Gosh that’s one ruddy awful cover. Generic Manga kids in front of a Red Hood hidden by the distinctly OK logo and dull colouring.
So can you judge the book by its cover? Pretty much. The kind perspective is that this isn’t a comic aimed at me, a longtime fan of the Teen Titans. These are 2026 kids, teens with attitudes, eat it Grandpa and all that. They don’t meet when they all happen to be at the scene of a crime, they come together in an arcade after chatting online.
They do want to do good, and are trying to to decide which of the options brought to them by computer kid Fairplay to take on when the arcade is invaded by a couple of masked thugs out to steal souvenirs or something. Time for action!
Proxy sensibly stops the unpowered Eugene from attacking a criminal twice his size with a hammer, giving the bad guys a chance to get away. The kids pursue them into the streets
They’re doing OK, but Eugene again proves a liability, trying to jump between buildings, almost getting killed and giving the goons time to get further ahead. But they don’t get away.
Black boot = Red Hood.
Red Hood – former Robin Jason Todd – tells the kids he’s been hired to find one lad who uses their Teen Titans Disqus-style servers, a young man named Cole. Leaving to continue his hunt, Red Hood warns the kids to stop using the Teen Titans name – it’s not theirs.
Over the next few days, while Red Hood lets Nightwing Dick Grayson know there’s a new kid gang around he might wish to mentor, the would-be heroes open their own investigation – online, of course.
That’s the voice of FairPlay’s dad bringing the last thing a young rebel wants.
Approval.
Jeffrey and pals, though, don’t take up the jet meant to fly them to Titans HQ, they turn up at Red Hood’s supposedly secret base, at shower time.
And wouldn’t you know it, Jason’s dead heart is melted, and he agrees to a team-up.
This comic came out a few weeks ago and I meant to review it but ran out of time. And maybe interest. But gosh darn it, this is (yet another) Teen Titans launch so it deserves a look.
The good: Writer Kyle Higgins is trying to engage with the kids.
I liked that the bad guys didn’t want to hurt young people.
The Ascend cult is interesting.
I never expected to see Eugene – last seen possessing the magical Ibis Stick – away from a Shazam book and portrayed as a danger junkie.
The action scene with Proxy’s power limitations.
Jason and the kids’ respect for the Titans legacy.
The clarity of the story, I was rarely scratching my head (see Mother Boxes, below).
The artwork by Daniele Di Nicuolo – if this is the sort of thing you like, you may like the visuals here a lot. They’re not my cup of tea.
The colours by Marcelo Costa and letters by Becca Carey.
The bad: Red Hood is the worst Robin, I just don’t enjoying reading about him. Why would a bunch of supposedly independent young heroes want to be bossed around by someone nearly twice their age?
I wasn’t sure how the Mother Boxes were being deployed, beyond occasional zapping.
Dick is very bad tempered in this comic.
All the faffing around on computers.
Pink hair, stuck-out tongues, gritted teeth, ugly grimacing generally.
Eugene disappears from the story as if he’d never existed.
The cursory character introductions, secret files snippets rather than story moments.
If someone told me this was originally pitched for DC’s Young Adult line of original graphic novels, I’d believe it. The attitude, the artwork… it’s not regular DC. And that would explain why we’re getting yet more new, fairly generic, teen heroes, along with the likes of Cheshire Cat – just one more martial artist teenager – and mini-Mr Terrific Fairplay. I mean, how many versions of the regular DCU Teen Titans have been cancelled, tossing promising characters into comic limbo? Why not bring back some of those, the likes of Argent, Prysm, Stitch, Roundhouse and Djinn? Years after their books were killed, I can still picture them, these new kids I can’t visualise them from page to page… are these baggy outfits what young Americans are wearing these days? Introduced only in the last couple of years, Fairplay had a perfectly decent costume, now he looks utterly dopey with his big collar hiding his chin.
There’s enough intriguing stuff here to bring me back for #2, but this isn’t the splashiest debut issue.
I would love to hear other opinions on this first issue. Anyone else wishing it success while yelling at clouds?
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 