Teen Titans #96 – Review

By: J.T. Krul (writer), José Luis (penciller), Sandro Ribeiro & Jonas Trinidade (inkers), Jason Wright (colorist)

The Story: Hasn’t anyone learned by now it’s not a good idea to anger a giant ape?

The Review: One key feature of weak writing is when the story makes its points a little too obvious.  In these cases, it almost feels like the writer is so uncertain in his ability to get his message across that he feels the need to shove it in your face and remind you of it over and over.  He tends to neglect the fact that if the characters and plot come off convincing and strong, his points will too, without all that irritating reiteration.

Take Krul’s opener of Solstice’s dad reading her the tale of Rama vanquishing Rankor.  On its own, the scene is sweet and relevant.  Had it started this story arc, and had Krul spent less time emphasizing his key words (“His light would endure…I believe he had faith…faith in the light overcoming the darkness.”), its impact would’ve been much stronger.  But since he’d already in previous issues explicitly made the parallels between the Titans’ adventure in the demon world and the original Hindu story, the scene just feels tiringly redundant.

It also makes the rest of the issue fairly predictable.  As soon as Krul mentions Rama’s light and his monkey king companion, you already know why Solstice and Beast Boy end up the last two teammates standing against the revived Rankor, and you know exactly how they’ll finish the boss demon off.  Krul clearly intended this issue as a character piece for Gar, playing up his role as veteran Titan, but since you saw that from page one, a lot of the sentiment gets lost.

This issue also offers some of the most senseless of Krul’s dialogue to date, with page eight showing the choicest samples. Beast Boy calls out the name of each trapped Titan like he’s announcing roll call: “Superboy!  Red Robin!  Wonder Girl!  Ravager!”  Wonder Girl: “Beast Boy?  Is that you?” (she knows some other green shapeshifters, I assume).  B-Boy: “I’m here, Cassie.”  (No you’re not—you’re there!”)  He immediately follows up by saying, “Wake up.  It’s time to go.” (she just spoke to you; I’m fairly sure she didn’t fall asleep directly afterwards).