Oct 1984
Final Conflict!
By Marv Wolfman, George Perez, Mike DeCarlo, Bob Lappan, Adrienne Roy
The leaders of H.I.V.E. are ready to celebrate the destruction of the Teen Titans when they see something in the water. It is Raven’s soul self. She has rescued her teammates, their friends, and the member of H.I.V.E. that Jericho possessed last issue. She can’t hold them there indefinitely.
Aqualad and Aquagirl lead the charge against H.I.V.E.. Once the others are back in the H.I.V.E.’s undersea base, Raven disappears and is not seen again in this issue. The heroes battle the forces of H.I.V.E.once again. Starfire gets knocked out. Jericho possesses her body and helps the others to escape from a deadly fire trap.
The Titans discover, when they finally make it to the control room, that the leaders are all dead. There is a recording left by the woman in charge. They start to listen as she explains what the H.I.V.E.’s ambitions and goals were. Her dead husband founded H.I.V.E. Wonder Girl recognizes one of the bodies in the control room from Wonder Woman’s files. It is Professor Torgo.
H.I.V.E.’s plan was to destroy Atlantis and then poison the water of the world. Aqualad acts quickly and prevents the H.I.V.E.’s torpedo from striking his home. Wonder Girl senses that something is wrong and rushes everyone back to the Titans' Sub. They escape in time to avoid the destruction of the undersea base.
The final panel shows the Monitor’s satellite as Lyla informs him that H.I.V.E. has been destroyed.
Thoughts
The title on the cover of the book is The End of the H.I.V.E. I think that’s a better title or at least should have been the subtitle for this issue.
The coloring in the collected edition muddles some of the images. There are panels that look great and other ones that look very rough. The original comics aren’t perfect but the reprints seem in places to be worse.
Professor Turgo’s only other appearance was in Wonder Woman 46 (Mar-Apr 1951). That was an Earth-Two story. This must be his Earth-One counterpart. It seems a bit random to mention this character here but based on my research it seems as though Marv Wolfman was setting something up for a future story.
It still isn’t clear who the leader of H.I.V.E. is or if he has any past in DC Comics. The next appearance of the H.I.V.E. isn’t until Teen Titans Spotlight 3 (Oct 1986) in a story that stars Jericho and runs through Teen Titans Spotlight 4 (Jan 1987).
This seems to wipe HIVE off the map. I found this ending to be abrupt, unsatisfying, and it reminds me of the ending to New Teen Titans (1980) 31 where the fight with the New Brotherhood of Evil wrapped up much faster than I thought it should have. It felt like Marv just wanted to get on with things and had other plans for the team. I doubt that the connection to the Monitor was part of the original plan for H.I.V.E.
Meanwhile...
Elliot S! Maggin and Dick Giordano write about Superman 400 and include a list of artists who contributed to this milestone issue. Dick regrets that he won’t be one of the artists because Julie Schwartz only wants ones who had not worked on Superman before.
I purchased a copy of Superman 400 earlier this year but I have yet to read it. There are 12 pinups that are included in the book which along with the cover image were also included in the Superman 400 portfolio which retailed for $10 in 1984. Copies of the portfolio now sell for $125 or more.
Images of the contents of the portfolio can be found here.
Titans Tower
Two pages of letters about parts 3 and 4 of the Judas Contract which are overwhelmingly positive. Marv writes in response to one letter that the 4th chapter of the story was originally intended to be in issue 45, which would have been double-sized, but for some reasons that proved to be unfeasible so instead it was put it in the annual.
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