By: J.T. Krul (writer), Nicola Scott (pencils), Doug Hazlewood (inks), Sal Cipriano (letters) & Jason Wright (colors)
The Story: The Teen Titans face a mad scientist and get a new team member.
What’s Good: I try to stay away from telling the reader what my personal experience with a comic series or character is because it isn’t very germane to whether a comic is good or not. If the only way you can explain why it is “good” is by sharing your personal history, you should probably work on your writing a bit. But, in this case, I am coming at this issue of Teen Titans in a way that is very different and my personal history does inform this review. In the early/mid-1980’s I was a big Uncanny X-Men fan (as were all kids my age), but I’d also sampled this thing at DC called Tales of the Teen Titans. The first issue of that I ever bought was Part 1 of the Judas Contract (which is widely lauded as the best Teen Titans story ever). How’s that for luck? I stuck with the Teen Titans until I got out of comics in high school, but when I got back into the hobby a few years ago, I was interested in picking up Teen Titans again until I saw what putrid reviews the series was getting and I stayed away.
When I saw that Nicola Scott (who was AWESOME on Secret Six) was taking over art duties and that Damien Wayne (who is my favorite new character of the last few years) was perhaps joining the team I figured I’d try it out after ~25 years away from the title. Thus, this is the ultimate “new reader” review.
From a story standpoint, Krul seems very aware that he’ll have a lot of new readers this issue. There is a lot more exposition, use of characters’ names, examples of their powers, etc. than we often see in comics these days. But, as a new reader, that is much appreciated and it is very much done within the context of the story. The plot itself is very straight forward as there appears to be a new mad scientist in town who is making folks go stark, raving mad. In case that wasn’t enough reason to hate the bad guy, he also wears a red KKK costume to touch into some visceral hatred. Nicely done.
Of course, Nicola Scott is a very gifted artist so you would expect this to look nice… And it does. Aside from a few anatomical quibbles (that happen in almost all comics), her characters really look nice. Scott especially draws women well and has learned how to make them look pretty without having heaving DD bosoms. That’s nice because Wonder Girl and Ravager actually look like they could be athletes. Not to mention, how many teenage girls have DD chests? Bravo, Ms. Scott!
By the way, did I mention that it is great to have Damien potentially on this team? He is way more interesting (to me) than any of these other characters.
On a minor note, I think I speak for all comic fans that I hate the constant renumbering of comic series. So, let’s give a round of applause to DC for having a major relaunch of a series with #88. You know what Marvel would have done. This would be a new #1 issue and then they would have renumbered the whole again thing to #100 in a year. When was the last time Marvel even published a comic with the #88 on it? Incredible Hulk?
What’s Not So Good: Ugh! The angst. The romantic angst was one of the reasons the Teen Titans never quite clicked with me as a kid. I’m on record as a great lover of teenage superheroes because they show actual personal growth over time. But as a grown man (like most comic readers these days), I am not remotely interested in seeing Superboy and Wonder Girl sucking face and talking about how worried they are for one another in a battle. And I never cared for Raven’s constant hand wringing either (which gets a full page in this issue). Just have them be a team of young heroes and have them clash with bad guys.
Conclusion: A pretty good first issue that is very new reader friendly. It has probationary status on my pull-list based on this issue.
Grade: B-
– Dean Stell
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Conclusion