Expert: Justin Case - 7/12/2008

Question
Ok, I have no idea who the Teen Titans are or what their powers happen to be, but I'll ask some questions.

5 Teen Titans vs. Superman

11 Teen Titans vs. Spiderman

2 Teen Titans vs. Data

Surely Flash must have some vulnerability. Even Superman has a weakness. Is this correct?

Flash vs. Cytherian-enhanced Barclay

Flash vs. Borg Cube

Answer
Hi John -

The Teen Titans were initially created in the 60's and the team consisted of all the sidekicks of the major DC heroes of the time.  At first there was Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, Speedy (Green Arrow's sidekick), Aqualad and a host of others who joined the group at one time or another.

In the 80's Marv Wolfman 'rebooted' the Teen Titans and it became one of DC's most popular books.  The new team initially consisted of Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash and Beast Boy, who had been kind of a kid mascot to the Doom Patrol.

Wolfman also introduced three new characters to this incarnation of the team, Raven, Cyborg and Starfire.

The abbreviated description of their powers is:

Robin -  Basically the same skills as Batman
Wonder Girl - Same basic powers as Wonder Woman
Kid Flash - Same powers as The Flash
Changeling (Beast Boy's new name) - The power to shapeshift into animals primarily

Raven - Empathic and healing abilities and the power to send her 'soul self' outside of her body

Cyborg - enhanced strength, speed and weaponry thanks to his cybernetic body

Starfire - an alien princess with the powers of flight, energy projection and superhuman strength.

Other members showed up during the title's run, but these seven were the core group.

Despite their awesome abilities I don't think the Titans would last for an extended period of time against Superman, he simply has too much combat experience and can match each of their abilities with his own.  Robin is an excellent tactician and leader, but even he can't hope to match Supes in a combat situation.  Starfire was immensely strong, but nowhere near as strong as the Man-of-Steel.

Raven had the ability to smother people in her 'soul self' and force them to see their greatest fears, but I think even that wouldn't be enough to stop Superman.

If Kid Flash and Cyborg took on Data, I think they could get the upper hand on him because of Cyborg's durability and understanding of engineering and Flash's speed.

Flash didn't have a specific weakness like Superman's vulnerability to kryptonite or Green Lantern's powerlessness against the color yellow, but he was human and could be stopped by anything that would stop a normal human, if whatever it was could get around his super speed.

If Barclay had sufficient time to build something before Flash could get to him, I would think he could design something to slow the superhero down or entrap him.

The same goes for the Borg.

The basic problem with Flash is that (towards the end of his run) he was faster than human thought, which made initiating any kind of defense against him very difficult.  Once the writers realized this they constantly had to dream up ways to 'chop back' Flash's powers so that the entire story they were trying to tell didn't end in a fraction of a second!

Hope that helps

Deran