TEEN TITANS SPECIAL #1, written by Adam Glass, with pencils by Robson Rocha, inks by Daniel Henriques, colors by Sunny Gho, and letters by Rob Leigh, drops onto our shelves this week after the fallout of NO JUSTICE with a reintroduction to three of our Teen Titans and their parental baggage.
Unless you’ve been under a comic rock for the past year, never read Teen Titans, or just started reading comics, now is the time to turn back before I drop SPOILERS up in this review.
Adam Glass opens this special by introducing us to Robin (Damian Wayne), Amiko (Red Arrow), and Kid Flash in three separate stories. Truly, the only connection between the stories was one overlapping theme: Mommy and Daddy issues. Overall, readers learn absolutely nothing new about the Teen Titans and are left with no cliffhangers for what’s ahead.
This issue was oversized, boring, and completely separated with no connective tissue. In general, every issue needs to have something important in it or at least a reason to buy it. I honestly don’t know what that would be in this issue. Robson Rocha, Daniel Henriques, Sunny Gho, and Rob Leigh do a great job trying to save this comic with the art.
This page above looks amazing with Damian standing over Black Mask holding a gun. I truly love it! But why? Was it because his favorite restaurant was burned down and the owner died? After everything he’s been through, this is what drives Damian to snap?
He almost drops a guy off a building and fires a gun at Black Mask because of characters we’ve never met before. Something just didn’t feel right.
Next Rocha, Henriques, Gho, and Leigh try to save this issue again by showing us the shear emotional dismay in Amiko’s face after her mother tried to kill her with a poison arrow. Somehow, Amiko survives by shocking herself. So the next time you’re poisoned, I guess Glass is telling us to stick a fork in an electrical socket. It will simply jump start your heart just like that!
This page above is laid out perfectly. However, the three pages before were too heavy in dialogue leading up to it. I couldn’t enjoy what the art team had to offer on this page the first read. In general, the comic was over saturated with dialogue. And keep in mind, this special is 42 pages long.
Glass gives us no direction. AND Damian says at the end, “I need my own team, not Grayson’s hand-me-downs.” That is false. Damian CHOSE the last roster because they were on a hit list from Ra’s A Gul. And wasn’t Tim Drake on the team after Grayson? Shouldn’t they have been Drake’s hand-me-downs?
To readers that know Robin’s (Damian’s) background, you learn nothing new about the character. If you’ve been reading Green Arrow, you learn nothing new about the character. If you’ve been reading the Flash, you learn nothing new about the character. Better yet, if you’re a Teen Titans fan, you knew all of this already. So, what was the point of the issue?
Should you pick up this issue?
No. You could skip this issue and go into the series if you wanted and not miss a beat.
Should you add this series to your pull?
No. The series was going downhill before the special. Furthermore, I had high hopes that this new start would change that but we didn’t move forward at all.
Readers got one page of the new team AND will probably get 6 issues or more of forming this new team. The last creative team did that already. It doesn’t need to happen again.
Well, what did you guys think of TEEN TITANS SPECIAL #1? Comment below or hit me up on Twitter @dispatchdcu
