Fantastic Five: Underrated Teen Titans

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our years on the Internet, it’s that there’s no aspect of comics that can’t be broken down and quantified in a single definitive list, preferably in amounts of five or ten. And since there’s no more definitive authority than ComicsAlliance, we’re taking it upon ourselves to compile Top Five lists of everything you could ever want to know about comics.

In their over fifty years of existence, the Teen Titans have been the premiere team of young heroes in comics, with various peaks and troughs of critical and commercial success. Several incarnations of the team have made a significant impression on readers, from the original lineup, to the '80s revamp, to their stint as Young Justice with the subsequent rebirth of the Titans team. However, in between these popular highs have come a number of less-appreciated characters and concepts who deserve another turn in the spotlight. This video takes a look at a handful of these.

Show notes:

• Just a clarification on one point from the video: while the New 52 has portrayed versions of Freddy Freeman and Mary Bromfield who temporarily receive the power of Shazam, they do not officially become the separate personas of Captain Marvel Jr and Mary Marvel, which is all I was getting at.
• If you're looking for a survey of Titans history, A Celebration of 50 Years is far from a perfect compilation, but it's not bad as a starting point.
• Of if you want a collection of heroes that looks more like the TV show, you could just jump into The New Teen Titans vol 1, though the stories about meatball parties are pretty few and far between.
• If you liked the Young Justice cartoon and would like a more modern incarnation of the team that roughly resembles that show, try this Teen Titans by Geoff Johns Omnibus.
• If, however, you want print versions of the characters from this video, you are basically SOL, which is an alarming trend among the comics I write about for these videos.

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