One of the issues with the current Titans roster is that a lot of their fans enjoyed Young Justice the comic better, and while Geoff Johns was the last great run on the series, he also set a precedent for a serious and angsty tone for the series that no one's broken from. He could pull it off. Nobody else has come close. And Tim, Bart, Casie, and Conner fans just don't gel all that well with a serious NTT and X-Men throwback that editorial seems to think is the series godsend.
Instead, I want to see some young heroes become friends first and a team as an accidental consequence of that, where there's a bit of a devil-may-care attitude to some of their interactions and where playful ribbing and pranks are just as important as teamwork and understanding. That was part of the original Teen Titans premise way back when, the core principle of PAD's awesome Young Justice series, and a significant factor in the best parts of the TV show.
It's also been ignored by most modern versions of the Teen Titans. There's a reason why Geoff Johns' run was both the last great run on the title and yet also a limiting move by management; Johns is the best there is at his style of writing, and trying I copy him in making the characters super-serious and angsty blew up in every following creator's face. And yet, throwing in some YJ-style friendship moments gave us engaging and fun blips on the book's radar:
-Bart taking the Batmobile for a ride remains one of the few inarguably funny scenes from Johns' run.
-Bryan Q. Miller's editorially-screwed run had the awesome double date sequence and an excellent down-time subplot compared to the mandated "kill Kid Devil now!" moment.
-And even Scott Lobdell tapped into this a bit, before the book took its final nose-dive. Bunker always seems like a Young Justice throwback (gasp, he's an entertaining and self-aware hero who enjoys his life!) and Bart pre-butchering (making a flirty joke while rescuing two of his female teammates and also impulsively assisting the Joker's attack, anyone?)
Throwing in this element allows for some serious drama because it's always contrasted with the fun and sometimes point-blank ridiculous elements of their world; Harm getting shot by his father is astoundingly dark compared to his 1960's style Beetle clue about murdering the Pope, Secret became terrifying because we saw how powerful she was in funny scenes, and I'll even argue that the reason why Superboy's Luthor programming was so powerful in Johns' run was because we were only a year or so removed from Young Justice, so the even had resonance outside the Titans series.
