Be Cruel To Your School
Release Date: April 27, 2021
School is back in session as we jump into issue #2 of the Teen Titans Academy, where one of the new students who has come to Titans Tower to learn from Nightwing and his New Teen Titans is up to something more than simply ditching class. For whatever reason, this mystery person is wearing the old Red X mask that Dick Grayson once wore and is doing possibly nefarious things inside the school. It's all up in the air right now so let's jump into this issue and see if we learn anything more about the new students or Red X. Let's check it out.
For this issue of Teen Titans Academy, we're focusing on the character Alinta, who you'll recognize as the character Bolt from Future State: Suicide Squad and it's in this issue that she starts realizing that "Bolt" is a pretty dope name and the reason that we're focusing on her this issue is that she has some sort of deep connection to Amanda Waller and the Suicide Squad and if you read the last issue of that series you'll know that Amanda Waller is looking for a bit of speed on her team and is targeting this new Teen Titans Academy student to get what she wants. It's weird though because it seems like she had a connection with The Wall way before this and I don't know why Amanda Waller sent her off here just to say come on back to me as soon as she unpacked her clothes in her dorm room. Hopefully, things will become clearer as they go along and if not in this series then in the Suicide Squad book that's doing a little crossover.
As for Red X, he's making himself really apparent to Nightwing as the former Robin finds this mysterious figure downloading Titan files, before giving Dick the slip, and like the last issue, I'm not too concerned with this Red X mystery because it doesn't feel like it's hitting hard enough since the entire background of the character hinges on you watching the 2003 Teen Titans cartoon. Instead, I would have liked a little more groundwork in the comic Universe to make this character feel like something that belongs here instead of just mentioning a name, showing a mask and that's it. It just doesn't feel all that thought out at all, but even with that said, I did enjoy the possible red herring of making Matt Price look like he's Red X.
All in all, the art in this book is really enjoyable and the idea behind this book's premise is something that I want to love but we're not getting enough of anything really and everything that I want to see or have explained is kind of sidestepped to do something else. Yeah, I love the idea that we're getting a Suicide Squad crossover and I know that I can't expect too much from this book yet because it is only the second issue but Red X isn't doing it for me and while I like Bolt and want to see her background and connection to Amanda Waller, this issue only did the bare minimum while throwing in a wonky bookended attack of Red X on Bolt where I'm not sure what the point of it was. Hopefully, things turn around in this book because right now even though I enjoy aspects of what it's trying to do, I'm just not feeling it yet.
Bits and Pieces:
Instead of having a Red X mystery out of nowhere, I really wish we would have built up the Red X character and made it feel right for the comic Universe since this is his first introduction into comics and not just said, "Yeah, the cartoon thing happened". There's so much to explore with this series but it seems to want to tell you there's a mystery happening but not giving you any reason to care. That being said, I like a lot of these new characters and think the art is great. I just hope that we get more from this book as the series progresses.
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