Seeing double – sorta!
Creative Staff:
Story: Dan Abnett
Art: Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund
Colors: Andrew Dalhouse
Letterer: Carlos M. Mangual
What They Say:
“THE RETURN OF WALLY WEST” part two! As the Titans prepare to do the unthinkable in order to defeat the intergalactic demon that stole time itself from the DC Universe, enter the Fearsome Five! But are the sinister quintet acting of their own accord…or are greater forces at work?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
After the strong Rebirth outing I wasn’t surprised that the opening installment of the ongoing series wasn’t as strong. There’s a lot of pieces moving with how this whole Rebirth event is going and this book in particular with bringing Wally back and working through the ramifications of it isn’t easy. Abnett keeps things moving at a brisk pace and throws a lot at us so it works well enough there. But a lot of the appeal for me is in Booth and Rapmund’s artwork as it has just such a dynamic feeling about it with the layouts and how it’s all designed combined with some very fun action pieces that I don’t mind that it seems to lean toward action more than it needs to. It’s just a mixture of fun and wonky that tickles a particularly weird bone of mine.
With this installment what we get delivered works quite well overall since it’s essentially all action. Considering how much I like what the art team is doing that works in its favor, particularly with the approach here as Kadabra has created his own puppet version of the Titans from a different, younger, period but with aspects of who they are. This sets familiar character against familiar character, notably Flash against Kid Flash, and it’s fun to see that Wally has grown and learned over the years how to deal with himself. But we also get some good stuff with The Arsenal/Donny matchups that happen and even a really fun sequence toward the end with Tempest going all out against Kadabra and landing some good hits. The book is really a big action piece from start to finish with some Linda Park nuance, for lack of a better word in this case, thrown in to show that things are just plain weird when it comes to this group and all that’s happened.
What makes this book something more important, however, is where the really strong readers that are following multiple books are likely to figure things out more. Kadabra’s dialogue reveals more of the mixup in time and how things are not what they’re supposed to be as he references that things are out of order here and simply not right. When he makes the mention that history must already be broken, presumably earlier than he expected it to be, it’s attributed to Wally. The general idea is that a lot of what’s happening is because of the tease for Doctor Manhattan we got in the main Rebirth special earlier this year. This gives hint that there may be multiple forces at work that are causing this and that opens it a bit wider to who is controlling things – or who has lost control of things.
In Summary:
I’m generally not a fan of books that are all action as it’s the characters that make it for me, and I’ve long grown past the witty banter amid a fight as character growth and exploration. That said, Titans is like that big dose of nostalgia mixed with hints of the big picture of the present story that’s working to fix everything and I’m more than willing to let it slide because Abnett, Booth, and Rapmund make it so damn exciting to watch play out. There’s more energy in this book than a dozen other books with the way it’s presented. The story is more just a few teases here than anything else but Abnett sets it all up so that Booth and Rapmund can just hit the ground running with some big, splashy, and terribly fun action scenes. I’m still very much on board as this feels like one of the books to really watch for the big picture events.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: August 24th, 2016
MSRP: $2.99
