Sometimes the training isn’t going to help.
Creative Staff:
Story: Phil Hester
Art: Tom Grummett, Scott Koblish
Colors: John Kalisz
Letterer: Marshall Dillon
What They Say:
When one of Raven’s college professors goes missing, Nightwing is convinced the Titans should investigate. But the danger they uncover is far greater than one missing person—the fate of humanity is at stake, and only Beast Boy can save the day!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With a number of fun titles with enjoyable standalone or mini-arc stories from the DC Giants so far, the Titans get their series at long last and start rolling out some team adventures. This opening salvo comes from writer Phil Hester, who has done a few other works in this overall group of projects, with artwork by Scott Koblish where Tom Grummett helped out on some of the layouts along the way. The book reads well enough since it has the whole thing to tell its tale but it has some awkward transitional moments that left me confused. The artwork is solid but it goes for a bit of a lighter touch with some more comical designs taking front and center, particularly with the last page where it really stands out.
The story for this gets underway where Hester gets to introduce the core team – Nightwing, Raven, Starfire, Beast Boy, Wonder Girl, and Red Hood, where it’s all physical combat training where they’re trying to take down Nightwing. The reasons are obvious in as we get Nightwing talking about how many villains have ways of negating powers and knowing how to fight beyond that is critical. It’s got its usual derision in some quarters, some who refuse to fight that way, and some like Red Hood that at least use a taser instead of his usual gun as he gets the drop on Nightwing. It lets us see their style and personalities quickly as it shifts gears to the whole team tagging along with Rachel to a museum lecture she’s going to. That, of course, happens because she mentions how her professor disappeared a week ago, which is suspicious.
The lecture is where things get awkward as we see the current professor unveil the slab that Raven had seen before but now it has carvings and other pieces to it and is suddenly coming to life. The slab was part of something ancient that adopts form to those around it, hence the professor being sucked in and it modeling itself on her somewhat, and now the thing is hungry and grabbing more – which isn’t great for Beast Boy. There’s a lot of action that works well but comes across awkwardly at times with how the story presents it – I got confused on the professors a couple of times – and the info dump with how it happened feels like it’s dropped in separately after the fact. But we get to see Beast Boy step up to the plate as he’s being consumed and having to really challenge himself to deal with the problem, which is the only way he can survive.
In Summary:
The Titans are a group that I always enjoy in a lot of different forms and this one is fun enough to get the party started with. There are some issues with the structure of things in how it unfolds and Hester is trying to get a lot done with a lot of characters in one issue while trying to make most feel at least a little relevant, so some things get a little lost along the way. But it has a fun feeling to it and the characters are captured right and that makes it easy to get into and a welcome change from the last time I read them when it was all just so grim in the mainline stories.I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what creative stuff is coming up for this run.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology & Amazon
Release Date: June 25th, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
