Titans United #2 – Cavan Scott, Writer; Jose Luis, Penciller; Jonas Trindade, Inker; Rex Lokus, Colorist
Ray – 7/10
Ray: It’s been a while since we had a decent Titans book, with most falling short in some key ways. The team dynamic is usually off, which remains the biggest problem with this stand-alone miniseries. The book seems loosely inspired by the current Titans TV series, which explains the odd presence of Red Hood and Superboy on the team. When we last left off, a few D-list villains were picking up the Titans’ powers before burning out in dramatic fashion, and it was Kite-Man next on the list. Superboy was seriously injured and seemed to have burned out his powers, but was still determined to get back in the action and back up his team. The team was barely able to get Kite-Man neutralized before he went nuclear, but that just seemed to deepen the rift in the team. Jason is usually a fairly caustic figure, but when he’s been on teams in the past he at least seems to care about his teammates. Here he mostly seems to enjoy antagonizing them.
There is an intriguing suspense plotline going on here, as the team starts to look into the links of Cadmus—the mad science organization that cloned Superboy—to the strange power surges. They interrogate a scientist who quickly finds himself assassinated by a mysterious arrow shot by a supervillain, and the heroes go on the run to try to chase down the culprit. The problem is that the plot seems to happen so fast in this book that there is really no time to reflect on any developments. New characters are thrown in casually, such as in the cliffhanger this issue that turns the story into a space-faring one. The older Titans have good characterization, but the “kids” of the team often seem only on the team to squabble with each other. The main plot is pretty solid, escalating low-level villains into major threats, but it’s the same problem as this title has had for a while—you can’t have a strong Titans team if you don’t care about the Titans.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
