Monday, May 3, 2010

Teen Titans #40 (December 2006)



After being accused of being the Titans' latest traitor, Ravager attacked Bombshell. Given the disparity in power levels, that didn't pan out very well. The Titans gave Ravager enough benefit of the doubt to send her back to Titans Tower alone, while they traveled with Bombshell in her Quantum Jet to where Robin deduced Raven had ended up, Phoenix, AZ.

Back at the tower, caretakers Wendy and Marvin stopped Ravager from packing her things. They had discovered pages from the book everyone was searching for in the trash, suggesting it had been hollowed out to conceal a data disc that was the true object of interest.

Back on the Quantum Jet, Kid Devil tried to call Rose to apologize, but the signal was jammed. As onboard Titans slowly came to Ravager's defense, Bombshell suggested another candidate for traitor, who happened to be flying right at them. "It's the Martian! I knew it! ...That alien tramp is attacking! She must have read my mind!" Jets flying alongside carried "quantum soldiers" under Bombshell's orders, which were to counterattack. However, Miss Martian turned transparent and entered the Quantum Jet with ease. "Titans. I have caught up with you... I broke the rules, Eddie. I read minds. I know."

Bombshell set the air around Miss Martian on fire, proving her theory that M'Gann was in fact a White Martian in disguise... the "bad" kind. Bombshell sent the reptilian Martian flying out through the ship's hull. "Time to drop kick your ass back to Mars!" While Wonder Girl struggled to safely land the jet from the outside, Bombshell pressed her attack on Miss Martian. Once the White (still wearing her cutesy costume) hit Earth, Cyborg joined Bombshell, though Miss Martian got in a good jab beforehand. "You shouldn't have started this, Amy. It's really not nice!"

Kid Devil couldn't believe Miss Martian was the traitor, but her being a White Martian, Wonder Girl had no such trouble. The pair found Raven inside the abandoned church where she had been resurrected in new flesh by the Church of Brother Blood. Raven attacked Kid Devil, providing one last red herring as to who the traitor was. Sorry for her mistake, Raven heard Cassie's theory about Miss Martian, and emphatically corrected her. The traitor, who immediately knocked Wonder Girl out by using her quantum powers to scramble her brain waves, was Bombshell. The same trick had taken out Robin and Miss Martian, while Cyborg was forcibly rebooted by her blasts. Raven remained defiant against Bombshell, and a returned Ravager managed to distract the villainess long enough for Raven to complete a spell of resurrection on the stolen data disc. From out of a pit rose Rose's long disembodied brother, Joseph "Jericho" Wilson.

"Titans Around The World: Part 3" by Geoff Johns, Tony Daniel, Jonathan Glapoin & Kevin Conrad.

4 comments:

mathematicscore said...

So THAT's how Jericho go un-killed.

Speaking of White Martians... is the whole white cavemen vs more modern whites you've mentioned an invention of yours, or is there some basis in current continuity?

Diabolu Frank said...

M.C., I wouldn't take credit for it as an invention. It's more of a supposition.

Officially, all stories involving Mars prior to 1988 were at one time fabrications implanted in the mind of (Unpronounceable Natural Martian Real Name of the Manhunter) by Saul Erdel. In fact, throughout the '90s, pretty much every Martian Manhunter story prior to 1985 were either completely out of cannon or simply ignored by every modern writer. Hell, for about a decade after the Crisis, almost the entire run of Justice League of America was out of continuity. Remember when Superman and Wonder Woman "first joined" the JLA in the early '90s?

Anyway, writers like Mark Waid, Grant Morrison and James Robinson started sneaking Silver Age elements back into continuity, while other writers like John Ostrander were throwing out stuff from just a few years earlier. For instance, while Waid reintroduced Diane Meade and the concept of Pale Martians (sight unseen,) Ostrander negated the 1988 Martian Manhunter mini-series and retroactively instated its revisions as perpetual.

Morrison established the back story of his White Martians, which were different from that of the Pales/Pole Dwellers, who were contemporaneous with the Greens/Desert Dwellers. Robinson brought a bunch of Justice League of America continuity back into play, while Waid restored a lot of the '60s stuff through JLA: Year One and the Silver Age event. The real deal breaker was Brad Meltzer though, as Identity Crisis re-entrenched the Satellite Era League, and then he restored Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman as founding members in his relaunch. Coupled with Morrison using the Human Flame in Final Crisis and Geoff Johns' constant mining of the Silver Age, it's safe to say most of the mainstream DC continuity from the '50s onward is back in play.

If that's the case, then we've got to accept that there were Pale Martians in the '60s & '70s, and that there were White Martians from the '90s on, and they aren't exactly the same thing. Hence, the evolutionarily challenged White Martians, trapped in the Still Zone since Earth's pre-history, and the Pale Martians that coexisted with J'Onn J'Onzz in modern times.

mathematicscore said...

*Standing Ovation*

Diabolu Frank said...

Thankyew! Thankyewveddymuch!