What's the Story?

Aqualad, Robin, Kid Flash, Superboy and Miss Martian are ready for their first mission as a team. To get to know each other better, they decide to trade stories around the campfire, revealing how they all started as crimefighters. Will this bring them together or underscore their differences?

Credits
Cover artwork by Mike Norton & Alex Sinclair.
 * Written by: Franco Aureliani & Art Baltazar
 * Illustrated by: Dan Davis & Christopher Jones
 * Colored by: Zac Atkinson
 * Lettered by: Carlos M. Mangual
 * Edited by: Jim Chadwick

Summary
Title: "What's the Story?" On the evening of July 20, Wally is at the cave watching TV. He is bored by the 600 channels with nothing worth watching and decides to talk to Megan. After suggesting several activities he asks her to sit with him under the stars by a fire and make smores. Megan delightedly agrees and when Wally gathers the supplies, he finds that she has invited the rest of the Team to join them, the fireside stargazing having become a full camping trip. As the Team sits around the fire, Robin suggests telling stories, which Megan takes as a basis to ask Kaldur how he became Aqualad. Kaldur explains that he is from the city of Shayeris in Atlantis, adding that Atlantis is large with many cities and a diverse population. He completed his education and began mandatory military service at age 12. At 14, he was transferred to the Conservatory of Sorcery in Poseidonis. One day Ocean Master attacked the city and defeated Aquaman. Kaldur and Garth attacked Ocean Master without thought of the danger and that allowed Aquaman to recover and defeat Ocean Master. After this, Aquaman, following the example of Batman and Green Arrow, decided to train a protege to one-day replace him and offered the opportunity to both Kaldur and Garth. Garth chose to stay and Kaldur, because he had always longed to travel, accepted. Wally breaks in as Kaldur finishes and says "if you think he wanted to be Aqualad so bad, wait til I tell you how I got started". Wally then explains that in the 40's and 50's, Jay Garrick was "The Flash" and didn't "really" hide his identity. One day he met a "huge fan" who spent hours talking with him talking about his adventures. The guy re-created the accidental explosion that gave Garrick his powers and became the new Flash. Wally explains that since this explosion was deliberately created and controlled, it made Flash even faster than Garrick. Wally tells how he, in turn, had been a big fan of Flash and that one day he had come across his uncle's notebooks describing his duplication of the Flash's powers—Wally's uncle was the Flash. Wally asked his uncle to duplicate the experiment again to give Wally powers so that he could join the Flash like Robin worked with Batman. His uncle strongly refused, saying he didn't want the responsibility. Wally re-created the experiment on his own, using what he'd learned from Flash's notebooks, but it wasn't as successful and Wally was hospitalized. Flash felt guilty because it had been his notebooks that had caused this. A few weeks after his recovery, Wally gained super-speed and told his appalled uncle that he would be "Kid Flash". His uncle reluctantly accepted under the condition that Wally do whatever he told him to. Following Wally's account, Megan asks Robin how he got started, but he only looks grim and sullen while Wally laughs and says that Batman won't even let him tell them his name. Wally says they'd get a better origin out of Superboy. Megan says she already knows that story and they talk about his G-gnomes, then Superboy says that what he always thinks about is "Destroying Superman" (which is the end of this issue's story).

Appearances

 * Aqualad
 * Miss Martian
 * Kid Flash
 * Robin
 * Superboy


 * Aquaman
 * Batman
 * Flash
 * Garth
 * Green Arrow
 * Iris Allen
 * Jay Garrick
 * Martian Manhunter
 * Mera
 * Ocean Master
 * Red Arrow
 * Superman
 * Tula