Titans #13 – Tom Taylor, Writer; Daniele Di Nicuolo, Artist; Adriano Lucas, Colorist
Ray – 9/10
Ray: Demons and the supernatural have played a pretty key role in this run, with Raven’s twisted soulself being in the driver’s seat and puppeting her as she manipulates the team. When we last saw the team, “Raven” had discovered that Nightwing was concealing his mind from her. She attacks, revealing her existence to the team – and then things get quickly unwound, hinting at just how deep her power goes and how much she can manipulate things without even being detected. But there isn’t time to really figure what’s going on, as the team gets called abroad. A President of a newly Democratic country has been targeted by an assassin – and the assassin was reported to be a green tiger. Beast Boy is clearly suspect #1, and so he’s motivated to clear his name. But when they get there, it doesn’t take too long for things to devolve into a fast-paced battle of shape-shifting monsters.
This is a clever way to bring back Apex Ava, the villain introduced by Taylor during the Beast World event. She’s an interesting look at how dangerous Beast Boy could be if he had no scruples, and she’s entertainingly vicious as she digs up Gar’s insecurities over that event. But while this is going on, there’s a larger battle over Raven’s soul – and it shifts to the underworld. Hell is currently ruled by Blaze, Neron is out of power, and Hera has come down from above to parlay. It’s always a good sign when the Greek Gods are getting involved! Surprisingly, both of Taylor’s books seem to be staying out of Absolute Power at the moment, with more than enough subplots to keep them busy, but both are working with common themes of heroes battling against propaganda and a lack of public trust. It’s interesting to see how well Taylor balances these themes with the larger-scale plots.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
