The title of Teen Titans Lost Annual No. 1 (DC Comics) implies that the publishers recently found an unpublished gem from decades past in a drawer somewhere. In actuality, they simply finally found the will to publish something they themselves stuck in a drawer a few years ago.
Originally scheduled for release in 2003, the 48-page special featured the original version of the Teen Titans written by their original writer Bob Haney, with a cover by their original artist Nick Cardy and page after page of brilliant art by Jay Stephens (Jetcat) and Mike and Laura Allred (Madman).
According to Stephens, changes at DC about the time they finished working on the book resulted in its becoming intentionally lost. It was deemed too weird and too different from the more realistic and more dour version of the 21st-century Titans.
So what’s changed in the last five years? Perhaps the increase in interest in Haney’s original output from the ’60s, thanks to cheap reprints of his work, convinced DC there was a market for his last work after all.
His scripts of the era read a lot like a zanier version of Stan Lee, with the same faux-hipster slang and forced jocularity, but without the built-in cult of personality of his more famous peer. It’s too bad he died before this book actually saw release, because it’s some of his best work—boasting the same kinds of silly fun he traded in 40 years ago, but with sharp points about the changing times, and how the optimism of the early ’60s can continue to inform our new century.
President John F. Kennedy has been kidnapped and brainwashed by blue-skinned, mop-topped mod-looking aliens, who need him to lead their forces against their enemies, hairy, bestial blade-wielding hippies. See, JFK is the greatest leader in the universe, the only one capable of bringing peace to their war-torn planet.
Only Robin knows that the real JFK is in space, and has been replaced by a shape-shifting alien, so the Boy Wonder leads his fellow sidekicks Wonder Girl, Kid Flash and Speedy on an off-world rescue mission.
Stephens and the Allreds prove perfect partners for Haney and his story, creating pages of boldly inventive art that has a lo-fi cartooniness about it, inspired by the flatter superhero art of the Silver Age without actually aping it (the art, like the story, is about the positive perception of the era more than the actuality of it). The color is particularly impressive, sticking to bright primaries and replicating Benday dots, turning climactic panels—like the ones wherein Robin recreates JFK’s PT-109 experience to deprogram him—into Lichtenstein-like images.
Even assassination can’t stop Kennedy—see, it was the shape-shifter who was killed in Dallas, and the real JFK is still out there in space somewhere, fighting for peace.
How horribly depressing that DC found such a fun, hopeful and optimistic story to be out of tune with their sensibilities for so long.