Beside every great hero is a faithful sidekick; Wonder Woman has Wonder Girl, Superman's teamed up with Superboy on occasion, and Batman works with numerous different Robins regularly. But what's a sidekick to do when they're ready to step out of their mentor's shadow? Well, they join the Titans for a start.
Comprised of the DC Universe's greatest upcoming heroes, the Titans are a force to be reckoned with. That's not to say that these young heroes haven't had the taste slapped out of their mouths before - sometimes in humiliating fashion. Though the team learns from their loses, you can bet that some of these defeats have left a mark.
10 Getting Kicked Out Of Titan's Tower
We're stepping back through the annals of time and revisiting Glen Murakami's 2003 animated series for this entry. Specifically the third episode, "Final Exam." While heading out to get some pizza, the Teen Titans get ambushed by members of the HIVE Academy. The villains swiftly defeat our heroes, sending them limping back to their tower while Robin's MIA.
To pour salt on the wound, the HIVE students follow the Titans home and kick them out of their own headquarters! Robin eventually returns and rallies the team by the episode's end. The team learned how to better communicate and coalesce after this humiliating experience.
9 Mother Mae-Eye Messes With Their Heads
This entry pays homage to Murakami's cult classic series. Mother Mae-Eye is a villain created for the show and the comics based on it. At first glance, Mae-Eye seems like a sweet old lady who's obsessed with baking pies. However, things get creepy when Mae-Eye starts referring to the Titans as her children.
Near the end of her self-titled episode, the team learns that she's a witch who can control folks that eat her pies! That's how Mae-Eye was able to defeat the Titans and trap them in the first place. Being deceived by an enemy isn't embarrassing in and of itself. However, the fact that she treated the team like small children (playing dress-up and all) muddles things up a bit.
8 Ding Dong Daddy Defeats The Team
Let's delve deeper into this rabbit hole of strangeness and revisit the 1960s. It's May 1966, and the third Teen Titans comic has just hit the shelves. Eager readers swarm the comic shops, frothing at the mouth for another action-packed story! Imagine their collective surprise when they pick up the team's third issue and see them facing off against an obese greaser.
Ding Dong Daddy is an ancient Titans villain whose goal in life is to encourage high schoolers to become dropouts. Slade Wilson, he ain't. However, DDD did manage to beat Robin and company by clobbering them with old tire wheels. So that's something, we guess.
7 Blinded By Light
One of the Teen Titans' greatest foes is Arthur Light, aka Doctor Light. Over the years, Light and the team have crossed swords more times than we can count. Heck, we could make an entire list detailing all of the team's encounters with the good doctor. What we're trying to say is that you'd think the Titans would know their nemesis quite well by now.
Moreover, you'd figure they'd know not to power him up with energy based attacks. You see, Light excels at absorbing ambient light and energy. During one fight, the Titans try to blast Arthur out of commission with bright lights and lasers. In response, Arthur KOs the team by redirecting their attacks at them! And to think this loss could've been avoided if someone just snuck up and laid Light out.
6 Wonder Dog Breaks Bad
You can always count on the old Super Friends cartoon to serve as a nearly limitless supply of cringe fuel. This is the series that turned Aquaman into a joke decades and unleashed Wonder Dog upon the world. A glorified Scooby-Doo knock-off (even voiced over by Frank Welker himself,) Wonder Dog contributed very little to the team.
In Teen Titans #62, the team adopts a puppy that they named Wonder Dog. However, Sean McKeever decided to turn WD into a raving hellhound! In a shocking twist of events, Wonder Dog maimed Marvin and Wendy White - the same teens who cared for him on the Super Friends show. Wendy survived but was paralyzed from the waist down. Her twin brother wasn't so lucky. McKeever apparently did all this as a jab towards the much-maligned Super Friends show. However, very few readers were laughing when the dust settled.
5 Devolved Into Neanderthals
We're guessing that a lot of you have seen the Doom Patrol show by now. At the very least, you've probably seen a few ads for it on the internet. The show has a delightfully strange and demented vibe to it, sort of like a David Lynch film that's slightly easier to digest.
Well, that strangeness didn't come out of the clear blue; the Doom Patrol comics are just as weird, if not weirder. In one of their crossover stories, the Titans get kidnapped by General Zahl and tossed into his 'Devolving Pit.' Most of the team get turned into neanderthals with bad hygiene and single digit IQs! Thankfully, Beast Boy and Robotman help the team get back to normal.
4 Harvest Handles The Titans Alone
Ah, 2011 was such a strange time for DC Comics. In an attempt to bring in new readers, DC rebooted their entire universe - intent on wiping away decades of continuity for accessibility's sake. Dubbed the 'New 52,' DC introduced revamped versions of classic heroes as well as a slew of new villains.
Harvest served as an antagonist for the Titans early on. The heading is a bit of a misnomer, as Harvest regularly soloed whole groups of heroes during the New 52 era. It almost seemed like the heroes would stop thinking every time they encountered this cat. You had teams with people like Red Robin, Wonder Girl, and Superboy getting jobbed out by an old guy with a scythe. It's no wonder DC left Harvest behind after Rebirth.
3 The Whole of Titans Hunt
The team took L's both in-universe and in real life for this overly long series. One of the biggest critiques against Titans Hunt is its length; the series started in 1990 and ended in 1998! Even the best major comic stories typically run for about a year. The next big ding against Hunt comes via the series' story.
In a confusing turn of events, the Titans get kidnapped, and Deathstroke sets out to rescue them. Fast forward a few years and a dozen issues, and the series ends with numerous Titans dying at the hands of the Wildebeest Society. Imagine dying to a group of bad guys who aren't even literate enough to spell their own name correctly after besting foes like Trigon, Brother Blood and Deathstroke! Here's hoping the new series goes over better.
2 Goth Gains The Upper Hand
As we're sure you know by now, not all of the Titans' foes are zingers; for every iconic enemy that the team takes down, they have to face an opponent that just doesn't have a lot of staying power. Goth (real name not given) is a prime example of this notion.
Goth looks like Marilyn Manson and compels teenagers to do bad things by making rock songs. Now we can't say if this was all intentional, but we will say that designing comic book characters is a very slow, deliberate process. Either way, Goth managed to outmatch the Titans on multiple occasions - typically by rocking out really hard.
1 Getting Stomped Out By Superboy-Prime
Goth isn't the only DC villain created to make a statement, nor is he the most universally hated. That dishonor goes to Superboy-Prime; a kid from our world who gains Superman's powers and entry into the DC Universe. At first, Prime is content saving the day. However, he becomes hypercritical of everything and kills scores of heroes, villains, and innocents in a superpowered temper tantrum.
During Superboy-Prime's rampage, numerous heroes die trying to stop him and many more are left severely injured. Kon-El, aka Superboy, gets the worst of it - nearly losing his life to Prime. And to think that Prime is supposed to represent overly vitriolic comic critics. Yikes!