Smells like Teen Spirit"
So here's Lobdell's second foray into the teen story lines. (After Superboy) Thankfully, since they're mostly (or all) underaged, no one's naked in this issue. The quick and dirty: while the Teen Titans of the past still were TT members (Dick, Starfire, etc) the history of the current lineup (with Red Robin) appears to have been erased. I never read Teen Titans before, so I couldn't care less. I came to this book because of Red Robin and I like his characterization. More on that later.
One theme I picked up on a few of the new 52 books was a grounding of the DCU in our modern world. This may make for some fun issues in the future (the same way we laugh at those things from the Silver or Golden Age - like Martians), but it kinda makes the characters seem more real. For example, Kid Flash (with whom we open the issue) is an "ambulance chaser" and mentions caring what the people on message boards say about him. So he's like half super hero and half celebrity. That concept was briefly explored in one of the extra issues of Marvel's House of M. I'd like to maybe see that worked in a little more in the DCU. Why wouldn't People magazine have sleazy photos of Superman "he's just like us - he goes to the beach (or something)"?
Between Kid Flash and later remarks by Wonder Girl, one thing Scott wants to establish, is that these kids are not just distaff counterparts to the adult heroes. It's just a coincidence that Kid Flash has the same powers and name as Flash. Kid Flash is not his sidekick and in a press release Flash disavows knowlege of him. This is a bit of a break from the way these "kiddy" characters have been treated in the past, but we're not in the corny Silver Age anymore so this is a welcome change even though if you think about it - why not come up with a cooler name than Kid Flash if you aren't associated with him? It's one of those things where real life intrudes upon the fictional universe.
We're then introduced to Reb Robin. His past appears to be all (or mostly) preserved and he WAS Batman's sidekick. He's also still the computer whiz he was before. Again with the grounding of the DCU in our world, Robin has essentially contributed to the DCU version of Wikileaks. And there's a Colbert Report expy in Robin's first scene when he's watching a bunch of TV channels. That scene gives us a great intro into all the future members of the TT as they're covered by the news.
This first issue is essentially a crossover with Superboy #1. They both stand alone and you don't need to have read both, but you'll get a lot more out of these two books if you read them together. This issue explains why NOWHERE sends Superboy after the Teen Titans.
