause of his struggle in English class.
- Famed In-Story:
- Garfield is shown to have an action figure of Batman in his room. He's later shown to have a mask of the Joker.
- It's shown that Gar has a comic for Swamp Thing in his school locker and he later namedrops him as having an Atrocious Alias.
- Gar mentions that he can see in the dark and needs to be a hero like Superman.
- Gar's dad has a Flash shirt in his closet.
- Gar and his classmates enjoy watching a high school influencer named R.J., who pulls off stunts like eating extremely spicy food or running through his school with only a speedo.
- Foreshadowing: The aggressive dog at the shelter has unkempt hair and a scar over one of its eyes… who does that remind you of?
- Friend to All Living Things:
- Garfield is able to get the neighbor's ill-tempered cat down from a tree by gently coercing it, much to the shock of everyone else who knows its reputation. Later, a snake and a dog are shown to be attracted to him, immediately turning friendly in his presence when they're usually aggressive.
- Gar is shown to prefer vegetarian options like rice milk and breakfast sandwiches without sausages, though he's also shown to be eating a pepperoni pizza. He and Kong are later seen wearing shirts that read "Meat is Murder".
- Green-Eyed Monster: Mike, one of the popular boys that Gar embarrassed by eating Carolina reapers, tips off East Georgia State for the theft of their mascot when Gar brags about it to them, in hopes of getting his expelled and arrested.
- Hopeless Suitor: Garfield sees himself as this to Alana, a popular girl he has a crush on.
- I Just Want to Be Badass: Gar wants to be seen as cool and accepted by his peers, especially the popular kids. However, being a late bloomer has made him look wimpy… until he stops taking his supplements.
- Innate Night Vision: Gar unknowingly uses his powers to make his eyes act similar to a primate with night vision, allowing him to sneak into East Georgia State at night without using a light.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Garfield doesn't remember much about his family's trip to Africa when he was four-year-old, other than the green monkeys.
- Mistaken for Pedophile: Since he's been seen creeping around the high school, people think that Slade is a child abductor.Garfield: If you're some kind of perv, you better back off.
Slade: Do I look like a perv, kid?
Garfield: You don't look like a conservationist.
Slade: Fair enough. - Mundane Utility: An accidental variant. Gar unknowingly uses his powers for the first time by thinking about tree shrews while eating a Carolina Reaper, remembering that these animals can eat spicy peppers without recoil. As a result, his body acts like that of a tree shrew so that he can eat a Reaper without issue, thus impressing his classmates.
- Mysterious Watcher: Gar sees a strange man at the store and wonders if he looks familiar. A little kid mentions to him that his parents saw him stalking Gar's school, though some think he's a coyote conservationist. Not only that, but Gar's parents know that he's Slade Wilson.
- Mythology Gag: Garfield's Twitter handle is _garlogan1367. Doom Patrol Issue #113, released in August 1967, was where it was explained why Beast Boy changed his alias to Changeling.
- Pet the Dog: Slade has a soft spot for dogs, adopting the dogs that Gar freed from the shelter and feeding them chips.
- Power Nullifier: Garfield's parents put him on an amino trianidol supplement because he supposedly has a non-essential amino acid deficiency. He starts to suspect it may be preventing him from growing bigger and discovers online that it has a side effect of affecting the pituitary gland, so he stops taking it.
- Puberty Superpower: Gar finds out that his supplement is preventing him from developing through puberty and stops taking it… except it was preventing something else.
- Race Lift: Gar and his parents are Ambiguously Brown rather than Caucasian-American.
- Recursive Canon: At the beginning of the comic, Garfield's TV is showing an action movie with a cyborg that highly resembles Cyborg/Victor…
- Sequel Hook: Gar decides to seek answers from Slade, who has already moved on but tells him to meet him in Nashville. Gar elects to run away from home with Kong, though not before saying goodbye to Tank and Stella, who have figured out about his powers.
- Shame If Something Happened: After Gar frees the animals at E.G.U. and accidentally escapes with the snake mascot Crush, both he and Stella know that the university can't do anything about getting the animals back since then they would have to admit they lied about not using animals in their experiments. Later, when they do figure out it was Gar, he blackmails them by saying that if it was him, he would release footage of the animals they were using.
- Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: After meeting Slade, Gar accidentally transforms into a wolf and his clothes rip off, forcing him to steal a nearby pair of overalls. In the climax, he takes off his clothes first before transforming into a bear.
- Shout-Out: Garfield's English teacher assigns the class to each read a classic and then write an essay relating it to their life. Gar is given Lord of the Flies, Tank is Atlas Shrugged, Stella is Pride and Prejudice, and Destiny gets War of the Worlds.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Gar breaks out the three dogs from the shelter the night before they're going to be euthanized, except one of them is an aggressive dog that gets far enough from Gar's influence that it tries to attack a little girl. Fortunately, the neighbor's cat and Slade are there to save the day.
- They Would Cut You Up:
- Gar and Stella are against animal experimentation because of this.
- Gar fears that H.I.V.E., who he knows experiments on animals, also experiment on humans, and he fears that his parents experimented on him too.
- After scaring away the coyotes at the park and the park rangers show up, Gar runs away and mentally hopes that they won't tranq him. It's Played for Laughs, though it probably wouldn't be good if the government got their hands on a green bear…
- Toilet Humor: One R.J. video has him eating Carolina reapers, which not only makes him cry from the pain of eating it, but also gives him a stomach ache, barf, and a nasty case of the farts. Gar's classmates also mention that one of their classmates supposedly crapped his pants two minutes after eating a Reaper, and Gar's friends get him adult diapers in case that also happens to him.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Gar accuses his parents of experimenting on him when they reveal that they injected him with antibodies from the West African green monkey in a desperate attempt to save his life from the lethal sakutia.
Beast Boy Loves Raven
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Gar and Raven both think to themselves that the other looks cute, but Raven is reluctant to trust anyone, especially another boy, after what she had just been through in her own book, not helped by Gar's antics. This is pretty downplayed though, Damien and Max though are a straighter example.
- Insistent Terminology: Gar tries ordering a vegan dog at a barbecue place because they don't consider it a meat dish. Turns out their definition of "meat" is barbecue, and since a "hot dog" isn't that, they don't consider it real "meat".
- Naïve Animal Lover: Downplayed. Gar asks the waitress at the barbecue restaurant if they have any vegetarian dishes, to which she answers they only have collard greens and cheese plates. He then ignores her answer and orders a hot dog because he was apparently told that it isn't meat by their definition of real "meat". Raven even lampshades his stupidity for believing a barbecue would have genuine vegan dishes.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Beast Boy attempts to sneak into a bar by wearing a cowboy hat after seeing an older patron wearing one. The doorwoman reacts as well as you'd think.
Robin
- Always Someone Better: Dick is that for Damian. This culminates in Damian making a rant about that.Damian: I bet everyone like you, don't they, Dick? Strangers, professors, Bruce, my friends... You've got the whole nice-guy-promking-quarterback thing going for you. And I'm the unlikable one with the bad temper.
- Anti-Climax: The story basically ends with Gar saving the team pet, Slade crashing his car trying to pursue them, and the gang getting away. And that's pretty much it.
- Breather Episode: Compared to previous volumes, this one focuses on the youngsters honing their skills, their romantic relationships and Damian accepting Dick Grayson as part of the team. The main plot returns to prominence after Dick realizes that Slade is close to finding them.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Basically Damian resents Dick out of jealousy. It is also implied that the reason he ran away from home was because he felt there was no place for him in his Bruce's life with Dick being there. Dick being virtually perfect and loved by everyone makes matters worse.
- Nice Guy: Dick is friendly and helpful, and tries to act like a good brother to Damian and his friends. While this trait makes Dick quickly accepted by the rest of the group, it's ironically also a reason why Damian doesn't want him around.
- Parental Favoritism: Another reason why Damian resents Dick. When he fist met his father
, Dick had been adopted and had been his sidekick for years ,which immediately makes him feel that Bruce doesn't need him as a son in his life, being strongly implied that this ended up spurring his decision to run away from home and meet Slade in the previous volume. - Sequel Hook: After hacking the H.I.V.E database, the group decides to head to Los Angeles to try to help the next H.I.V.E target, Kory Anders.
- Sore Loser: Once he loses the competition to make Dick leave, Damian basically complains about how much of a Nice Guy he is before storming off.
