“The other Wally West.”
Creative Staff:
Story: Dan Abnett
Art: Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund
Colors: Andrew Dalhouse
Letterer: Josh Reed
What They Say:
“DEATH RACE!” After suffering a major cardiac episode due to his weakened heart, Wally West is dead…or is he? In a race against time and death itself, Wally reaches out to another speedster for help: Kid Flash! Can the two of them jump start Wally’s heart…or is there about to be one less Wally West?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While I’ve been using Rebirth as my way to reconnect around the edges with the DC Comics mainline world I’m still very out of touch with a lot of it. Dan Abnett has made this book fun with it working characters that I grew up with years ago and getting them back into a better place than they’ve been in a while. What’s made it even more fun is what we get from the art team as I feel like I’m raving about Booth and Rapmund month after month because it just fits so perfectly in giving us a kind of modern yet 90’s feeling about it with the layouts and line work. The action has the big moments that I like (but not in every book) and the energy is just fantastic, especially when Booth and Rapmund get to work with a speedster.
The last issue gave us some bad end material for Wally West as he tried to fix things with a big speed move that has given his heart more than he can handle. That event resonated with the “other” Wally West that’s out there, one that I don’t know (but know from the TV series) who arrives to find everything a real mess eventually. Before he arrives we get Psimon lording this over everyone and setting his attendants to go after the rest of the Titans, which has a good bit of intensity not just because of the designs – Psimon looks hella intense – but thanks to some really bold color work from Andrew Dalhouse. The blues that we get from Mal and Dick are just wonderful but the flow of purple from Psimon with his design just strikes me as haunting.
A lot of what we get here is full of action, something that Titans has leaned into harder than I care for, but it also puts the emotion into play with Aqualad getting intense with what happened to Wally while Roy and Dick go coldly professional. It’s Donna that becomes really emotional over the hold thing and that pushes her in some dark areas, which leads to the surprise twist at the end as to the big bad that will destroy them all possibly, but it’s something that feels natural even with Donna’s backstory being so wonky over the years and her discovering that much of it was a lie. What wasn’t was that Wally was a part of her past and her present and one she doesn’t want to lose. This issue also ties back to some recent material from the annual and part of the Titans Hunt story that I didn’t read so we get some extra numbers on Psimon’s side but both The Key and Mister Twister don’t do a heck of a lot for me.
In Summary:
Titans is a chaotic book in general and this one boosts that up a few notches, especially when viewed through the other Wally’s eyes as he arrives to find Wally dead and everyone in a very pitched fight scene. I like the way the various Titans handle things, the narration we get from Omen about what’s coming and how she misunderstood/was tricked into believing a certain point of view, and the emotions that come from several of the events underway. It’s a strong book in this regard even while it spends so much of it with fisticuffs between the good guys and bad guys. I do wish for a few issues where things slowed down and we got some good character stuff or at least not quite so much intense action but this is what Titans is about in the here and now. I remain a bit hopeful for some bigger “family” bonding material as more of the Rebirth era gets further along.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: October 18th, 2017
MSRP: $2.99
