Teen Titans #4 – Review

By: Scott Lobdell (writer), Brett Booth (penciller), Norm Rapmund (inker), Andrew Dalhouse (colorist)

The Story: Cheer up, Wonder Girl.  For some, it’s traditional to get beat up on New Year’s.

The Review: Thus far, most of the Titans are pretty one-dimensional as individuals.  Like J.T. Krul, the last writer to handle the title pre-relaunch, Lobdell has a habit of stamping a mantra to a character and emphasizing it over and over.  You have Tim, wordy and pensive; Bart, frenetic and impulsive; Cassie, defiant and contrary; Miguel, upbeat and easygoing; Superboy, sullen and aloof.  As any one of their narratives demonstrates, these kids can very easily get on your nerves if you have to deal with them on their own.

Throwing them together, however, improves the situation quite a bit.  I have to admit, I like the energy of all these kids when they’re in the same room.  They undercut each other’s personality crutches before it gets too annoying, and together they genuinely project that restless, yet eager spirit that makes members of their age group so terribly annoying and exhilarating at the same time.  It’s fun to see them encounter conflicts adults would try to avoid, yet they actually egg on, like Miguel enthusing, “Fight!  Fight!” when he sees Tim and Bart arguing over a sweatshirt.

The smart guy and idiot dynamic between the two young men is exactly right, of course, but Lobdell introduces it with the most ridiculous point of contention ever, with Tim accusing Bart, “…is that one of my sweatshirts?!”  It’s a joke that may have rung true back in the nineties, but now seems petty and cliché.  Worse still is Tim’s overblown anger over the offense: “How is that any different from what N.O.W.H.E.R.E. is doing—stealing teenagers!”  Does he not realize he just answered his own question?

Teen Titans #2 – Review

By: Scott Lobdell (writer), Brett Booth (penciller), Norm Rapmund (inker), Andrew Dalhouse (colorist)

The Story: All that talk about sewer mutants and mole people are just rumors, I swear!

The Review: Just like in Justice League, this title has taken the strategy of introducing the cast in stages, which has a few downsides.  For one, it goes against the reader’s eagerness to see the entire team come together all at once.  The writer also has to ensure the few characters he puts in play manage to keep the story substantial and engaging.  You also have the danger of turning those characters into the “stars,” making all who come after accessories to the storyline.

Here we have a mix of all three problems.  We get yet another Wonder Girl and Robin-centric issue, with Kid Flash showing up in a couple pages and Superboy in just the one.  The opening with Kid Flash does nothing except establish his Emily Dickinson style of narration (“…and I’m locked in a cell / who knows where / by who knows who / or why.”), and the Superboy page is almost completely redundant if you read his solo title.  Not the best use of either character.

You also get intros to two future Titans, the mutated Skitter and the smoky Solstice.  Skitter actually gets a whole sequence to herself, but ultimately squanders it by doing little more than creep around like your typical sewer creature and hissing unintelligibly (“Kikt!  Kir kritik kih”).  So don’t expect her to add much personality to the issue.  Don’t expect Solstice to pick up the slack either, since she appears briefly and looks far from her formerly sunny self.

Granted, at this point, we still know close to nothing about Solstice or what direction Lobdell plans to take her, but just from the little we can see, it feels like Lobdell is utilizing the Grim Method of character development: when in doubt, just grim them up.  Though hardly thrilled with J.T. Krul’s version of Solstice, I at least appreciated the effort in making a character who was down-to-earth, positive, and had a loving, stable family life.  Lobdell starts on the opposite foot, turning Solstice into yet another teenaged basketcase.