Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Titans United #1 Review




Kind Of United


Written By: Cavan Scott
Art By: Jose Luis, Jonas Trindade, Rex Lokus, Carlos M. Mangual
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: September 14, 2021


It's time to check out this seven-part mini-series where we take the Titans team from the HBO show and throw them into a possible in-continuity comic. The weird part about this issue is that it doesn't feel like it's a part of the HBO series and also doesn't feel like it's a part of the comics continuity but what we do have is a limited series that's showcasing one of the most interesting Titans teams that I've seen in a long time and them being confronted by their powers in weird and mysterious ways so let's jump into this issue and see what this is all about.


So right away I want to tell you in case you couldn't see on the cover that our Titans team consists of Nightwing, Starfire, Donna Troy, Raven, Beast Boy, Superboy, and Red Hood...... and then later Hawk and Dove, but that first group is who we're mostly deal with this issue as they show up to a disturbance in San Francisco, where a man named Evan Morton is kind of losing his shit with some heat vision blasts, but that's not the only thing that's going on with this unsuspecting citizen, every time that one of the Titans gets closer to help him it seems that Evan then switches things up and takes on their power, like Beast Boy's animal shape-shifting, and Starfire's solar absorption and while this is weird enough on its own, especially since this display of mimic power seems to come from nowhere, but this also leads to Superboy losing his powers and nobody seems to understand why.




This is a cool team but it seems like they haven't been a team very long...... or they just don't like each other for how Cavan Scott writes Superboy and Red Hood, who take up the majority of the team turmoil because while I want to love this incarnation of the Titans, the squabbling really turns me off and while it might be going for more of the HBO show aspect of the characters, it's the closeness of the characters that the comics always depict that makes me continue to be a fan and here..... people are just kind of dicks. This is an interesting story though and I want to see where it goes, especially since it looks like Kite-Man has suddenly taken on some powers of his own.




All in all, I really enjoyed the art in this issue, even if some of the costume choices feel like they don't work out in a comic continuity sense but everyone looked great and while I have trouble figuring out if this story matters to the rest of the Infinite Frontier of DC Comics right now, it is a fun, interesting story that maybe doesn't need to fit into place perfectly because as it is right now it's enjoyable and maybe that's enough. I just hope that some of the interactions between the characters smooth out a bit because while I love the idea of Red Hood being on the Titans, the way he's presented here feels weird because there's no way that anyone would let him continue to be on the team after a couple of mission for how rough around the edges he is........ and not to mention the whole gun thing.  


Bits and Pieces:


Where this works into continuity might be a bit of a puzzler, but beyond that idea and some of the ways that the characters are portrayed, this is a cool book that seems to be telling an interesting story that I'm into and thankfully, the book looks amazing all the way through. I just hope that we get something important here with this roster and not just some way of appealing to the HBO Titans fans because I love these characters and I want something more than cross-media synergy being the focus overall.


7.5/10

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