Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Teen Titans Academy #14 Review




No More Pencils, No More Books


Written By: Tim Sheridan
Art By: Tom Derenick, Peter Pantazis, Rob Leigh
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: April 26, 2022


It's the penultimate issue of Teen Titans Academy and it's crazy because, with the Red X stuff in this book, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse and War For Earth-3, and Suicide Squad tie-ins, we really haven't done much with our new characters, let alone our previous Teen Titans, who are now the upper-classmen. Previously we saw Gorilla Gregg and Addison figure out a way to save Changeling and Cyborg after Titans Tower was destroyed, but sadly that way means combining them together as we saw in Future State, and hopefully, in this issue and the next we can figure out a way to make sure that future never happens. Let's jump into this issue and check it out.


For this issue we get to see Kid-Flash, Red Arrow, and Roundhouse graduate for a minute..... even though I think the only class we actually saw them take at Teen Titans Academy was in the last Flash issue, but they're graduated now and that means.... not much here. Instead, we see our Young Justice Dark head off to save Billy Batson from some sort of attack at what they think is the Rock of Eternity, which then leads them to Apokolips. For some reason even though we only have one issue left after this we're now tying into the Shazam! four-issue mini, that barely made any sense because what we desperately needed in this book beyond more Red X, who thankfully doesn't show up here, is more Teddy, the de-aged Black Adam from the 853rd Century.  




If that wasn't weird enough for you, this issue is doing an early George Perez tribute, where Chupacabra's uncle is Jorge Perez, who's an artist, who for some reason knows Diego is out and about even though he spent all that time in the orphanage in Gotham, where he met the rest of the Bat-Pack and became the Chupacabra, but ultimately, this story beat goes nowhere except Uncle Jorge wants to draw Diego, while his friends go off on a weird-ass mission that will hopefully bring some continuity between this book and what's been going on in the rest of the DC Universe..... and hopefully going forward we can reverse Changeling and Cyborg being combined together, which for this issue, their struggle is our drama of the issue. One issue to go.




All in all, I do really enjoy the art in this issue and have enjoyed it for the majority of this series, the story though, like the stories previously, just seem to happen with no build-up and in some cases, they don't make much sense and that continues here where we have our students do separate things but don't ever seem to have a focus beyond trying to make some jokes to fill out the page space. Yeah, the characters that are featured here are definitely the standouts that we've had in this series but with one more issue to go I don't know if trying to make Shazam!'s status quo make any sense is the right way to go, not to mention with where we left that mini with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse being contained, but now being taken to Apokolips.... it just feels like too much story for a series that barely wanted to tell a story in its entire run.


Make sure to listen to our Weekly DC Comics Recap and Review Podcast to hear us talk more about this book.  Just look up "Weird Science DC Comics" anywhere you listen to podcasts, and make sure to rate, review, and subscribe!


Bits and Pieces:


While some might enjoy the George Perez tribute that this issue has to offer, it doesn't ultimately do anything for the book overall, and like we've seen previously from this run, with the number of characters that we have, everyone and everything is spread out way too thin and with one issue left, I can't see there being any that resembles a good conclusion to this book. Thankfully though, the art is decent throughout, and maybe with where we're going here Shazam's status quo can get back to normal by the end of this series.... probably not though.


5/10

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