Teen Titans Lost Annual #1 (2008)
While the original Teen Titans run spent three decades pretty much discarded and forgotten in favor of Wolfman and Perez's far more successful iteration, a certain nostalgia for the classic line-up began manifesting itself around the turn of the millennium with DC first releasing a Teen Titans Annual #1 in 1999, containing reprints of several classic Haney adventures. I suspect this was DC putting feelers out as to whether or not a DC Archive Edition reprinting those adventures would be financially worthwhile. They ended up giving the Archives project the green light in 2003, but another retro Teen Titans project was originally intended to coincide with its release.
The Teen Titan Swingin' Special was slated for a 2003 release and would have been published under the Elseworlds imprint, but (for reasons I'm not clear on) it got shelved, only to be released five years later as Teen Titans Lost Annual #1, a title that would have better suited the 1999 Teen Titans Annual #1. The 2008 release was intended to promote the upcoming Teen Titans Year One project, but what makes the Lost Annual more significant than the 1999 Annual that came before it, the Year One volume that followed it, and the Silver Age Teen Titans one-shot published in 2000, is that rather than attempting to
imitate the vibe of the original Teen Titans, the Lost Annual is the real deal, featuring a new story by Bob Haney...in 2003!
I have looked and looked and can find no information on why/how they got Haney to come back and write this, but it may well be the best early Titans story he's ever written (I still prefer his later Brave and the Bold and Scooby-Doo style Titans adventures). They even brought back Gaspar Saladino and got Nick Cardy to do the cover!
"President Kennedy Has Been Kidnapped!"
Script: Bob Haney
Pencils: Jay Stephens
Inks: Mike Allred
Colors: Laura Allred
Letters: Gaspar Saladino
Grade: A
Let's begin with the obvious: Kennedy was already dead before the Titans assembled for the first time. Heck, Speedy's already on the team, and Batgirl gets referenced in this story (she didn't exist yet during this Titans era). But if we keep in mind that 1) this is Bob Haney, 2) this was intended as an Elseworlds story, and 3) even Haney is tongue-in-cheek suggesting this is one of DC's classic "impossible stories":
then we can sit back and enjoy everything this story is doing right.
It's Haney's biggest absurd fantasy story ever. His early Titans tales could be ridiculous, but they were never on this massive and audacious a scale, and that's thoroughly charming here:
President Kennedy gets abducted and replaced, the Titans follow him only to get ensnared in an alien civil war, and Haney's idealism gets a chance to shine in parallel to Kennedy's, seeking peace among warring factions, a theme that permeates so many of Haney's Titans adventures. He isn't talking about the generation gap this time (actually, the fact that the Titans are teens is entirely irrelevant to this particular story), but it's still very much a Haney story, and while Nick Cardy apparently wasn't up for penciling the 48 interior pages, Jay Stephens and Mike and Laura Allred do one hell of a job playing up the campy-ness with tremendous love and respect:
Both in terms of story and visuals, the classic Titans were NEVER this fun.
IMPORTANT DETAILS
- Here's the big fan-service splash page. We have the Titans living in a much cooler secret HQ than Haney originally gave them, littered with souvenirs from adventures that shouldn't have happened yet in 1962 (when this story takes place):
We have the giant robot from Teen Titans #1, The Separated Man's eye from Brave and the Bold #60, the Olympics logo from Teen Titans #4, Ding Daddy's roadster from Teen Titans #3, a robot suit I only vaguely recognize (it isn't Honey Bun), the Ant's costume from Teen Titans #5, the syringe Wonder Girl used to cure The Separated Man in Brave and the Bold #60, Garn's hatchet from Teen Titans #2, Mr. Twister's staff from Brave and the Bold #54, the surfboard
might be from Brave and the Bold #60(?), and (I missed it at first) the floor is in the pattern of DC's classic Go-Go Checks.
- While Speedy and Kid Flash get very little attention in this story, Haney spends a lot of time on Wonder Girl, playing up both her best quality during this era (how strong she is) and her worst (the boy craziness). Even in 2003, Haney is apparently not at all apologetic about any of this:
MINOR DETAILS
- One of the most clever/endearing moments in this story comes at the end, where we find out both that the Cuban Missile Crisis was caused by the impostor JFK and that the impostor was the one who was assassinated, the 1960's presidential hero still spotless in reputation and living among the stars, but this would mean that this single adventure lasted from at least October 16th, 1962 thru November 22nd, 1963. So the Titans were away in space for over a year without Batman or anyone else taking note of this?
- Definitely the most Haney moment of the issue:
Does this story truly capture the flavor of those early Haney stories? No. Aqualad is barely in this tale, Speedy shouldn't be there at all, and there's absolutely no message about teenagers, the generation gap, nor the importance of working for the establishment, and the bad guy isn't some ordinary thug corrupting gullible teens. All those signature pieces of the classic Titans stories are absent, and yet Haney writes something far more fun and imaginative in their place. It's a GREAT way to close out this review thread, a perfect, loving nod to the early days of the Teen Titans.
