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Mild Mannered Reviews - Teen Titans Comics

Teen Titans #8 Teen Titans #8

Teen Titans #8

Scheduled to arrive in stores: April 25, 2012

Cover date: June 2012

"A Dark Omen"

Writer: Scott Lobdell
Penciller: Ig Guara
Inker: JP Mayer

Reviewed by: Shawn Morrissey

Click to enlarge


In the gelid underbelly of N.O.W.H.E.R.E.'s headquarters, the Teen Titans face the fresh and disquieting threats of Harvest and his creepy minions, Omen and Leash. One by one the Titans are pulled into Omen's disgusting, watery orb and are mind-probed, their deepest secrets and most callow desires revealed, their ids and their egos picked open like buzzards to a corpse. All of this is part of Harvest's master plan, for which the Titans are set to play an unwilling part.

In New York City, Amanda Waller and Agent Kurt Lance investigate the damaged ship that Solstice sheared apart during the team's fight with Superboy. Waller is concerned about the continued presence of the Titans and seems set to get Lance involved in apprehending them.

Meanwhile, the pressure of their impending assimilation is causing in-fighting among the Titans. Despite all their attempts, they simply can't escape, and Omen's mind games making our juvenile heroes believe things that are untrue only add insult to injury. The only thing the Titans can do is roll with it, give up their collective sobriquet, and become the New Ravagers.

Hail Harvest.

2Story - 2: Once again Lobdell has some pretty good intentions but he just doesn't seem able to take them the distance. He's trying hard for a gritty, doomsaying, horror tinged story, but it just doesn't seem able to crawl out of the grave. He really wants Harvest to be a Christopher Lee Dracula, but the character comes off more like a Tom Cruise Lestat.

What's really missing is the tension. The Titans are desperately trying to get out of the Preparation Chamber and get their meta-mitts on Harvest and his bloodcurdling backscratchers, but it's hard to feel any sort of claustrophobia or helplessness. The dread is all done through exposition, and that simply doesn't work. Imagine watching Night of the Living Dead and just when the zombies make it to the farmhouse the camera cuts to and stays on Barbara screaming for five minutes. That wouldn't be very scary, and it certainly wouldn't be good storytelling.

Truly the scariest part of this title - the most spine tingling, teeth chattering, skin crawling part - is how... slow... it...'s... going... All of this Harvest and the Colony stuff should have happened months ago. Instead we were fed a few pointless issues and left to wonder about a bunch of far more interesting but underdeveloped pieces of subplots. The whole Kurt Lance nonsense is a great example. The ship was torn apart three issues ago! I don't care what he's going to do about it, especially since the Titans are now going to be predisposed with the Culling.

What's this do I see? Yep, once again, no Superboy.

A final point: I don't think there's a more useless character in the New 52 than Skitter.

3Art - 3: The art team changed with this issue. I liked Booth and Rapmund for the most part, but Guara and Mayer do a decent enough job picking up the pencils. What I particularly like about this issue's art are the hues. While in the Preparation Chamber, the panels have a muted blue tint, but things turn a rusty red in the "torture room". It's a nice attention to detail.

Where the art fails is in keeping the character features consistent. In one panel Red Robin looks rather heroic, while in the next he looks ever slightly like Tintin.

3Cover Art - 3: Booth stays onboard for the cover. It's a reworking of issue #1's cover with the Titans in their New Ravagers garb. It's about as good as the original, not much to write home about.

2Variant Cover Art - 2: This cover works far better in color.

Mild Mannered Reviews

2012

Note: Month dates are from the issue covers, not the actual date when the comic went on sale.

January 2012

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