The Titans. Many years ago, Marv Wolfman and George Perez made this into one of the best books on the comics rack. It was always a top of the stack, first read book. Arguments were made as to whether the X-Men or Titans were better.
Somewhere along the line Titans suffered a great drop in quality. I have not read it since the current team has taken over. It is time for the Revolution to take a look at what Miller and Unzueta are doing with this once great book.
Creative Team
Writer: Bryan Q. Miller
Artist: Angel Unzueta
Inker: Wayne Faucher
Story Rating: 6 Night Girls out of 10
Art Rating: 7 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 6.5 Night Girls out of 10
Synopsis: North of Gotham, Raven can feel a gathering taking place. A black van pulls up to an altar. Troops pour out. The have a female hostage who is thrown on the altar. The troops are carrying guns. They prepare to sacrifice her to open a door for Trigon to enter our world. Raven appears and commands them to leave the girl alone.
Raven yells at the girl to run while she confronts the attackers. Using a combination of acrobatics and teleportation, Raven makes short work of them. They are backed up by men in helicopters. Raven teleports into the cabin of the helicopter and disables it. They explode.
Raven lands in front of the church where the girl escaped to. They enter the church. Raven is struck by familiar feelings. It is the church where she was conceived. The girl claps. She approaches Raven and knocks her down. The girl transforms into one of Raven’s brothers-Envy.
The whole cult sacrifice was a trap to lure Raven to them. Envy offers to take Raven back into the family. Raven refuses. She has a family-the Titans.
Envy says that if the Titans were really her family, they would be there to help her. Raven says she does not need help to handle her brothers. He wants her to return to their home. She has made her choice. Trigon will never hurt anyone again.
Envy tells her that the Children of Trigon will always be bound together. Raven says that the Titans will always be bound together against evil like Trigon. Her brother warns her that the next time they meet, she will not be walking away.
Back at Titans compound…Raven is feeling lonely. She looks for the others. They are having breakfast outside. As she watches the others, she feels like she is alone.
Garfield (Beast Boy) is packing to leave. He will be mentoring the Teen Titans. Gar tells her that she is only as lonely as she chooses to be. He wants her to join him. Raven decides to stay with the Titans. The only question remaining is where will her future lead her?
Commentary
The Good: The art by Unzueta and Faucher was good in spots. They were very good at creating a dynamic flow from panel to panel. The action leads the eye through the story. The characters were far from static. The action burst off of the pages.
The special effects were solid. Raven’s teleportation was well drawn. The variety of panel sizes in the helicopter scenes added to the flow of the story.
One of the highlights of the story was the choreography of the fight scenes. The panels and the action within the panels really help give the impression of a very intense fight between the opponents.
Miller’s story was adequate. Nothing was technically wrong with it.
The Bad: My only complaint with the art was that sometimes the faces were cartoony. It did not fit in with the rest of the art style.
Miller’s story, while technically okay, was just another rehash of the old Trigon/Raven conflict. When it was originally introduced, this conflict added another dimension to Raven’s personality. Now, it is like we are trying to write the same story and pass it off as original work.
If this is what the author has planned for Raven, I will just go back and read the old stories. If the main theme of this issue was that Raven was to be tempted to return and join her brothers, the author did not present that. Raven did not seem tempted in the least. It appeared to be just an excuse for a fight scene.
Overall: An average superhero comicbook. I did not see anything new in this issue. Titans used to be cutting edge, exciting, original. This issue was none of them.
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Jim
3 thoughts on “Comic Book Review: Titans #18”
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The problem with the Titans is that everybody is trying to repeat the success of Wolfman/Perez. And all the new writers of the series have only read that era. So we the readers feel like they are repeating these stories again and again…
The X-Men have the same problem with Claremont.
The art on this wasn't of professional quality. I could get someone from Digital Webbing to provide artwork of equal quality for $50 a page – pencils and inks. $500 total when you include color.
Now think of how much DC must pay.
Something has been missing in the Titans since the Wolfman/Perez years. I am not one of those hard-core past obsessed fan boys who only likes one writer or yearn for the yesteryear. But really nothing that has been done with the titans since the Wolfman/Perez that has been interesting.
Young Justice was interesting when written by PAD. But once the teams were merged, its like nothing has changed. and if it has changed its not in a good way.
1. the titans rooster is constantly in flux
2. raven has devolved from mature girl to immature gothic ho
3. Starfire is getting sluttier and sluttier as the years go by
4. Donna's backstory continuously grows more warped.
5. Titans are constantly killed off and new characters that no one cares for are brought in
6. There is constant rehashing of the same old stories.
7. and now the most important characters have graduated to the JLA… makes the Titans a meaningless second tier team at the same level as New Warriors
8. Raven and Beastboy… REALLY????
– Seafire