Review - Teen Titans #1

TEEN TITANS #1
Written by SCOTT LOBDELL; Art and cover by BRETT BOOTH and NORM RAPMUND

The reboot of Teen Titans has been one of the most dramatic in the DC Comics relaunch. Those of you who have been reading comics for a while will have seen the close friendship of Tim Drake, Cass Sandsmark, Bart Allen and Superboy develop from their first meetings in Young Justice to loyal ties in Geoff Johns' Teen Titans. Their friendship has survived the deaths of both Superboy and Kid Flash, but it couldn't survive the relaunch. In this version of Teen Titans, with the exception of Tim Drake's Red Robin, everything that you knew about these characters hasn't happened. Even with Drake we need to be selective of which parts of his history we can assume have happened. I'd say that everything within the Batman universe is still solid as a foundation, including when he went off as Red Robin. The only changes are that these other heroes never helped him out, so any crossovers, he now did by himself or with one of his Gotham allies. This is the problem with the 'soft reboot' of a fictional universe. It makes it accessable for new readers, but a logistical nightmare for long-time fans.

That being said, Teen Titans v3 had been pretty dire for the last 50 issues and needed sorting out. What Scott Lobdell has done is to play off both the world's mistrust of teenagers and the New DC Universe's fledgling acceptance of superheroes to create a culture of antagonism against these teen heroes. They are seen as a menace that needs to be locked up and contained before they cause disaster. Kid Flash displays exactly why the media, government and populace think this by unfixing the work of firefighters and causing an explosion. Red Robin is accosted by agents of N.O.W.H.E.R.E. is the penthouse of Lex Towers (what's he doing there?). He shows that he hasn't lost any of his capability or confidence that he had built up in the Red Robin ongoing. After he escapes from them he starts to build his team - first on the list is Wonder Girl.

Generally the book is good and the art is good-great throughout, but there are some really awkward lines of dialogue mixed in here that just seem out-of-place. It's so bad in parts that it interupts the flow of the book, which otherwise would be quite nicely divided into flowing chapters. I really hope that we start to pick up steam with issue 2 as this title has the potential to be really interesting.

My rating:

An interesting start for the new team of teen superheros. Red Robin slowly starts to build his team and this slower pace gives the reader time to get to know the characters. A lot of promise, but some clunky dialogue.