Tuesday, June 29, 2021

Teen Titans Academy 2021 Yearbook #1 Review




It Will Probably Be Easier To Get This Signed Than My Actual Yearbook


Written By: Tim Sheridan
Art By: Bernard Chang, Marcelo Maiolo, Rob Leigh, Marco Santucci, Michael Atiyeh, Darko Lafuente, Miguel Muerto, Rafa Sandoval, Jordie Tarragona, Alex Sinclair, 
Cover Price: $5.99
Release Date: June 29, 2021


Allow me to get all Super Friends Riddler on you with this question. When is an Annual not an Annual? When it's a 2021 Yearbook, that's when and that's what we'll be dealing with in this issue, a look at characters within the Teen Titans Academy and for how many characters we have in this series, a book like this is seriously needed to give you some more deep dives into the students that fill the backgrounds of the hallways while people try to figure out who Red X really is........ plus, we'll be getting some Red X stuff out of this as well. Let's jump into this issue and see if we want to write "Have A Great Summer" by the end or maybe, just maybe we'll get a little more personal with our regards. Let's check it out.


For this special issue of Teen Titans Academy, we're given four stories about our residence of Titans Tower and while they are all good for the most part, the things that Tim Sheridan chose to include in this is weird. I mean, we have an entire school full of new kids that we don't know anything about.... for the most part and instead of dealing with them specifically, we're given a Beast Boy and Raven story that lets us know that they're in a relationship again, like they were Pre-Flashpoint. Now that's a weird thing to complain about since I love knowing about this detail in our "New Teen Titans" lives but with so many other characters that we could have focused on, who we need to know more about, this addition to the special felt odd.




Speaking of odd...... but not totally unwelcome, we have a Red X story to finish this special out and while I've already been sick to death of Red X and the mystery about who's behind the mask, this flashback story dealing with the origins of Red X and what Red X actually is was surprisingly good and while we can't for sure put a pin in the identity of our current iteration of the character, we're given more clues to who this character is and it was done in a way that felt like it was doing something besides for play coy or throw red herrings at us left and right. Beyond that, we have two other stories in this book dealing with Stitch and Matt Price with Tooby and these two stories were great because not only did we get some background but we saw how these characters will be portrayed going forward and with how well these bits were written, I can't wait to get more of these characters in the series going forward.




All in all, we have four stories with four different art teams but they all tell their stories well and each one looks great in its own way and while I would have liked to use the pages of this book to simply show us more about the new characters of the DC Universe and less with goofy yearbook style advertisements and inserts to make this feel more like a yearbook since the concept is flawed from the get-go because the school year for our characters just started. With that out of the way though, and the idea that we have an odd feeling Beast Boy and Raven story that while I like, felt weird for this book, not to mention the continued look at Red X, which like the last story I talked about, I liked but it still felt weird having it here. So with all the "weird" being what it is and me liking the stories despite this, we do have a pretty solid special issue that accomplished a lot with the characters it included and I found myself wanting more of these new characters that I haven't been completely sold on yet.


Bits and Pieces:


While a yearbook looking at all we've done so far is a strange concept for a series that's only been around for four issues, this was still a fun special that used its page space to tell some good to great stories features the characters of Teen Titans Academy. While I'm still not completely sold on the mystery of Red X, I feel that the bits about the character here were probably the best we've seen so far.


8/10

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