The DC Universe is in a very different place in the aftermath of 2022’s Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, and perhaps nowhere is that more obvious than with the Titans. In the absence of a Justice League, the Titans have become DC’s preeminent super-team. Now they’re about to face their first true test as Earth’s greatest heroes in a new crossover called Titans: Beast World.
What happens when the heroes and villains of the DCU are transformed into beasts? How does this crossover build on the foundation of the monthly Titans series? And just how different will things look when the dust settles? To learn more, IGN spoke with writer Tom Taylor. Read on to learn more about DC’s final, epic crossover for 2023.
The Origins of Beast World
Things are definitely looking up for the Titans as Beast World looms. While the team is facing no shortage of problems in the pages of Taylor and Nicola Scott’s monthly series, be it the mysterious murder of Wally West’s future self or the rise of the Church of Eternity, they’ve responded to these crises with a unity that would make even the Justice League jealous. As Taylor explains, there’s a sense of history and family to this team that sets them apart from the far more fluid Justice League lineup.
“As the Justice League was disbanded, they immediately came to Dick Grayson,” Taylor tells IGN. They came to Nightwing and said, ‘We want you to lead.’ And Nightwing has said, ‘Sure, but it's not going to be the Justice League. It's going to be the Titans. It's going to be the people that I trust and I've grown up with. They're going to be the people that protect the world with me. And we're all going to live in one big house, one big share house, and we're going to save the world while living in a share house dynamic and watching TV on the couch.’"
“I think by issue #5, you've seen them demonstrate a high level of competence as a team and as a group of friends and as a family, not doing things the way that the Justice League always would, looking for different ways to react to problems,” Taylor adds. “They've had interactions, for instance, with Peacemaker where they've basically said, ‘Hey, instead of our usual subterfuge and just being quiet and keeping things to ourselves, how about we just share information and we talk?’ So despite being quite a bit younger than the Justice League, I think they've handled things with a lot of maturity.”
That being said, the Titans clearly have their work cut out for them as Beast World opens. Taylor makes it clear that this crossover is something he’s been building towards from the very beginning of the series. At one point, Beast World was planned as a story arc within Titans, until it grew into a larger DC Universe crossover.
“I think that was one of the great things about this event is that it wasn't just something tacked on or derailing [Titans]. We've been planning for this since the beginning,” Taylor says. “We started this conversation very early, and even in my original pitch for Titans, before we knew that there was going to be an event, I had something very similar to Beast World that I was working towards. So when it was like, ‘Oh, we were planning this event around here, what do you think?’ I'm like, ‘Oh, well, I think I can pivot and use this enormous story that I wasn't sure how it was going to fit right here.’ So yeah, everything you've seen with Brother Eternity has all been leading to Titans: Beast World.”
For Taylor, Beast World is also a welcome chance to collaborate again with artist Ivan Reis, who previously worked with him on Batman: One Bad Day - Ra’s al Ghul. Reis is also renowned for drawing some of DC biggest crossovers of the past several decades, including 2008’s Blackest Night and 2012’s Justice League: Throne of Atlantis.
“I think as soon as we'd done that Ra's al Ghul story, we wanted to work together again - the whole creative team, not just myself and Ivan, but [inker] Danny Miki and [colorist] Brad Anderson,” Taylor sys. “So being able to bring that entire team together again for something this epic. And knowing full well, being such a fan of Ivan's work and having seen him do these large-scale superhero stories in the past, I feel very guilty when I write more than three people are in this panel, sorry. But I know with Ivan it's like, oh man, this is going to be amazing. There's one panel in the first issue where Starfire is talking to half the superheroes on the planet, and it's so exciting. And Ivan, he's the quintessential, he's just that guy that has drawn superheroes, some of the best superheroes on the planet for his entire career, and it's really exciting to be working with him.”
How Beast World Impacts the DCU
As Taylor reveals, Brother Eternity is the villain who sets the events of Beast World into motion by summoning a monster known as the Necrostar. Basically an undead version of the iconic Justice League villain Starro the Conquerer, the emergence of the Necrostar forces Beast Boy to make a choice that winds up impacting the entire planet.
“Brother Eternity somehow unleashes something called the Necrostar, which is another star conqueror,” Taylor teases. “It breaks out of the moon of Titan and is literally going to destroy the world, and no one can stop it - not Superman, not Martian Manhunter, not Batman, not Wonder Woman. The only person on the planet who can save the world is Beast Boy - is Garfield Logan - by changing his brain, transforming into something with the largest brain matter on the planet. And so he can comprehend the next step of what he's going to do with Raven in his mind, helping him, and he becomes a Starro. He becomes Garro to save the planet. And I can't really tell you what happens yet, but something happens and in this moment, his mind is lost and he just becomes The Conqueror. All of his spores infect the world, and everyone turns into human-animal hybrids, beast people, and terrorize the planet.”
However noble his intentions, Beast Boy winds up transforming many familiar DC heroes and villains into beasts. That includes even Batman, who becomes not a giant bat (too obvious), but a half-human/half-wolf monster. Many of these transformations will be explored in a series of tie-in books called Beast World Tour, as other DC writers help Taylor explore the full scope of this conflict.
“So you've got Chip Zdarsky doing Gotham. You've got Si Spurrier with the whole Flash family over there. You've got Josh Williamson in Star City. So it's to have this group and to see what they do. They had a bible from me, but largely they were told, ‘Run with it. Let's see what you come up with.’ And some people have gone very jokey. I saw a Harley Quinn that turns into a giant muscle bunny, and then you've got someone like Si Spurrier who turns Godfspeed into a Hornet, which is a terrifying idea. The idea that you give somebody who's the fastest person on the planet wings and a stinger, that's genuinely scary. So you've got people who are taking this and turning it into utter horror and people who are taking this and turning it into absolute comedy.”
Both Taylor’s monthly Titans and Nightwing comics will tie into the events of Beast World. Titans will dig deeper into the conflict with Brother Eternity, while Nightwing will give DC fans a Super Sons reunion as Dick and Jon Kent show up to help Damian Wayne with his unexpected transformation.
“Basically, Damian is turned into a cat and John Kent shows up to save his friend with Nightwing,” Taylor says. “And it is strange. I always felt like this was going to be a comedic issue, and it's absolutely not. We've got Sami Basri joining us for that, and we've created this new DC supervillain in this book that is just… I think she's going to be quite big. I think we're going to see quite a lot of her probably in the Titans in the future. There is certainly comedy there, but I think because someone so important, both to Dick and to John, was taken, their drive to save him and his and Damian's drive and how he got himself in trouble and who he wants to save - they're all really key to this one.”
As if a planet of human/animal hybrids weren’t bad enough, Beast World also focuses heavily on the simmering conflict between the Titans and Amanda Waller. Waller has been lurking in the shadows since the end of Dark Crisis, where it was revealed that she aims to save the world from the heroes she feels endanger its very existence. In Beast World, Waller steps out of the shadows and into conflict with Dick Grayson’s team.
“Titans: Beast World is her coming out party,” Taylor says. “She is hitting another level in this book. We can't give too much away, but you have an entire world being overrun by beast people, and she's almost more of a threat to the superhero community with Peacemaker beside her, and, in particular, a new character called Dr. Hate. We don't know who's behind the mask, but Dr. Hate has a very big role to play in this and is a truly terrifying character.”
Taylor built his reputation at DC working on books like Injustice: Gods Among Us. Injustice, by virtue of being an out-of-continuity book set in its own version of the DC Universe, allowed Taylor and his collaborators the freedom to include plot twists and major character deaths that simply wouldn’t be possible within the mainline DC Universe. But with Beast World, Taylor teases that he’s finally writing an in-continuity DC series that operates on the scope of something like Injustice. In short, expect this story to have a profound impact on the wider DCU in 2024.
“Yes, the events of Beast World are epic, and they are quite like my Injustice DC stuff,” Taylor says. “I really got to play on a scale I've never gotten to play with continuity before. Everything that happens, this is a global threat and it affects everybody. I can't say too much, obviously, but the status quo ship for the DC universe at the end of this book is quite profound. And the threat that it sets up is, yeah, it's going to be big.”
Titans: Beast World #1 will be released on Tuesday, November 28, 2023.
For more on what;s coming up in the world of comics, learn more about DC's Joker: Year One origin story and see the biggest new comics of November 2023.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
