Rating:  -
I'm not sure where the Titans fall in my pantheon of heroes. First, I loved the Cartoon Network series. That's what got me interested in the Titans. And I love Nightwing, who founded it. Robin is there, and the current incarnation is a fascinating one. And now Superboy (Connor) is a part of the team, and I find him very fascinating. Plus I really like the cartoon version of Beast Boy, Raven and Starfire, though they are a little different in the comics.
Basically this volume is two major stories in one. In one, they travel to the future. It's an okay story. But the second one, involving the return of a newly dangerous Dr. Light is very, very good. You have to read it to appreciate it.
Rating:  -
Well this is two different stories and both of them are fantastic and are worth getting your hands on.
In the first story, the Titans are thrown to the future and almost the whole team has turned evil but, Some of them are still on the side of good. As the story goes on you get little tidbits of how this happened and why. A very good story and worth the purchase by itself alone.
The second story stars the villan Doctor Light who has recently gained back all of his powers thanks to the events of Idenity Crisis and he is going after the Titans for what the JLA did to him. In this story, every person who has been a Titan comes to the rescue including Nightwing, the Flash, and Tempest.
The artwork is very nice and Johns really finally connects with the characters for the first time in the series in this volume.
Rating: -
This is an enjoyable volume. Fans, longtime and otherwise, of the Legion of Super-Heroes, will appreciate their appearance here. Good story, good art, good reading experience.
Rating: -
Robin has to deal with the loss of his father, and the Titans have even bigger problems.
The newly deadly Doctor Light and his recovered memories would like to make Speedy an ex-Speedy.
They also end up confronting future selves that have gone on to be not very nice fascists, and not even well meaning ones, really.
Rating: -
This is such a terrific read! The stories are spectacular, the countless characters are all fascinating, the dialogue is totally believable, the fights are epic, the thought-balloons are gone, the pace is greased, the art is like a bag of your favourite Halloween candies spilled out on the carpet when you were seven--all magic colours and hidden treats, and Raven is still hot. Teen Titans: The Future Is Now is a must, a rare must.
I say "Raven is STILL hot" because this graphic novel represented my return to the Teen Titans, after many years, just to see what was going on in the new era. In fact, I hadn't been reading many comics at all. Even when I read comics regularly, I never really got to know the DC Universe as well as the Marvel Universe. One of my biggest blind-spots, for example, would be The Legion Of Superheroes. But that didn't stop me from enjoying the first part of this graphic novel, where said Legion yanks first Superboy, and then ultimately the rest of the Titans, into the 31st century to battle five hundred foes.
The battle is a grand and terrifying affair, with a big piece of Legion World exploding and plummeting towards Earth, where the main event is taking place: The entire Legion (I met a lot of Legionnaires really fast as they were busy trying not to be beheaded, fried, stomped, etc.), alongside the Teen Titans fighting The Fatal Five Hundred...formerly The Fatal Five, but the whole crux of their plan was to transport so many of their parallel selves from parallel universes that they became five hundred. I love time-travel stories with a dash of parallel-reality, and Superboy's dilemma over which team he owes more allegiance to--new Legion pals or the Titans--is gripping, especially when he may have to sacrifice one team to temporal non-existence so the other can get home.
Part two of this collection is the best part: on their way home from the far future, the Teen Titans take a wrong turn and end up ten years in their own future. They encounter their own future selves and don't like what they've become. Robin has become a heartless Batman with a gun, who leads a bitter, ruthless, militant group of Titans who use their power to control and dominate parts of the United States. But then the younger, timelost Titans learn about the Titans East, future Titans who didn't get corrupted by paranoia and anger, and who still fight for good. They also formulate a plan to return to their proper time, but don't know how to avoid the fate they've seen, even if they get home.
The rest of The Future Is Now is somewhat connected to the events of Identity Crisis. I hadn't read Identity Crisis when I first read this Teen Titans graphic novel, and I still enjoyed it immensely; now I've re-read Future Is Now after experiencing Identity Crisis (another fine product from the folks who brought you Arm Fall Off Boy), and it's that much better.
An enraged Doctor Light snatches the man he hates perhaps most of all--Green Arrow--and demands that the Teen Titans confront him, or bye bye Green Arrow. He especially wants to kill Green Arrow's "daughter" of sorts, Speedy, who has just joined the Titans. Once just about every hero who has ever been a member of the Titans shows up, it looks pretty grim for Doctor Light, except that he's a changed man since the events of Identity Crisis. Sometimes it seems like the Titans, now a small army, are fighting Darkseid, as they fall, and fall, and fall. Doctor Light really comes into his own here, looking unbeatable until one particular Titan decides enough's enough, and fights on despite being blasted full of holes.
So that's it. Except that I haven't done it justice. Oh, and there's an appearance by an old fave of mine the Electrocutioner. And a future Deathstroke the Terminator, missing an arm. And Speedy looks like a cool addition. While sometimes Wonder Girl takes my mind off Raven.
Masterfully conceived and executed, these stories fit nicely into one amazing graphic novel.
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