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<\/a><\/div>\nOne of the great things about comics is how reading one inevitably leads to reading another. After re-reading Kurt Busiek and George Perez’s 2003 JLA\/Avengers<\/a><\/i> as part of my series on DC\/Marvel crossovers<\/a>, I felt compelled to re-read Devin Grayson and Phil Jimnez’s 1998 JLA\/Titans<\/i>\u00a0miniseries.\u00a0<\/p>\n Although smaller in page count, scale, stakes, cast and history (and, set in a single<\/i> publisher’s fictional universe, no doubt less logistically challenging), the Grayson\/Jimenez book resembles JLA\/Avengers<\/i> in its ambition, and its efforts to successfully juggle a huge roster of heroes (giving most <\/i>of them at least a moment of their own) and its completist posture.\u00a0<\/p>\n JLA\/Avengers <\/i>teamed not only the current line-ups of the two teams, but also many of their past incarnations (at least briefly) and, by its climax, every single hero who had ever been a Leaguer or an Avenger (plus an awful lot of their villains) put in appearances.\u00a0<\/p>\n JLA\/Titans<\/i>, meanwhile, featured the then quite large, post-“Rock of Ages” Justice League and, as it neared its climax, plenty of reserve Leaguers. It also featured every single living Titans character, one-panel cameo\/mentions of all of the deceased ones, every super-heroic character who had been an ally of the Titans (and\/or had assumed the legacies of them), plus<\/i> Young Justice, Mary Marvel, Catwoman and, at the climax, one-panel appearances by Lex Luthor, The Joker and Circe, because, at that point, why not…?<\/p>\n It also, in its layouts and visual style, bears more than a passing resemblance to Perez’s JLA\/Avengers<\/i>. Jimenez is an apparent Perez fan, and the late artist seemed to influence Jimenez’s own art quite a bit, both in his very realistic and detailed rendering, as well as panel-packed layouts. Flipping through the pages of JLA\/Titans<\/i>, it’s hard to imagine any artist other than Jimenez even attempting, say, 10-to-20-panel pages, or filling them with such big crowds of characters and highly detailed backgrounds. Excepting Perez himself, of course.\u00a0<\/p>\n A DC Comics fan whose favorite book by far was the Grant Morrison\/Howard Porter\/John Dell JLA<\/i> and a fan of writer Devin Grason and artist Phil Jimenez, I of course bought and read the series as it was originally released in three oversized issues. At the time, it seemed like a book made particularly to appeal to me, despit the fact that, at the time, I had read relatively few Titans books (None of which were from the Marv Wolfman\/George Perez team, which seems to be the best regarded era of the then almost 35-year-old franchise).<\/p>\n When I went to re-read it though, I looked for a trade collection from the library before approaching my comics midden of single issues in plastic bags in big, white long boxes, as I usually do. I found the 1999 collection, entitled JLA\/Titans: The Technis Imperative<\/i>, which also includes the Grayson-written, Paul Pelletier-pencilled and Dexter Vines-inked lead story from the 1999 Titans Secret Files & Origins #1<\/i>, which kicked off the 50-issue, 1999-2003\u00a0Titans<\/i> ongoing (of which Grayson wrote the first 20 issues).\u00a0<\/p>\n That’s the cover above. It’s not the best cover. Jimenez basically assembles parallel heroes from the ranks of the two teams who fight one another in the story (although Batman and Nightwing’s “fight” is simply a long verbal argument), with Arsenal and Martian Manhunter an awkward fit\u2014Oliver Queen was dead at the time, and Connor Hawke was no longer on the League\u2014and Superman kind of presiding over everything. It’s not terribly representative of what one might find inside the book, which finds dozens of heroes from both teams doing battle as an alien menace threatens to pull the moon from the sky.<\/p>\n I’m also not crazy about the sub-title, which is basically unnecessary (it’s not like there’s another<\/i> JLA\/Titans comic that this one needs to be distinguished from), and, though accurate, it’s sort of meaningless; it might as well be called “The Maguffin Plotpoint”.\u00a0<\/p>\n The term “Technis imperative” is used in dialogue during the proceedings, but I’m not sure “Technis” would have meant too much to JLA<\/i> readers at the time, and it means even less so these days; it comes from something near the end of Wolfman’s run on the 130-issue New Titans<\/i> series, from around the point he was essentially putting away the main toys of his New Teen Titans<\/i> run with Perez.\u00a0<\/p>\n I suppose I’m lucky I found this trade at a library, given that it’s over 25 years old at this point, and DC never re-collected it anywhere…which seems strange for a such a big story, given that it has a Crisis<\/i> or line-wide crossover’s worth of characters in it, that it’s attached to the oft-collected and re-collected JLA<\/i> and that it features such superior work from Jimenez, who seems to have remained popular enough with fans and the publisher that he’s been working regularly with them for decades now (Grayson’s star, by contrast, hasn’t fared as well\u00a0 over the years. DC has collected precious little of her work, despite its quality. I suppose it’s unlikely DC will ever collect the Grayson Titans<\/i> run and its associated comics; maybe this will end up in some sort of collection of Jimenez’s work though, akin to the Legends of the DC Universe: Dough Mahnke <\/i>or DC Universe by Mike Mignola<\/i> trades they’ve published…).<\/p>\n The plot is rather heavily tied to that of the last years of Wolfman’s New Titans<\/i>, with Cyborg, Starfire, Raven and Changeling (as Garfield Logan was still going by then) having by then been mostly absent from the DCU for a while, and the five Titans founders more active in their own books and\/or those of their mentors than as any kind of unit. Familiarity with New Titans <\/i>seems fairly important to this book, although Grayson and Jimenez, who co-plotted it in addition to pencilling it, do provide all of the necessary information.<\/p>\n In December of 1998, when the first issue of this book shipped, the most recent Titans book was the 24-issue, 1996-1998 Teen Titans<\/i> by writer\/penciler Dan Jurgens and inker George Perez, which featured four new teen heroes: Argent, Joto, Risk and Prysm. They were led by the recently de-aged Atom Ray Palmer, in a new costume with a vest, and they were later joined by original character Fringe and Captain Marvel Jr. (I had only read a single story arc of it, “Then and Now,” which ran from #12-#15 and guest-starred original Titans Nightwing, The Flash, Tempest and Arsenal, the latter of whom adopted his Kingdome Come<\/i>-inspired “Red Arrow” costume during it. Looking at it the series’ covers on the Grand Comics Database, I see they also went to Skartarsis at one point; I’d be interested in reading that.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Its final issue had just shipped two months previous, and one assumes that Grayson’s pitch for a Titans book had already been accepted and was in the process of being created. JLA\/Titans<\/i> reads, in retrospect, as a bridge between Jurgens’ Teen Titans<\/i> and the upcoming Titans<\/i>, using JLA<\/i>‘s popularity to help launch the next iteration of the title and, perhaps, justify the return of the founders and some of the more popular characters to the team.\u00a0<\/p>\n Indeed, one way to read JLA\/Titans<\/i> is as a celebration of the team’s history and legacy, a book meant for Titans fans, and for making new<\/i> Titans fans.\u00a0<\/p>\n As for the Justice League, JLA <\/i>was entering its third year that month, and “Rock of Ages”, Mark Waid (and Devin Grayson’s!) fill-ins, the two-part Starro story and DC One Million <\/i>were all\u00a0in the rearview mirror. Morrison and company had just launched a three-part story pitting the League against General Eiling-in-The Shaggy Man’s-body (who DC would start referring to as “The General,” though I preferred “The Shaven Man”) and his team of US government-sponsored heroes.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the time, the team consisted of the new “Big Seven” or “Magnificent Seven”, plus Plastic Man, Zauriel, Steel, Huntress, Orion, Barda and Oracle.\u00a0<\/p>\n The first issue of JLA\/Titans<\/i> finds many of those Leaguers gathered on their lunar Watchtower base, where The Atom Ray is helping Steel, Orion and Barda install some sort of towering piece of New Genesian technology. Meanwhile, on Earth, a plainclothes Changeling is with Argent in what must be the monitor room of the dissolving Teen Titans’ headquarters.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both begin to note strange activity, like some high-tech, morphing droids that look a little like slick, mechanical jellyfish targeting and capturing various heroes as diverse as The Flash, The Atom, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner and Starfire. And electronics all over the world going haywire. And, most visibly, a huge alien mass of mechanical debris approaching Earth, a mass that eventually engulfs the moon, setting off earthquakes and various other disasters around the world.<\/p>\n The issue involves a lot of heroes throughout the DC Universe observing and reacting to these phenomena and talking to one another about them. Every time one of the jellyfish droids targets a new character, Jimenez presents a little panel of the character apparently from the drone’s point of view, featuring a portrait of the character, as well as their name, their team affiliation (here, always an iteration of the Titans) as well as powers.<\/p>\n It quickly becomes apparent to readers (and to Batman), that these drone are abducting heroes who were formerly Titans, no matter how briefly (like Kyle, Supergirl and Impulse, for example, who were only on the team for some of the final iteration of Wolfman’s New Titans<\/i>, the Arsenal-lead team that lasted 15 issues after Zero Hour…<\/i>which I would nevertheless love a trade collection of).<\/p>\n These captured heroes are all then placed in virtual realities that are often pretty funny, like one in which Nightwing is hugged by a smiling Batman<\/a>, which makes him realize he’s in a virtual reality simulation, or one in which Flamebird is playing tennis with a bunch of Dick Graysons in Robin costumes, or one in which Tempest is presented by Aquaman with all of his past girlfriends combined into a single being (“Uh…thanks,<\/i><\/b> Arthur, but–” he stutters in response.)<\/p>\n They are all being gathered beneath Titans Island, the space entity’s beachhead on Earth. As the League beings to realize that any time the entity is attacked, as Orion does vigorously with the astro-force, Batman eventually insists that the entire League assemble on Titans Island to deal with the “hostage” situation, which has already claimed their members The Flash and Green Lantern (and The Atom).\u00a0 Oh, and Catwoman also shows up for some reason…presumably just so Grayson and Jimenez can have her fight Pantha for a few panels later.\u00a0<\/p>\n What precisely is going on takes an explanation of events from New Titans<\/i>, which Changeling gives at length. Cyborg Victor Stone had allowed himself to be absorbed into “The Technis<\/i><\/b>–that cyber-alien collective all into exploring<\/i><\/b> and cataloging<\/i><\/b> and stuff.” He took the name Cyberion (and a new body), but, when the rest of the collective was destroyed, he decided to carry on their work, with Gar at his side…until he started getting too remote and too weird for Gar, who ultimately returned to Earth.<\/p>\n Apparently, sometime after Gar left, Raven, who only ever appears in the story in a luminous golden “soul self” form, Vic’s consciousness started using the Omegadrome, a shape-shifting super-technology once possessed by the alien Jarras Minion, to start acting upon “the Technis imperative<\/i><\/b>” to rebuild itself, using what abandoned spaceships and other debris was available to make itself planet-like (that’s the thing that’s absorbing the moon). Then, beset by loneliness, what was left of Vic set about rebuilding the Titans, collecting them all…using not his own memories of his<\/i> Titans, but various databases that included all<\/i> of the Titans ever<\/i>.<\/p>\n Once the captives have all been freed, Orion is ready to destroy the crystalline computer units housing Vic’s “soul” in order to take out the menace, but Changeling pleads with the JLA to stop attacking it, as it would essentially kill what’s left of Victor Stone. In the brief debate that follows, Flash sides with his old friends over his current teammates, and Changeling challenges Orion and the JLA: “If you try to hurt <\/i><\/b>him again, I’ll stop <\/i><\/b>you.”<\/p>\n Orion, whose inherent hotheaded nature has been driving the conflict up to this point, responds, “I believe the Earth <\/i><\/b>saying goes: You and what army?<\/i><\/b>“<\/p>\n