10 Worst Teen Titans

The Teen Titans are the greatest team of teen heroes in comics, by a wide margin. The Teen Titans have long been one of DC’s most popular teams; in fact, during the New Teen Titans years, they were the most popular. The Teen Titans started out as the sidekick team, and grew and grew, eventually becoming the legends they are now. There have been some amazing Teen Titans over the years, heroes who have joined the team and grew into something special. The Teen Titans have become an icon factory as the years have gone on, taking young heroes and giving them the kind of attention they need to turn into amazing characters. However, that doesn’t mean that every Teen Titan has been great for the team.

As with any superhero team, there are two kinds of bad members. There are the members who never really reached their potential, dragged the story down, or never really lived up to their legacy. Then there are the members who were actively detrimental to the team; some of them betrayed the group, and some of them were more trouble than they were worth. These ten Teen Titans are the worst members of the team, dragging the Teen Titans down and proving that even the best teams have bad members.

10) Bart Allen/Kid Flash II

This one hurts, because Bart Allen is actually a pretty decent character when written right. His years as Impulse and as a member of Young Justice showed him off best as the character, building him into a very different young speedster than we’d seen before. His joining the Teen Titans in the early ’00s should have been a big upgrade for the character, but other than learning about a change in his powers, it was a failure for the character. The problem was that after years of being the hyperactive speedster, he suddenly became bookish and kind of boring. The best way to describe Bart’s time in the Teen Titans is that they tried to make him into Wally West II instead of developing him as Bart Allen. Bart Allen got literally kneecapped in the opening stages of his Teen Titans run, and then got kneecapped as a character so he could fit in with the Teen Titans.

9) Lilith/Omen

Once upon a time, the X-Men were considered a teen team and DC didn’t have their own teen team. This made the Teen Titans competition for them, and DC did their best to make the Teen Titans more popular. Marvel and DC have long had the tendency to copy one another in little ways, and Omen was one of these. See, the X-Men had a redheaded telepath who was popular on their team, so when the Teen Titans started adding members, Lilith Clay was recruited. Her time with the Teen Titans was decades ago, and like some of the other members of the Teen Titans of the time, she just sort of faded away. She didn’t make a lot of appearances in New Teen Titans like a lot of other older Titans, and was a trivia question even for well-read DC fans. Lilith has gotten a couple of second chances over the years — she joined the cast of DC Rebirth’s Titans (a highly underrated team book) and co-starred in Power Girl (Vol. 3) — but she’s never been able to ride her Teen Titans membership to stardom.

8) Roy Harper

Roy Harper is a great character, with a rich history. He’s extremely important to the history of the DC Multiverse, being one of the first sidekicks. However, in his time as a Teen Titans never reached that of his fellow Titans. Roy Harper, like many older DC characters, didn’t have much of a personality for years, and after it was revealed that he was a drug addict, his defining trait became the hero who always messed up. He was presented as damaged goods more often than not, and his character was retconned to fit with this portrayal. What makes Harper a bad Titan isn’t that he’s been in bad stories or is a bad character, it’s because he was never able to reach the same levels as some of the other original Teen Titans. A big part of this was that he was left out of New Teen Titans, and it took years for him to regain any kind of fan esteem. However, even then, creators couldn’t help but have Roy screw it all up. Roy is a lot of fun to read about, but calling him a good Teen Titan just isn’t true.

7) Bunker

The sad thing about Bunker is that in another era of the Teen Titans, with a better writer, he could have been a great character. However, Bunker premiered during the disastrous New 52 Teen Titans book. That book was so bad that the Teen Titans have barely recovered from it, and still aren’t nearly as popular as they once were. Bunker was the gay character on the team, and that was pretty much it. He had cool powers — creating Green Lantern like constructs with violet energy — but he was just so boring. He was just a peppy, positive hero with no angst. That’s it. He didn’t get to have a cool relationship, because back then gay characters rarely got anything like that. He was actually a token gay character, which is unfortunate. Bunker has showed up several more times over the years, most recently appearing in Titans Academy, but no one has ever been interested in the character, so it all was for naught.

6) Aqualad I

Now, I want to be clear — Garth has become an awesome character. His change to Tempest was just the shot in the arm he needed. However, the fact that he needed that show in the arm really says it all. Aqualad I was one of the founding members of the Teen Titans, but that doesn’t mean that he was a good Teen Titan. The problem is that Aqualad I had was the same one that Aquaman had for years — his powers were looked down upon, and he was just the guy who could swim and talk to fish. He also really didn’t have any personality back then, a big problem with a lot of the original Teen Titans not named Robin. As with Roy Harper, Aqualad I would have done much better if he was a member of the team during the early years of New Teen Titans, but alas, it wasn’t to be beyond a few bit appearances. Aqualad I has been retconned into a better character, with writers like Mark Waid playing up the fish out of water nature of the character in World’s Finest: Teen Titans, but we still have years of bad Aqualad I stories in the Teen Titans outweighing the good stuff.

RELATED: Teen Titans’ Greg Cipes Shares Update on Parkinson’s Diagnosis

5) Jericho

This one really hurts, because Jericho had so much potential. The son of Deathstroke was created by George Perez during his New Teen Titans run without the help of co-writer Marv Wolfman. Perez wanted to create a character that would be totally artist driven, making him mute. This is how you challenge yourself when you’re one of the greatest artists ever, co-writing and drawing one of the most popular series ever. Perez, of course, knocked it out of the park, his expressive pencils and use of American Sign Language doing all of the work of making Jericho a great character. Then, Perez left the book, and Jericho fell far. Jericho needs a basically perfect artist to make him work as a character, and so far, no one has been able to match Perez in that respect (or any really — R.I.P. George Perez). On top of that, he’s been made into a traitor to the team, making him one of the worst Teen Titans for two reasons. Jericho should have been so much more, but instead he just got transformed into villainous character, possessed by monsters, then returned as a vengeance driven villain. There have been less extreme versions in the years that have followed, but the damage was already done to Jericho. It was an unfortunate end for one of the most inventive characters in the history of superhero comics.

4) Terra

Terra is one of the most famous Teen Titans of all time. She was a teen hero stereotype at first, an angsty young woman who thought she was the best and that everyone else was below her. Readers warmed up to her as she warmed up to the team, and then it was revealed that she was a spy for Deathstroke, leading to one of the greatest comics of all time, “The Judas Contract”. So, on the one hand, Terra being the Teen Titans’ most famous Judas makes her a literal bad Titan. However, she’s also a bad Titan because of the weird legacy of the character. DC just can’t leave her alone, sometimes bringing in alternate reality version and other times just straight up resurrecting Terra. All of this has hurt the legacy of Terra as a character. She’s popular and one of the most well-known Teen Titans of all time, but DC has tried to frequently recapture the lightning in the bottle that was Terra so many times it’s sort of ruined her as a character.

3) Gnarrk

Gnarrk is another example of the X-Men-ification of the first roster of the Teen Titans, Gnarrk being the team’s Beast-alike (there was also Golden Eagle, the Angel-alike, but he’s not actually lame enough to include here). Gnarrk was a caveman who was awakened in the present. That was his entire character. He was the muscle of that team (because even though Wonder Girl was almost certainly stronger, she was a women and this was a book in the ’60s), and that was pretty much it. He’d be there for extreme fish out of water stuff, but the impact he made on Teen Titans history is negligible.

2) Pantha

Pantha debuted in 1991, a year when feral girls with claws were getting very popular. Feral debuted in January, and Pantha in February, so it was doubtful she was made to copy Feral; however, much like Swamp Thing and Man-Thing, the idea of feral girls with claws was in the air. Pantha was created to be a living weapon with claws (cue the Squidward “How original” meme), and was first known as X-24, made by the Wildebeest Society. She ended up making friends with the Teen Titans, and joined the team. She ended up in a relationship with Red Star (who isn’t on the list because he’s actually kind of cool), and the two of them adopted another character you will be introduced to momentarily. Fans never really cottoned to her, and she disappeared until Infinite Crisis, where she was one of the notable casualties of Superboy-Prime. There is a Pantha in the current DC Universe, but no one cares enough to do anything with her, which is the most Pantha thing ever.

1) Wildebeest

Wildebeest came from the Wildebeest Society, a group of criminals that pretended to all be the same bestial person, with only one of them appearing at a time. When Jericho was possessed by the souls of Azarath, he took control of the Wildebeest Society, using them to attack the Teen Titans. Wildebeest was created in order to make bodies for the disembodied souls of Azarath, but he was the only success. He escaped the Wildebeest Society and joined the Teen Titans, where he was adopted by Red Star and Pantha. Wildebeest was barely a character, and he died along with his adopted mother in the battle against Superboy-Prime. He returned as a Black Lantern in Blackest Night, but has been gone ever since. No one misses him.

Who do you think are the worst Teen Titans? Sound off in the comments below.