TITLE: Titans #2
AUTHOR: Dan Abnett
PENCILLER: Brett Booth
PUBLISHER: DC Comics
PRICE: $2.99
RELEASED: August 24, 2016

By Rob Siebert
Editor, Fanboy Wonder

By God, I knew it! The dastardly villain responsible for making Wally West “disappear” from the timeline is none other than…Abra Kadabra? The guy with the top hat and the magic wand? I’ll say this much, I didn’t see that coming…

But indeed, in following up on the events of DC Universe Rebirth #1, Abra Kadabra is the first villain the Titans come up against. He hits them with a classic supervillain plot: Mirror opponents. In this case, the Titans fighting younger versions of themselves. Nightwing against Robin, Wally West against Kid Flash, etc. Though I may jest, this is actually quite fitting. We’re still re-establishing the idea that these characters were a team. So in effect, Dan Abnett is giving us a fight, and adding depth to the team at the same time.

Our penciller for the series thus far is Brett Booth. Objectively, there’s very little wrong with what we get here. Booth injects a nice energy into things. During action sequences his characters have a great sense of motion, Wally and Kid Flash in particular.

But justified or not, I’ve got a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to Brett Booth and anything Teen Titans-related. The Teen Titans haven’t been good for years. That isn’t his fault. He didn’t write any of the material he’s worked on. But Booth was the penciller when things really started to go south: The New 52 reboot. He spent over a dozen issues on the interiors, and even more on cover duty. I’m sure everybody tried their best. But during that time the book was, by most accounts, bad . Booth drew some god awful costumes, too. From that horrible Red Robin look, to the seemingly TRON-inspired suits they wore in the “Culling” crossover. It’s been a dark time for DC’s younger heroes. So to see Booth attached to Titans didn’t fill me with confidence, despite the solid work he’s since done on books like The Flash and Nightwing.

Perhaps, like Wally West, he hopes to find redemption in these pages…

There’s an undeniable sentimental quality in seeing these characters together, especially after having them apart for so long. Abnett tugs at our heartstrings a little bit with Wally and Linda Park, and the question of whether she’ll remember him. We also have what appears to be a revelation from Roy Harper, which definitely catches Donna Troy off guard.

There’s been confusion on my part regarding Bumblebee. The solicits have her entering the series at issue #3, but she was on the regular cover for issue #1, and the Mike Choi variants (lovely, by the way) for issues #1 and #2. I’d rather not tell you how long I spent looking at the Choi cover for this issue trying to figure out who that top left person was. Hopefully next issue will alleviate any future confusion.

I’m interested to see just how close the Titans get to uncovering the real mystery behind the DC Universe’s wonky timeline. But either way, this is a solid series for the time being. The band is back together, and it’s nice to hear them playing some familiar tunes.

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