When an eldritch horror from Tamaranean history threatens to destroy all life on Earth, the Justice League is powerless to stop it. Only one man has the ability and the know-how to battle his ancient evil. And that man is...
Beast Boy?!
It's true! His shapeshifting powers make him the perfect counter for the Necrostar that even Superman is powerless to defeat. But not everything goes according to plan, and it isn't long before millions of people are transformed into feral beast-human hybrids, including most of the world's heroes and villains! Can humanity survive in the Beast World that planet Earth has become?
Titans: Beast World is a Crisis Crossover that began with the release of Tales of the Titans #4 in October 2023. Written by Tom Taylor and with art by Ivan Reis, the event follows Earth's greatest heroes and villains as a plague sweeps the planet, transforming people into werebeasts with animalistic intelligence.
Titans: Beast World contains examples of:
- Big Bad Wannabe: Brother Eternity tried to initiate the takeover of Earth with the Necrostar, but was thwarted by the Titans and overshadowed by Waller's machinations exploiting their efforts. His attempts to fulfill his plans are treated as little more than a nuisance, and he gets a dressing down from Raven as a pathetically cruel sycophant before she banishes him to the Phantom Zone.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Titans and the rest of the heroes are victorious, saving humanity from being eradicated from Waller's military strikes, being able to pull the spores out and resurrect Beast Boy. However, Waller is able to use Cyborg's hacking of the military drones to further her goals and has taken possession of the old Hall of Justice, renaming it the Hall of Order while trying to turn humanity further against the heroes. As well, Raven's dark half has captured the real Raven inside the stone in her head and taken her place despite losing the Helmet of Hate.
- The Bus Came Back:
- The Waller Rising tie in features the return of David Zavimbe, the original Batwing, who hasn't been seen since Luke Fox took the name in Batwing #20 (July 2013).
- The Central City one-shot sees the return of Godspeed, who returned from the dead at the end of The Flash (2016) but hasn't had a big role since.
- Die or Fly: In the Flash Family tie-in, Jai is self-conscious about his spotty connection to the Speed Force when compared to his dad and sister. It even works against him when Godspeed manages to poison him with a neurotoxin, sending the toxin to Jai's heart in seconds rather than hours. While dying and frothing at the mouth, Jai finally manages to force the Speed Force to listen to him, shocking himself back to health with a lightning bolt of Speed Force energy. He then flattens the remaining Godspeed-Wasps with a Shockwave Clap while admitting to his crush Maxine that he feels like he can take on Superman.
- Didn't See That Coming: The the Flash Family tie-in, Jai defeats a Godspeed-Wasp with one punch after he manages to catch Godspeed before he could be stung. But as Jai is savoring his victory over someone even Barry struggles to beat, Maxine yells at him to turn around in time for Jai to get a stinger shoved into his back. Only then does he remember Godspeed's ability to create duplicates of himself.
- Dystopia Justifies the Means: Amanda comes right out and says it; she believes people don't want heroes to inspire them to be better, they want targets to hate and rulers and gods to give that to them. Her plan wasn't to do what she thinks is right, it was to seize control and be the dictator-god she thinks the world needs, and sacrifice however many people she needs to make that happen.
- End of an Era: Meta example. Beast World is the final DC Comics project (for now) to be penciled by event artist Ivan Reis. Following the event's conclusion (and the end of his current exclusive contract), Reis will be leaving DC after 20 years for Image Comics (and reuniting with longtime collaborator Geoff Johns for his new Ghost Machine imprint).
- Evil Is Not a Toy: Amanda Waller has Doctor Hate meddle with Beast Boy's transformation into a Starro, which causes a crisis as intended but also a fallout that threatens the government she's trying to manipulate. Hate excuses this with the the fact he's using chaos magic, so results may be imprecise. Doctor Hate also gets corrupted from using chaos magic and wants to cause an even worse disruption to the balance of nature at the behest of the Lords of Chaos and has to be reigned in.
- False Flag Operation: Waller has Doctor Hate sabotage Beast Boy's transformation into Starro the Conqueror so that he becomes a new threat to the world, all to discredit the superhero community and gain support from the US government to control metahumans.
- Forced Transformation: Amanda Waller is revealed to be behind at least one of the transformations, when she forcibly infects a kidnapped Dolphin with a spore.
- Friend to All Living Things: Damian is the most compassionate about the well-being of the beast people and goes alone in search of ones that have gone missing. He refuses to hurt them in direct combat.
- The Heavy: Besides Doctor Hate, Amanda also has Peacemaker doing her dirty work.
- Hijacked by Ganon: Brother Eternity is furious that his Necrostar, the culmination of everything he's been doing in Titans (2023), has been subsumed into the Amanda Waller Metaplot.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Apex Ava was a globetrotting hunter that tattooed herself for every animal she hunted, until she got sick with Sakutia on a fateful hunting trip. Realizing she was terminal, she began hunting people before being institutionalized in Arkham Tower.
- I Have Your Wife: Amanda leverages the knowledge of the secret community of aliens Nia Nal is protecting to blackmail her into joining a new Suicide Squad.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Invoked; the Titans realise that a part of Beast Boy is still alive in the spores when they realise that all of the infected avoid attacking Raven, reflecting the depth of his feelings for her.
- Mass Transformation: Doctor Hate magically suppresses Beast Boy's consciousness while the latter is transformed into Starro, effectively turning him into another Starro. Operating on Starro's instinct, Beast Boy-Starro then spreads his spores across the world to find hosts. But combined with Gar's mutagenic abilities, these spores transform millions of people into werebeast hybrids.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The spores don't care if the infected are already Beast Men, leading to mashups like King Tiger Shark.
- My Sister Is Off-Limits: The Central City one-shot sees Jai West on a date with Maxine Baker, best friend of his sister, Irey West. The two both lied to Irey to make the date possible, since she doesn't like the idea of them dating and is clearly pissed when she stumbles onto them during the event.
- No Ontological Inertia: As soon as the Garro spores leave a victim, they change back to normal.
- No-Sell:
- Brother Eternity tries to possess Cyborg with a Necrostar spore to force him to Boom Tube the mother star back into the Solar System. It doesn't work both because he's missing half the things it's trying to latch onto and his cybernetics have the processing power of peak technology from two worlds. He expels it without issue and incinerates it.
- Doctor Hate tries to possess Wally West while Wally's carrying his helmet, but Wally observes that his long experience with similar attempts to manipulate his mind have allowed him to train himself to think so fast that the other party can't keep up with his thoughts. He's dropped it into a volcano before it finishes claiming that he can't resist it.
- Orifice Invasion: The Necrostar spores invade the body to control people. Beast Boy's Garro spores do the same thing to expel them, and then do it themselves to possess people instead of latching onto their faces like normal Starros. Starfire defends against this at one point by biting down on one that tries to enter her body.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Surprisingly, the President of the United States. He questions Waller's plan to kill all one million beast people and when Nightwing approaches him to ask him not to go through with her plan, the President criticizes him and the heroes for hijacking the U.S. army to prevent such attacks, pointing out that their actions do not encourage him to trust them. Despite this, the President stops Nightwing from revealing his secret identity as a sign of good faith and agrees to convince the world leaders to let the Titans and the other heroes save all the infected.
- Refuge in Audacity: Amanda Waller has the gall to say that Chunk willingly gave his life to stop Garro after losing his son to them when Peacemaker was the one that shot his son dead and she sent him to his death against his will to stop Garro.
- Shout-Out: Nightwing #110's tie-in cover recreates the infamous "Woman Yelling at a Cat" meme (with Dick and and Jon Kent as the Real Housewives and the now-feline Damian as the Cat).
- Superior Successor: Deconstructed with Barry Allen. He's going through a bit of a mid-life crisis now that Wally West is the main Flash again who he knows is faster than him, and even does a double take when he realises that Irey West was able to keep up with him. It takes Iris telling him he's more than just a name and speed to snap him out of it.
- The Reveal: Doctor Hate is Raven's demon side, having escaped from the gemstone she keeps on her forehead.
- Touched by Vorlons: Apex Ava was a woman who got sick with Sakutia from a monkey bite, much like Beast Boy, and then killed and ate a piece of his Garro spore. She turned green and gained the ability to control spores and the people transformed through them as well as transform into animals exactly like Beast Boy.
- Transformation Horror: Beast Boy's transformation into a Mother Star-sized Starro from a whale is not a pretty sight.
