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Teen Titans Academy #8 features an awkward reunion between two veteran members of the Titans that might bring the team together again.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Teen Titans Academy #8, on sale now from DC Comics.
While the Teen Titans have always featured the bright-eyed, young superheroes of the DC Universe, this ensemble has explored the dark cost of heroism on more than one occasion, with many of the heroes on the team enduring a tremendous amount of tragedy to temper their youthful enthusiasm. This distinction carries over to the founding members of the Titans, and two of those members with a shared tragic history have an awkward reunion in Teen Titans Academy #8 ( by Tim Sheridan, Mike Norton, Hi-Fi and Rob Leigh).
Teen Titans Academy opened at the start of the Infinite Frontier era, with many of the veteran Titans mentoring the new generation of young superheroes in between their own heroic duties around the DCU. Boasting plenty of legacy characters, two of the private academy’s latest recruits are Iris and Jai West, the young children of Wally West and Linda Park who inherited their father’s connection to the Speed Force. As Wally personally drops off his children at the school, the Flash Family finds that the school is preparing for Halloween just in time to be visited by its own ghostly legacy as Roy Harper reunites with his fellow founding Titans.
While Wally and Roy have been good friends for nearly their entire lives, this longstanding friendship saw a disastrous end in Heroes in Crisis (by Tom King, Clay Mann, Mitch Gerads, Travis Moore, Jorge Fornes and Lee Weeks). Recuperating in the superhero rehabilitation facility Sanctuary, Wally accidentally lashed out with raw Speed Force energy that resulted in the deaths of several fellow patients, including Roy. While Wally would atone for this tragedy in the crossover event Dark Nights: Death Metal (by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo), the story would also see the return of Roy, who rose as an undead figure to help his old friends before returning to life in the “Infinite Frontier” era.
The nature of Roy’s apparent resurrection were revealed in the Infinite Frontier miniseries (by Joshua Williamson, Xermanico, Paul Pelletier and Jesus Merino) when he returned as a new kind of Black Lantern. While giving Roy a new lease on life, his ghastly undead form was revealed whenever he tapped into his Black Lantern Power Ring’s raw potential, making him a target for nefarious forces like Darkseid and Hector Hammond. Roy broke free from the Black Lantern’s corrosive influence but he still has plenty of unfinished business with the man that killed him, even if this death was the result of a horrific, unintentional accident.
Ever since reclaiming his old superhero mantle as The Flash from Barry Allen while his best friend and mentor explored the reborn DC Multiverse, Wally has steadily been working his way back towards redemption from the disastrous consequences of Heroes in Crisis. Still, the matter of accidentally killing his old friend is undoubtedly a sore subject for Wally and being reunited with Roy, resurrected or not, is sure to reopen old wounds and provide a setback towards his atonement.
The arrival of Wally and Roy back to the team they started was really only a matter of time, but the two heroes definitely have some major, unresolved issues to work through together if they hope to effectively work alongside each other once again.
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