Titans Together!
There is no better combination than The New Teen Titans and Marv Wolfman. Well, the only thing that could possibly be better would be Wolfman and George Pérez on New Teen Titans.
Wolfman knows fans as much as he knows his Titans. Convergence New Teen Titans opens with Donna Troy recording a message to her husband Terry. Kole and Jericho are hanging out with her on monitor duty. Nightwing and Starfire are out on patrol. Gar and Vic are helping at a power plant. And then the domes come down. The Titans are pitted against the Tangent Universe's Doom Patrol.
The Doom Patrol are more interested in finding a way to return to their own timeline than fighting for survival. And yet, the two are one. Neither side is interested in killing, except for Starfire. The conflict is that under the dome, she and Dick have been married for six months.
The Good
It's Wolfman on The New Teen Titans. He's brought Donna back, along with Kole and Jericho. This is set just before everything goes off the rails. He's brought the soap opera elements back.
Nicola Scott's pencils are quite good, and it is complimented by Marc Deering's inks and Jeremy Cox's colors. Lettering can be a bit tricky, but Carlos M. Mangual pulls it off and rounds out a smooth creative team.
The Bad
We all move on. Stagnation is really moving backward. Monthly comics and super-heroes can not stand still. That's the shame of a group like The New Teen Titans. They stop being "new", and in some cases, they stop being teens. This story makes me want to read a Wolfman Titans stand-alone one-shot or mini-series. Unfortunately, he pretty much mined everything before everybody moved on,
Readers unfamiliar with the Tangent Universe version of The Doom Patrol might be disappointed to find that there is no background on them, which is a shame. This is a Titans book; but it couldn't hurt to have some background on both the Tangent universe itself and some specifics on The Doom Patrol. Some readers might find him or herself like Gar, seeing a recognizable team that is really unfamiliar.
The only Titan missing for obvious reasons is Wally West. This story takes place after he's dropped the Kid Flash identity to take up his Uncle Barry's legacy.
The Skinny
Convergence: The New Teen Titans is aimed more at older, more established fans than new, first-time readers. These are familiar characters like a pair of well-worn jeans or shoes from high school. Like grabbing a yearbook off the bookcase and catching up with old friends.
Convergence: The New Teen Titans 1 earns four out of five stars for bringing back all the elements for a great story. It's a pretty decent Convergence tie-in, a great showcase for the team and Wolfman. It is not an epic New Teen Titans story. The danger here is bumping into your first love, and possibly re-kindling that old flame. Unless there's a future in the past, there's no happy ending.