>>36832
The comics are generally much more serious. More like always the tone of the serious episodes, with much less comedy than the show has. The comedic tone of the cartoon is more like the comic of Young Justice, which does still have plenty of serious moments, like the Teen Titans cartoon does, but has a lot more comedy than most Teen Titans comics.
The Young Justice cartoon is much closer in tone to most Teen Titans comics.
Also, it's worth noting that the roster of the Teen Titans cartoon is actually based on the comic called "New Teen Titans."
There are multiple eras of Teen Titans. Eventually multiple generations. The originals, from the '60s, were Robin (Dick Grayson), Speedy (Roy Harper), Aqualad (Garth), Kid Flash (Wally West), and Wonder Girl (Donna Troy). A couple more get added over time, but the series eventually got cancelled.
In the early '80s they rebooted it as "New Teen Titans." This was much more successful. This is where Starfire, Raven, Cyborg, and Deathstroke were introduced, among others you probably know from the cartoon. Beast Boy was technically an old member of the Doom Patrol, but he's relevant here as well. The original Teen Titans aren't old yet, so they also show up and sometimes are main characters, but the guys from the cartoon are the consistent main characters.
Eventually these characters got old enough that it started being weird to call them teens. Robin grew up and became Nightwing. Kid Flash grew up and got promoted to Regular Flash. They eventually just started calling themselves The Titans.
In the '90s, the next generation of young heroes, the ones who were still young, became Young Justice. The third Robin, Tim Drake, would be the main guy you'd recognize from this. Flash's new sidekick, Impulse, would be another one. That would be the old Kid Flash's sidekick, for the record, since he grew up and became Regular Flash.
Eventually they would just bring back the Teen Titans series, and as far as I can tell it's basically the same characters as Young Justice, but they call it Teen Titans now, and usually it has a bit more of a serious tone than Young Justice had.
After the New 52, they kind of fucked up continuity and now there was a new Teen Titans (not a new New Teen Titans), and it kind of mixed a few characters from different generations. Like at first Tim Drake was on a team that included Beast Boy, who was normally much older than Drake. They ignored the existence of the original and New Teen Titans. But later they revealed Flash villain Abra Kadabra erased everyone's memories of the original Teen Titans (which includes the New Teen Titans, because they weren't called that in-universe) ever being a team. Or to be clear, we should call them The Titans, as they changed their name to eventually, not the Teen Titans. Also he erased everyone's memories of Wally West ever existing. But eventually Wally comes back and restores people's memories. Also, history did actually change a little in Flashpoint, so some things were a bit different, but less different than they seemed to be before. Because before it almost seemed like the original/New Teen Titans never exist. But don't worry, they did.
But this story about remembering the original Teen Titans really focuses on the original Teen Titans and not the New Teen Titans. Meanwhile, the newest iteration of the Teen Titans included both Robin V, Damian Wayne, and Raven, who should have been a grown up Titan by now.
But basically, Flashpoint fucked up history and they sort of fixed things but I'm not well versed enough in 21st century Teen Titans lore to understand all of it. Maybe it makes sense if I read more, but I haven't done that.
>tl;dr: Read "The New Teen Titans" from the '80s. It's one of the best, most successful, and most influential comic book series ever. It's the reason anyone cares about Teen Titans, and the reason they keep making new Teen Titans comics, not to mention tv shows, to this day. The show is based on this series in terms of characters and story. In terms of tone, though, it's more similar to the comic series "Young Justice" from the '90s. The Young Justice TV show, meanwhile, is a bit closer in tone to other Teen Titans comics, most specifically the later ones from the 2000s and 2010s. It's not really like the Young Justice comics.