Some thoughts about Crush & Lobo #1

Can Crush deal with her issues with Lobo?

Crush is ready to attend to her new girlfriend's birthday but past experiences won't let her be her best and to solve that, she will need to finally have a talk with her father.

I was honestly looking forward to this. As people who have been following my useless thoughts, I was a big fan of Adam Glass' run on Teen Titans and Crush was one of the biggest reasons for it, I just loved the amount of personality and backstory Glass developed for her and I was really excited to see how that was going to be further explored.

The future was not exactly kind for her though with Robbie Thompson's run giving her a pretty off portrayal, Tim Sheridan's Teen Titans Academy just kicking her out of the story (for the better I guess since that story sucks) and now Mariko Tamaki handling her with quite frankly, mixed results.

Let's takes this out of the way since it will be the first thing you will notice from this issue, the narration can be annoying, especially the one given to Crush which is particularly bad because she's the protagonist and her thoughts get repeated constantly. It's like Tamaki wanted to give her an unique voice but it makes her sound obnoxious and unnatural instead and this is really weird because while Tamaki has faults as a writer (plot-structure being her biggest flaw), I never felt that dialogue was one of them (for proof of that you just need to check her Supergirl miniseries).

Another problem is that the rest of the cast is just unremarkable. We're forced to care about Crush's new girlfriend and their relationship despite of not even knowing her or even give her an interesting trait. This direction is also baffling because if Tamaki wanted to give Crush an actual compelling girlfriend she could just brought back Djinn from Glass' run who actually had a connection with the protagonist or hell, just make Emiko Queen her new gal pal, whatever is bettter than introducing that cardboard of a romantic interest.

Finally, Crush's issues with Lobo feel like a step backwards because most of them were solved during Glass' run. Tamaki could have easily worked around them to create a new dynamic between father and daughter but instead, she just decided to make character regression.

Amancay Nahuelpan's artwork is fantastic though, really expressive and polished with a pretty clear storytelling skill.

Other than that, this is disappointing and I'm not sure if I will keep following it.