Teen Titans #92 – Review

By: J.T. Krul (writer), Georges Jeanty (penciller), Rob Hunter (inker), Jason Wright (colorist)

The Story: These exploding Calculator robots are really harshing these Turkish clubbers’ buzz.

The Review: In crossovers, besides the stickiness of mixing up different characters (who may or may not be a good fit for each other), you’ve also got the issue of how the different styles of the writers will work together.  It’s usually best for them to co-write the story; you get a more cohesive product that way.  You also avoid the position of comparing one writer to another, which may be uncomfortable for the one who comes off weaker.

In this second half of a crossover with Red Robin, Krul shows with painful obviousness that his writing has a ways to go, quality-wise.  He’s simply not as deft or nuanced a writer as Fabien Nicieza, who wrote the first half of this story in Red Robin #20.

Their different approaches to dialogue say it all.  Nicieza’s takes for granted that these characters have history and know each other.  When Tim says, “We should—oh, sorry, Cass—you go,” he doesn’t have to explain what he’s sorry for; you get that from the context and what you know of them.  Krul feels the need to make everything explicit, resulting in chunky, in-your-face dialogue like: “Because you didn’t know [he was an android].  And killing him would have felt very real.  I couldn’t let you do that.”

The major weakness to Krul’s dialogue has always been that it doesn’t let the characters show distinctive personalities.  Most of the lines feel like babble: “If the circumstances were different, this looks like it’d be a fun place.”  Not only is this remark just silly (if there weren’t exploding robots around, everyplace would be more fun), but it’s lifeless as well—anybody could have said it.  It feels like filler, padding the time until something more meaningful happens.

Teen Titans #91 – Review

By: J.T. Krul (writer), Nicola Scott (penciller), Doug Hazlewood & Scott Kobush (inkers), Jason Wright (colorist)

The Story: Teens these days…if they’re not listening to terrible pop music, they’re creating black holes in their schools.

The Review: Each of the major teams in the DCU stands for something—the Justice League representing strength in numbers, while the Justice Society is for heroic legacy.  But the Teen Titans have always emphasized family among friends.  It’s not a coincidence that when those themes are kept in mind, the stories tend to work better.

That’s the case with this issue of Teen Titans, which shows some improvement over the previous ones.  J.T. Krul clearly loves writing damaged goods.  The exchange between Ravager and Robin as they try to one-up each other on who has the most screwy parents is fun to read, but also just feels natural.  Certainly that was one of my favorite topics when I was a teen.  And the fact they have this conversation while beating down a horde of psychotic teens just makes it that much more entertaining.

Krul wraps up the drama between Connor and Cassie, although whether for the better remains questionable.  After all, even prior to Krul’s run, the heroic lovebirds didn’t get that much time to explore their feelings.  Something always got in the way: Superboy getting sucked into the future, Superboy getting mind-controlled, Superboy dying—huh.  I sense a pattern here.  And the pattern continues as Connor lets his—I hate to say this—emo hang-ups over his self-identity get in the way of an otherwise healthy relationship, just when Wonder Girl gets over hers.

The character work on the other Titans is similarly mixed or downright uninspired.  It’s a nice touch that Bart is finally starting to confront his death (which most writers have seemingly tried to forget), but there’s so much angst in the team now that dampening one of the more upbeat characters seems like overkill.  The question of Raven’s evil nature is old material, so old it dates back to her first appearance in the eighties, for crying out loud.  And Beast Boy literally gets three lines in this issue.

Worst of all, for all the action you get, there’s no resolution to the storyline whatsoever.  Take Barney and his genetically modified “friends.”  Their motivating emotional insecurities don’t get addressed or solved by the Titans, who basically luck out in saving the day—by which I mean they leave the entire student body either beaten into submission or taken into STAR Labs custody.  As for the mastermind behind it all, you learn close to nothing about him.  He can be a good villain with more than your usual mad scientist routine, but as is, he’s just a useful tool to bring some conflict to the Titans.

Teen Titans #88 – Review

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.

Batman: Streets of Gotham #11 – Review

By: Main Story: Paul Dini (writer), Dustin Nguyen (pencils), Derek Fridolfs (inks), John Kalisz (colors) & Steve Wands (letters).  Manhunter back-up: Marc Andreyko (writer), Jeremy Haun (pencils), John Lucas (inks), Nick Filardi (colors) & Sal Cipriano (letters)

The Story: Damien and Abuse face off against Zsasz while the Manhunter looks for her lost kid.

What’s Good: I keep trying to drop this title on the grounds that I don’t need to get so many Bat-books, but it keeps being good enough to buy one more month.  Honestly, its been a better title than Batman has been for the last year.

I loved how we got to see Damien and Abuse settle Zsasz’s hash in this issue.  Dini has been building Zsasz up as the villain for nearly 8 months now, by having him build an arena for homeless kids to knife-fight to the death in.   So, it was good to see him get stopped by a couple of kids.

I’m also enjoying the growth of Damien over the last year into a heroic character, which comes to the forefront here as Damien is willing to sacrifice himself to let the other kid (Abuse) get away.  One of the big quandaries for the Bat-books is that all the Robins have stepped up (Dick, Tim & Damien) and I’m curious to see where they all end up once Bruce Wayne is back.

Dustin Nguyen is an acquired taste, I’ll say.  He probably isn’t my favorite artist just due to stylistic issues, but he does execute very well within his style on this issue.