Okay, now DC is just acting out.

Included among today's announcement of new DC titles are an all-new, all-different Teen Titans, the solicitation of which seems to suggest that at least some of the titles and characters will be completely divorced from their post-Crisis, pre-Flashpoint continuity.

After you've had a good look at Brett Booth's rendering of some of the ugliest costume designs I've ever had the displeasure of encountering—I'm not a violent man, nor do I believe that violence is the answer to almost any problem, but Jim Lee deserves slapped very, very hard for each and every one of those character designs—peruse this copy from DC's announcement of Teen Titans:

Tim Drake is forced to step out from behind his keyboard when an international organization seeks to capture or kill super-powered teenagers. As Red Robin, he must team up with the mysterious and belligerent powerhouse thief known as Wonder Girl and a hyperactive speedster calling himself Kid Flash in TEEN TITANS #1, by Scott Lobdell and artists Brett Booth and Norm Rapmund.

That looks and sounds like a "Heroes Reborn" Teen Titans, and has to appeal mainly to the same people. Can you imagine a fan of the Teen Titans or Young Justice cartoon seeing that image and deciding they want to start reading that book?

I experienced a brand-new feeling while looking at that image: Aesthetic pain.

And then there's this:

It’s up to the living avatars of war and peace to root out the hidden forces who look to plunge the country into a deadly civil war in HAWK AND DOVE #1. The exciting new series will be written by Sterling Gates and illustrated by legendary superstar comics artist Rob Liefeld.

A comic that seems designed specifically to appeal to the Rob Liefeld fans who liked his earlier work, before he started drawing mutants for Marvel and starting and abandoning comics of his own for Image. (His brief run on Hawk and Dove was in 1988, when I was 11).

I like how they announced Liefeld as the artist, too, as if he's going to get more than one, maybe two issues out before this goes on hiatus or fill-in or replacement artists are called in. As with Jim Lee on Justice League and David Finch on a second volume of his Batman: The Dark Knight series, this is one book that seems guaranteed to go off schedule immediately.

UPDATE: I wonder if the whole point of this post on The Source from Jim Lee was to assure the panicked fans who saw the Teen Titans cover above that it was mostly Brett Booth's fault, and that he was just a sounding board? If that's the case, then I think Lee deserves slapped once for each of those costumes, but, after each slap, he should be instructed to "Give this to Booth for us."