Each Monday this year I'll be taking a look back at a random comic, prestige format issue, graphic novel or collection of reprints from amongst my 3,000 or so comics that date from 1962 to 2003 - I figured anything in the last ten years would be too recent to hark back to.
The comics are chosen completely at random and apart from a four week lead-in period, even I don't know what I'll be looking at in the weeks to come!
TITANS/YOUNG JUSTICE: GRADUATION DAY #3 - August 2003
Despite Young Justice being so much fun (or perhaps, if I'm feeling ungenerous) the series was cancelled and quickly rolled into a crossover with the Titans series that was around at the time. Written by Judd Winick, Graduation Day would romp through three issues, pulling both teams together at the start and, at the end, ripping them apart, introducing a couple of characters along the way but also killing some long standing ones.
Chief among the casualties, and probably the thing the series is remember for, was Donna Troy's death at the hands of a rogue Superman robot. When the other members of both teams had been defeated or incapacitated, it was Donna who faced up to the robot and beat it into submission before being cruelly struck down at the moment of victory:
It's left to one of the newcomers called Indigo to deal the final blow to the robot, but it comes too late for Donna.
There's a large funeral held for her with most of the major DC characters attending and it's during the funeral that the two teams of Titans and Young Justice blame themselves and decide to split up. It's a temporary split: this storyline would go on to launch the new Outsiders title written by Winick and a new Teen Titans by Geoff Johns, the latter of which would be very good.
As for Donna, an epilogue revealed that all was not done with her yet:
She would come back to the main DCU a couple of years later, just in time to play a part in Infinite Crisis and the new world that followed that. As at the time of writing, she's yet to appear in the New 52.
Oh Lord, that was horrible stuff - Indigo, bah, nasty blue traitor!
ReplyDeleteOh no! Spoiler alert for a series that's ten years old!
DeleteThis was pretty much dreadful, designed solely to tear apart the old teams and make way for the new in a dramatic fashion. As much as I liked Johns' Teen Titans, I'd rather have had Peter David's Young Justice.