Saturday, January 19, 2008

Superteen Battle Royale - Your Thoughts Please?


VS


ROUND ONE: Classic Teen Titans line-up versus Modern Runaways line-up - who wins?

Given our familiarity lies mostly with the animated series, Kay and I based a team for the Titans on that model - which turned out pretty evenly matched.

Raven Vs Nico, Starfire Vs. Karolina, Robin Vs. Chase & Old Lace - these all seem like pretty uneven match-ups on paper. On the other hand, I fully believe that Victor could take Cyborg, Xavin could take down Beast Boy and Molly Hayes could surprise Wonder Girl or Kid Flash into outcold-land. If we vary up these match-ups, things could get even more interesting.

In the end, we both leaned towards the Runaways. This was mostly because they A)have the stealthy lack of costumes going on, B)have the son of a Skrull Warlord who's willing to kill people (yes, Xavin hasn't been shown killing anyone but c'mon, (s)he's a freaking Skrull Warlord's son, people), C) Molly Hayes sucker punched the Punisher - doing the same to Robin isn't outside the realm of possibility.

While we didn't think it'd be a rout, we felt fairly sure it'd turn into at least a draw. Also, I just plain love to imagine the Titans being utterly befuddled by these kids without costumes who fight dirty. Now, if we were talking modern age Titans with Devil Boy, the Martian telepath and more importantly, Ravager and the royally ticked off Wonder Girl, I'd probably be singing a different tune.

Now, the winner of this battle have to take on the most vicious teen team we could think of - Gail Simone's revamp of Gen13.


Now before you scoff, these aren't the same cheesecake-y scamps from the early 90's you may think you know. Every one of them just saw their foster families murdered in front of them Batman-style, because the guy who cloned their bodies and raised them to be a certain way THOUGHT IT WOULD BE FUNNY. Each of them knows they're freaks of nature and aren't terribly happy about it (save Zen Grunge and Rasta Bobby but their anger still simmers deep down). They're all smarter, more paranoid and willing to kill if need be than their previous incarnations (well, poor Roxy's certainly more prone to violence at least). Grunge killed a version of Apollo, for heaven's sake. Whichever team you choose to stand against them, I wouldn't dismiss the possibility of a long, brutal battle.

Even Kay and I were uncertain about who would win what. At least I'll get to see a match-up of sorts between the Gen13ers vs the Titans in the upcoming Wildstorm/DC: Dreamwar.

The funniest part? After all this teen blogging, what I'm most excited about in the upcoming DC/Wildstorm thing is the JSA Versus the Welcome to Tranquility beat-down.

As Giffen himself so neatly puts it: "Geriatric wars, man! [laughs] Any book that's got old people pounding the shit out of each other -- c'mon! It's worth the price."

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