Comic Review: Teen Titans Special #1

Teen Titans Special #1

DC Comics

Writer: Adam Glass

Artists: Robson Rocha, Daniel Henriques, Sunny Gho

Oh, lordy. Where to begin?

Well, the art is hardly passable. At several points in the comic, it’s obvious that the artist either has no idea what a human head looks like or thought a potato was close enough. The quality of line is a little hesitant and thin, and the human anatomy in general never feels quite right. Combine that with inconsistent shading, bland coloring, at times completely invasive lettering, and you’re left with an extremely subpar experience artwise.

And the story! My god! It’s horrendous! It’s split into three chapters: one for Damian, one for Red Arrow, and one for Kid Flash. Spoilers ahead, because this comic is not good enough for me to refrain from spoilers. Robin’s story consists of him going to his favorite middle eastern restaurant. Which then gets bombed. And so Damian thinks to himself, “hmm. Maybe killing is okay after all. They did blow up my favorite restaurant.” And so he seemingly kills Black Mask. With a gun. So right there we know the author hasn’t read anything with Damian in it, because the whole killing question was answered seven years ago. (The answer, in case you’re wondering, was “no.” No killing.) The author is destroying every scrap of Damian’s character development in order to make this edgy teen titans thing happen, and I’m having none of it. In Red Arrow’s story, she gets poisoned by her mother. Sure. I can live with that. So she’s got three minutes to live, and I’m wondering how she’s going to get out of it, right? Well, it turns out that she lives by sticking an arrowhead into an electrical outlet and getting zapped. There is absolutely no explanation for how or why this method works, or indeed how or why she avoids being electrocuted to death. It is one of the strangest things I have ever seen in a comic book. Then, in Kid Flash’s story, he has a run-in with the suicide squad where real Wally shows up and tells him not to interfere. Kid Flash gets understandably upset, and comes to the conclusion that, quote, “I’m done listening to ‘grown-ups’ tell me my instincts are wrong.” So all of the stories are leading up to the creation of a Teen Titans team that has no problem with killing.

There is no nuance here. The author doesn’t even seem to be painting these conclusions in a poor light. God help me, I think the author might actually believe what he’s writing. Which would be fine, if he hadn’t just been put in charge of the teen titans. If you wanna write about super teens killing the bad guys, great. Take it to Image. Take it to Boom. Hell, take it to Marvel. But DC is not the place for you. You clearly don’t understand a single one of these characters. You haven’t done the footwork. This comic has managed to fall on its face before it even took a single step because the premise is flawed. The basic concept is flawed. I’m a little surprised DC even gave it the go-ahead, to be honest. And it’s not like one of those situations where the concept is bad but the execution is good. Oh, no. The writing is stilted and bizarre nearly the entire way through. This is not a good comic by any stretch of the imagination.