Tuesday, March 22, 2022

Teen Titans Academy #13 Review




Field Trip


Written By: Tim Sheridan
Art By: Tom Derenick, Peter Pantazis, Matt Herms, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: March 22, 2022


It's Part 4 of our War For Earth-3 storyline, where previously we saw Amanda Waller invade Earth-3, get Ultraman on her side, while Rick Flag and his Suicide Squad followed and tried to take their former boss down. Not to mention that Super Woman isn't happy about this invasion or the fact that she believes Talon killed her toy Owlman. So yeah, there's a lot of aggression going on in Earth-3, and in The Flash tie-in we saw previously it looked like whatever Amanda Waller has planned next, she needed Johnny Quick to come to Earth-0 and get the Cosmic Treadmill from the Flash Museum. Wally West didn't seem too worried about this incident though so let's see how our Titans deal with whatever problems come their way in a war they know nothing about. Let's check it out.


Where I was a fan of what the Flash book, the previous part of this story, did for its own series going forward and not so much how the War For Earth-3 tied into it, this book doesn't really have a lot going on for it in either department because it spends a lot of its time telling us that the Cyborg/Beast Boy amalgam that we saw in Future State is going to become a thing and to do that.... we're going to have a kid who as far as I remember has never been named before jump in and use his tech from Earth-12, which is the animated Batman Beyond Universe. So yeah, there's an Earth-12 student here with no real explanation and that will continue in this book, where Rick Flag will infiltrate the Titans makeshift school they've setup since the Titans Tower was destroyed, and on his team are Mirror Master and Bloodsport..... which we've seen previously..... and for some reason Captain Boomerang and an Earth-8 Harley Quinn..... which wasn't previously set up and really doesn't make sense at all.




Continuing the idea of things not making sense... We've seen Wally West show up in this book over the past couple of issues and that continues here but for some reason, his battle with Mirror Master and Johnny Quick in the previous part of this story never come up and we just have an issue that ultimately just gets the Titans to join Rick Flag's team but why Rick Flag would go for them and not the Justice League is never brought up and is just here to make this tie-in feel like its needed..... but I guess it gives us some stakes going forward with some characters who aren't supposed to be joining their teachers on this mission.  




All in all, the art in this issue is great, but for the most part, the art has never been the problem with this book. The story, like usual, gets in the way of this Titans series actually being good where it wants to focus solely on Future State stuff and Red X being the end all be all and even in a War For Earth-3 tie-in these concepts permeate the issue and the setup for our Titans joining the fight feels really nonexistent because we have Rick Flag's Suicide Squad in this issue doing stupid shit for no reason whatsoever until we find out that everything is a misunderstanding and none of this needed to be. So while this issue feels like it did more to progress the War For Earth-3 plot than The Flash book did, it did it in a way that felt silly and also felt like it would rather do anything but progress that story, while also not making anything that this series is currently doing feel important or relevant.


Bits and Pieces:


There's a new wrinkle in the War For Earth-3 from this book but besides adding some characters to fight against Amanda Waller going forward, this issue took forever to get at what it wanted to do and that felt like it was because the writer didn't know how to actually do it. Beyond the War For Earth-3 stuff though, this series continues to just get in its own way where it doesn't want to do anything other than Future State or Red X while a ton of new characters continue to feel underdeveloped.


4.5/10

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