The Green Team: Teen Trillionaires #4 – Review

By: Art Baltazar & Franco (story), Ig Guara, Robson Rocha, Travis Moore (pencils), J.P. Mayer, Júlio Ferreira, Jose Marzan Jr. (inks), Wil Quintana & Chris Sotomayor (colors)

The Story: Blue blood is thicker than water—and more expensive, too.

The Review: Well, never let it be said that I don’t give things a fair shake.  I never had much confidence in the premise of this series—the sur-title of Teen Trillionaires made me ever so slightly nauseated—but I was willing to place some trust in Baltazar-Franco and see if their offbeat vision could lead The Green Team somewhere unexpected and enjoyable.  Unfortunately, it may be a step above its sister title, The Movement, but that’s not really saying much, is it?

Both titles suffer from the superficiality of its characters, albeit from opposite directions.  While the members of the Movement always seemed to be trying too hard to fit into carefully constructed, oddball personalities, the Green Team started out more centered and credible, but never gained the distinguishing qualities which makes characters human.  Though occasionally displaying sparks of life when paired off, their dynamic as a group is flat and affected, leaving you underwhelmed by any declaration that “No matter what happens…we’re still friends.”

The Green Team #3 – Review

By: Art Baltazar & Franco (story), Ig Guara (pencils), J.P. Mayer (inks), Wil Quintana (colors)

The Story: Deathstroke refuses to be part of a buddy-idiot comedy.

The Review: I had a pal once who fancied himself an entrepreneur.  He had no scientific or business experience whatsoever—he was a fellow English teacher at the time—so he was often coming up with things that stood little chance of ever coming into existence, like a combination sprinkler/pesticide system for home use.  At the same time, he had so much love and enthusiasm for his own ideas that you couldn’t help feeling charmed by him.

That’s kind of the feeling you get from The Green Team, which at its heart is patently ridiculous (I mean, teen trillionaires—really), but so committed to its hyperbolic premise that it does end up pretty enjoyable.  While the idea of J.P. and Cecilia ordering crates of sparkling water to bathe in sounds silly-stupid, the idea of Commodore instant-purchasing a hotel and having it airlifted away by technicians in alien masks to save his girlfriend from bad press (and promote her latest alien abduction film) is silly-funny/clever.  When money is no object, this is exactly the kind of craziness it should be spent on.

The Green Team #2 – Review

By: Art Baltazar & Franco (story), Ig Guara (pencils), J.P. Mayer (inks), Wil Quintana (colors)

The Story: Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a cybernetic arm.

The Review: The way I see it, Baltazar and Franco really need to toe the line so as to make this title a success in one main area: the fact that hardly anyone really sympathizes with—can really sympathize with—the ultra-rich.  It may be fun for us as kids to play that classic scenario, “What would you do with a billion dollars?”  But as we grow up, the idea of any one person having that much money at their fingertips, solely for their own consumption, just seems appalling.

So while I’m sure Baltazar-Franco are just having fun coming up with increasingly outrageous expenditures for the Green Team, they’d be wise to keep it under control.  Not only do some of the transactions strain credibility (Commodore, in a fit of hunger, buys out a hot dog vendor’s entire stand*), but they can turn us off to the characters, period (J.P., unable to decide what to order from room service, says, “I don’t know…just bring two of everything on the menu.”).

The Green Team #1 – Review

By: Art Baltazar & Franco (story), Ig Guara (pencils), J.P. Mayer (inks), Wil Quintana (colors)

The Story: The best things in life are free—or, arguably, worth billions of dollars.

The Review: As I did with The Movement, its sibling title, I had my reservations about The Green Team.  Admittedly, the premise of a group of “teen trillionaires” trying to get into the superhero gig is pretty unusual.  At the same time, it’s one of those things where execution is really, really crucial.  Depending on how Baltazar-Franco handle the series’ development, it could prove to be very interesting or incredibly ill-conceived.

Big stakes, but Baltazar-Franco do seem to pull it off in their debut issue.  There’s certainly more credibility here than you probably would have expected.  It’s true that the characters’ wealth are hyperbolic exaggerations (“Hey, would you turn down sixty-four trillion dollars?”)*, allowing them to have some fairly exotic lifestyles (e.g., debating whether to jet to France or Quebec to satisfy a French food craving).  Despite that, the cast is self-aware and intelligent, avoiding the fate of becoming caricatures of the rich.

Tiny Titans #1 – Review

By Art Baltazar (writer, artist) & Franco (writer)

I’m not sure why I bought this book. It just looked so odd and off the wall that I had to give it a try. Now, if you’re looking for a serious story line, you’re in the wrong place. Tiny Titans aims to do nothing more than make you smile. There’s not much to read here, but its charm is irresistible.

Tiny Titans is a series of short comic strips featuring the Titans in school, messing around with pets, playing with dolls, and just doing kids stuff – based in an odd superhero world. I’m not sure how the idea of this book came around, but it’s almost sort of genius. It’s so simple, stripped down, and silly. And making Deathstroke their principal is just downright brilliant. At $2.25 it’s attractively priced. If you’ve got children, they’ll love this book. There’s also a four page Super Friends preview at the end of the book.

Art Baltazar’s art is vibrant, colorful, and just screams fun. The facial expressions do most of the work here, and the way these characters interact with each other is just hilarious. There’s also little things that’ll make you giggle like Wonder Woman’s lasso being used as jump rope! This book in a way, reminds me of the antics we were shown in the old Tiny Toons TV show and that’s surely not a bad thing. (Grade: A-)

– J. Montes