Review: Teen Titans #62

Teen Titans is one of those books that has been struggling to find itself.  Ever since Geoff Johns left, the book feels like it’s been pulled in a bunch of different directions.  None of them have been very interesting and none of them have lasted very long.

I suspect a lot of this has been the result of editorial mandates.  Teen Titans is edited by none other than Dan Didio who is notorious for making frequent “course corrections”.  There is no way of knowing for sure, but I suspect that Sean McKeever gets a lot of notes on what direction this book should take.

This is another one of those issues where it feels like McKeever is cleaning up the cast before he officially starts telling his own stories.  The cast members in question here are Wendy and Marvin.  For those of you who aren’t old enough to remember, Wendy and Marvin were originally non-powered teenagers who were basically the mascots of the Justice League on the first season of the Super-Friends.

For some reason, Geoff Johns decided to reinvent Wendy and Marvin as super-geniuses and add them to the cast of Teen Titans.  Johns never really did anything with the characters.  They were occassionally seen in the background fixing something.  Their inclusion didn’t really subtract from the book, but it didn’t really add anything either.

McKeever starts the book with Wendy and Marvin very obviously questioning their place with the Titans.  It’s a fair question as we haven’t really seen them do much since they were introduced.  Since they are supposed to be geniuses, it’s is reasonable to assume that they could be doing more somewhere else.

Unfortunately, McKeever’s answer to this situation is all too predictable.  If you want to avoid spoilers, turn back now.  Although the foreshadowing is so heavy in this book, I really can’t imagine anyone being surprised.  When things take a turn for the worse, even the weather turns ominous to tip you off that something bad is coming.

Back on the Super-Friends, Wendy and Marvin had a dog named Wonder Dog.  Wonder Dog didn’t have any kind of powers, but he wore a green cape.  He was kind of like Scooby Doo to Marvin’s Shaggy.  In this issue, Wendy and Marvin take in a stray who resembles Wonder Dog from the cartoon.  The Titans even dress him up with a little green cape.

As I mentioned, things take a turn for the worse.  Wendy finally comes to realize that she and Marvin have been making an important contribution to the team.  When she goes to discuss her realization with Marvin, she is horrified to see a mutated Wonder Dog standing over his body.

The scene is grisly.  It’s also really familiar.  There’s a copy of 52 very prominently shown on the floor.  It’s an acknowledgement that this particular plot twist has been used very recently (and more effectively) in that comic.  (As an additional piece of foreshadowing, the first page features Wendy staring at a statue of Orsis in the Titans memorial.)

The scene is so familiar, it’s impossible not to draw comparissons.  And the compaissons do not favor Teen Titans.  52 spent months building up the Black Marvel family.  Even though Orsis was a relatively new character, his death was shocking and tragic.  It was a betrayal that no one saw coming.  The grisly depiction of his death was justified by the emotional impact of the scene.

Here, there is no emotional impact.  We have barely had a chance to connect with Wendy and Marvin since their introduction.  Even in this issue, they spend most of their time whining about being underutilized.  What Johns spent months setting up in 52, McKeever has to do in 22 pages.

The scene even fails on the level of pure shock value.  We’ve seen this all before.  It’s not just familiar.  It’s the exact same scene repeated to much lesser effect.  You can’t recreate scenes like Orsis’ death in 52.  Professional story-tellers should understand that.

If anything, the brutality is played up even more this time around.  I’m not sure that the artwork is any more graphic.  But the scene drags on for pages as a terrified Wendy is pursued by a horrible beast.  The end effect is neither tragic nor shocking.  It just feels cheap.  In every sense of the word.  This was a cheap knock-off of a superior story.  It was a cheap manipulation of the reader.  And it was depicted in a cheap and tasteless manner.

In the end, Wonder Dog returns to his master.  He is a new villain who is supposed to be a foil for Wonder Girl.  Hopefully it will at least set up a story in which McKeever can move the book in his own direction.  This book needs to find its own voice and fast.

On the upside, this cheap and tasteless story was well-drawn by Eddy Barrows.

Tags: DC Comics, Eddy Barrows, Sean McKeever, Teen Titans