Some thoughts about Teen Titans Academy #1

Who or what is Red X?

The original Teen Titans are decided to teach a new generation how to be heroes but they're not prepared to deal with one of their darkest secrets. 

The long-awaited... HAHAHAHA! Sorry, I can't go on with my typical opening paragraph. We all know how terrible Tim Sheridan's work on Future State was (the badly executed ideas and conclusions were some of his biggest problems) and yet DC Comics decided to make him handle one of their most famous properties in what seems to be a brand new direction for the characters.

Teen Titans Academy is pretty much what Avengers Academy was many years ago, making some of the most famous members of the respective teams serve as the professors of young inexperienced heroes. The difference being that Christos Gage was a much better writer obviously and that such premise has been used so many times already that is nothing exciting at this point.

In fact, one of the major issues here is that the new cast is not exactly the most interesting personality-wise. I don't know if Sheridan is either making fun or taking seriously the "woke" new generation but either way, is badly-executed since their personalities barely go beyond that and their powers are not even that inventive. Hell, I would say that Scott Lobdell did the premise better during his Generation Outlaw storyline in Red Hood and that was a single arc.

The writing is the biggest reason why such premise fails. Just right from the beginning, Sheridan starts making the Titans call each other "Mr. Nightwing" and so in a weird attempt of seeming respectful to the students without realizing that such term seems silly as hell and they might as well have gone with their classic codenames and/or identities.

And can we talk about how useless the introduction of Red X is? I don't even know what the writer was thinking here. Red X was a character/concept that appeared in the Teen Titans animated show just a couple of times way back in 2003 and was never really used outside of that but for some reason Sheridan thought that he was such a cool and edgy character that deserved the full attention of his whole run and no, you can't tell me that I shouldn't make that call so soon because Red X was also the most prominent part of Sheridan's Future State work. The plot also suffers because it mostly revolves around that. I'm starting to suspect the author wrote fanfiction about Red X when he was young. 

Rafa Sandoval is the highlight here thanks to his flexible and vibrant art.

Aside from that, forgettable at best and irritating at worst. Hire better writers DC.