miércoles, 27 de junio de 2018

Some thoughts about Teen Titans Special #1

Are children really the future?

Murders are occurring around the world and Robin is tired of playing by the old rules and letting it happen which will force him to get a new team with new ideas.

Another beginning for this particular team starts here. As I mentioned before, I thought that Ben Percy's work on the series was surprisingly solid for the most part but I wasn't against a new direction since some of his ideas were getting tiring. This time handled by Adam Glass, mostly known for his Suicide Squad work, the book is certainly willing to go to more dangerous places.

What do I mean by this? Well, if there's a word that I would use to describe Glass' work it would be "edgy", meaning that he uses a lot of cheap tricks like murders, violence and delicate topics to try to surprise readers, sometimes this can work like in his Suicide Squad run but in other cases it can completely fail like his infamous Flashpoint: Legion of Doom miniseries.

I would say that this story is a mix of both. The plot is centered around how Robin is witness of how a group of radical nationalists lead by Black Mask destroy the restaurant of a family of Israeli immigrants and even kill one of them. Yeah, you can start noticing some of the already mentioned issues here. Is a pretty delicate topic to handle and I don't really think that Glass has the finesse to deal with it, all the contrary actually since is really blunt and creates a pretty horrible situation to seem more important than it actually is (and it actually surprises me that even Ben Percy of all people did less heavyhanded social commentary during his TT run).

The characterization is not so good either. I guess I could see Damian using a gun since he differs from Bruce enough but at the same time I believe he respects his father enough to follow his rules, not to mention that this also seems like one of the classic Glass tricks to shock readers. Emiko's portrayal seems fine although I'm not a fan of Shado's depiction which is based on Percy's awful direction of portraying her as a complete monster (which contradicted how Jeff Lemire introduced her). New Wally seems decent as well but I can't say the same about classic Wally who seems unnecessary patronizing.

The plot gives the characters the motivation to become different heroes and form a new team but in some instances I feel like such motivation is a bit forced for its own good. Not to mention that there wasn't much plot to begin with since most of the conflicts are finished here.

Robson Rocha handles the art and is solid thanks to his clear character designs and storytelling.

Yeah, mixed bag overall although it does create a sense of excitement in a few aspects so I guess some of Glass' tricks worked. Let's see how it goes.

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