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What a massive week (16 July 2014) for debuts! DC Comics kicks things off with a new Teen Titans #1 and the return of a sidekick (sort of) in Robin Rises Omega #1. BOOM! trades on the Black Market #1, Image fires up the Dark Engine #1, IDW launches Squidder #1 and Last Fall #1 and Dynamite explodes with the sold-out Devilers #1.
Teen Titans #1
DC Comics, Will Pfeiffer (writer), Kenneth Rocafort (artist)
Rating: 6/10
The poor Teen Titans have experienced their share of bad luck in the last year, not least of which the fact that they (like last week‘s New Suicide Squad) were cancelled only to be revived and renumbered a few months later. The cover art tease received its own share of controversy, which rightly received criticism from CBR’s Janelle Asselin for depicting an “underaged teen girl being drawn with breasts the size of her head”. (Of course, the culture it plays to gave way to an even larger issue, which Asselin discusses in detail at her blog). So after all of that, the important question remains: is it any good? Well, a little from column ‘yes’ and a some from column ‘no’ as well.
Apart from the anatomically questionable art on cover, which continues unabashedly on Kenneth Rocafort’s interior art, the reader is immediately presented with some totally now and stuff slogans in the form of hastags. The new (52) Teen Titans are totes on a #new_direction, with #more_attitude and (just like Poochie) all up #in_your_face. We couldn’t make this up if we tried. Even the creative’s names are presented as (inaccurate) Twitter handles. So preparing to be served up some amazeballs covered in awesomesauce, Will @Pfeiffer kicks things off in the middle of Manhattan with a bus hijacking that immediately calls the team to action. The device actually gives the book a linear focus for the debut, albeit via some clumsily introduced characters and a jarring conversation between Red Robin and the aforementioned underaged teen girl Cassie Sandsmark (aka Wonder Girl). As the crisis unfolds, Raven and Beast Boy are brought into the mix, and someone named Bunker who possibly does something with soft bricks.
Which is essentially the problem with Teen Titans: it’s an effective action sequence, complete with regular cuts back to group of people in danger narrating on how the situation is playing out. The tension plays out well on paper at least, but ultimately leaves us feeling as though nothing has really happened, and the stakes were never real. Apart from the two massive aforementioned exceptions one has to take with Rocafort’s character designs, there’s a fairly straightforward sequence of layouts here than functionally get the bus from A to (almost) B. It’s a colourful showcase for the powers and abilities of the individual team members, and this might be the biggest problem yet. While ostensibly functioning as one, the Teen Titans never really feel as though they are one.
Bottom Line: It’s difficult to pinpoint any one thing that is massively wrong with Teen Titans. It’s a solid outing featuring mostly headline characters that do what they say they are going to do on the tin. So maybe that’s it: it’s a perfectly capable book, but it lacks ambition and scope. There’s some bits and pieces there to give bait for future issues, but it’s hard to recommend it as a “must read” just yet.
Black Market #1
BOOM! Studios, Frank J. Barbiere (writer), Victor Santos, Adam Metcalfe (artists)
Rating: 8.5/10
Those enamoured with the retro adventure stylings of Frank J. Barbiere’s Five Ghosts: The Haunting of Fabian Gray will undoubtedly be thrilled to see his name on the cover of another title this month, and Black Market does little to disappoint. On the surface, it might seems as though there is a lot in common with other recent modern spins on the superhero genre. Think Mark Millar by way of Ed Brubaker and you’re partway there.
In Black Market‘s world, super powered beings showed up several years before, and have pretty much taken over the job of crime prevention. Some see them as gods, while others fear and hate them. Showcasing scenes from the past and present, we are introduced to Ray Willis, a disgraced medical examiner who is forced to prepare corpses at a funeral parlour in order to pay for his wife’s MS medication. However, his estranged brother Denny turns up, claiming to have gone straight and proposes a scheme that will make them both rich and exploit the DNA of the super powered folk.
Santos’ art is unexpectedly genre bending, something closer to what you’d see from the likes of Michael Avon Oeming or Sean Philips. The comparison is emphasised by Adam Metcalfe’s phenomenal colour work, a sublime mix of shades that carefully delineate between time zones and moods.
Bottom Line: Black Market is an noteworthy new title that legitimately has something new to say in the superhero world, even if it does cover some familiar ground. The only potential concern is that for a mini-series, Barbiere has already set up so many potential threads that we won’t have them all resolved by the end of the run. Yet that’s half the joy of discovery, and we are looking forward to seeing what Barbiere has in store for the rest of the run.
