Summary: <br> Deathstroke kidnaps two speedsters so he can travel back in time to change the past, and in terms gets both the Titans and Teen Titans on his back in The Lazarus Contract.Affiliate link included in this post. <br> Transcript follows:<br><br> D.C. Comics’ greatest assassin heads to the Speed Force in a crossover called The Lazarus Contract. We’ll talk about it just ahead.<br><br> <br> Welcome to the Classic Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here’s your host, Adam Graham.<br> The original Teen Titans began in the 1960s during the Silver Age but really hit the peak of their popularity in the 1980s. It began as a team of sidekicks of Superheroes. The original three were Robin/Dick Grayson, Kid Flash/Wally West and Aqualad but it expanded to include other teen heroes as well. In later years, many of the friends who stood together as Teen Titans became The Titans, but then came the New Fifty-Two and the wiping away of the D.C. Universe, as well as the efforts to alter the timeline. As revealed in D.C. Rebirth Number One, Wally West – a key member of the Titans – was wiped from everyone’s memory but he returned and he got the Titans back together with the team now led by Nightwing and headquartered out of Manhattan. At the same time, current Robin, Damian Wayne, has founded his own Team Titans headquartered out of San Francisco, and this book brings both teams together with Death Stroke, a foe of the Titans from the pre-New Fifty-Two era and a sort of anti-hero. The trade paperback collects Titans Number Eleven, Teen Titans Number Eight, Deathstroke Nineteen and Twenty, and Teen Titans Annual Number One.<br> The plot is that Deathstroke decides to travel back in time using the Speed Force to save his son. His problem is that he’s not a speedster so he tries to kidnap old Wally West, and I should make a distinction: there are actually two Wally West in the current D.C. Universe. Old Wally West was the main Flash of the D.C. Universe from the 1980s into the Twenty-First Century, and he’s the one who was apparently got wiped away by a nefarious forsooth being dealt with in other books. New Wally West is the son of Daniel West, the Reverse Flash and Iris West nephew. He’s biracial and was introduced in the new Fifty-Two Flash comics, and I think at the time they really wanted him to become the accepted version of Wally West, but fans were so attached to the old Wally West that they’ve kind of worked it so they have it both ways. They’re both members of the West family and Wally is a name that multiple people use. It’s a bit of a cop-out but it’s believable when you think about it. So, that cleared up, old Wally is kidnapped and doesn’t cooperate at all with Deathstroke. New Wally doesn’t fully cooperate when he is also kidnapped, but it’s enough for Death Stroke to steal some speed and be able to traverse the Speed Force while also bringing both the Titans – which old Wally’s a member – and the Teen Titans of which new Wally is a member down on him. And so the Titans and Teen Titans have to join together to stop him from his ultimate purpose which is to travel back in time and prevent the death of his son which could have major cosmic consequences. And it’s revealed in the course of this that Dick Grayson had actually made a deal with Death Stroke as Robin that was a Lazarus Contract which could be revived if either party violated it, and this leads to some distrust from all sides.<br> Alright, so that’s the basic plot. What are the strengths of the story? Well, as I look at it – and this is something as I’ve looked at reviews few have talked about – it’s the character growth for young Wally West. I’m a regular reader of The Flash and in that comic young Wally West has a lot to be upset about.
