Titans Hunt #6 Review and *SPOILERS*

Fighting The Future By Erasing The Past

Written By: Dan Abnett
Art By: Stephen Segovia, Art Thibert, Hi-Fi, Carlos M. Mangual
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: March 16, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Ready to continue the mind fuck that is Titans Hunt?  Well, you better be ready because it's coming at you faster than Jim if you were yelling "Free Food".  Also, when I say "mind fuck" when referring to this title, I don't necessarily mean that as a bad thing, even though I wasn't a huge fan of the previous issue, I only mean that this story is dealing with some hardcore timeline altering shit and if it's not done right, it will be a total mess, but if everything works out, it might also be the thing that really connects the previous continuity before the New 52 to today's comics in a way that is really satisfying........ Oh god, let's hope for the best.  In the previous issue, Roy and Gnarrk went to Lilith Clay, only to find a ravaging Hawk, who comes off like Roy did him wrong at some point in time because he starts bashing Roy in his jerk off face.  Donna, Dick and Garth are battling the beast servant of Mr. Twister: Mammoth, while Bumble Bee is getting the lowdown about Mal's past from Mad Mod and Mal is singing into Mr. Twister's bone organ............ which is way less sexier than it sounds.  Let's see what all of this has to do with our heroes being the Teen Titans five years ago.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins right where we left off with Mal singing into Mr. Twister's bone organ........ shit, I already made that joke.......... Well........ he's singing and Mr. Twister is delighted...... and from there we break off to tell our separate stories about our Titan heroes.  As for Dick, Donna and Garth, well nothing really goes on with that except for them battling Mammoth the entire issue, with Donna talking about what kind of sweet ass warrior she is and eventually they overcome the villain by using teamwork and set out find where that sound is coming from that they're all hearing, but it shouldn't be too difficult because they see a strange energy being shot off into the sky just a little bit away.  

Back at the hospital, where Mal was supposed to be, Bumble Bee is finding out from Neil Richards (Mad Mod) all about her husband's past with the Teen Titans and how that involves the somehow now demonic figure of Mr. Twister.  It turns out that Mr. Twister is apparently a lot like Freddy Krueger and in order for him to be real........ I guess, you have to remember him, but since our heroes defeated him five years ago and had this knowledge, they had Lilith erase their memories of the villain and of their time together as a way to make sure that he could never resurface........ but again, just like Freddy Krueger, Mr. Twister found a way to break through to this reality and start whispering in our heroes' ears as a way to make him stronger........... I guess.  It's all very weird and since Donna Troy wasn't created five years ago and Don Hall (Dove) died more than five years ago, I have no idea how any of this works........ especially since Hawk and Dove seem to have no memory at all of Dawn Granger replacing Don.  I really hope that this is explained and not simply swept under the rug because it's inconvenient to have to talk about the continuity that was established in the New 52, when they want to find a way to bridge the continuities for future story telling.  Our time with Mad Mod and Bumble Bee isn't all hot cocoa and storytelling though because as soon as Neil Richards finds out that Bumble Bee wasn't given powers by Mr. Twister....... because apparently that's something that he does according to Neil, he excuses himself from Bumble Bee to go and make a call and we find out that surprisingly, Mad Mod isn't on the up and up because he orders the deaths of the Teen Titans and the last that we see of the character he goes back to Bumble Bee with a gun in his hand.

In the end, we head over to Lilith Clay's addiction center, where our heroes are just beating the holy hell out of each other........... without any real explanation about why........... until they just simply stop fighting and Lilith decides to let them in on their shared history and how she erased their minds and all that.  This is where we get the backstory about why none of these heroes remember one another, but again, the fact that Don Hall died before all of this went down.......... it just rubs me the wrong way and the fact that Lilith just keeps pointing at Dawn Granger and saying that she's not supposed to be there doesn't feel like there's much of an explanation about her either.  It's all very weird and I hope to whatever god that you want to believe in that we get a satisfying conclusion to this story because as of right now we just have too many loose ends that nobody seems to want to talk about.  As our issue closes, we see that Neil Richards' call made it to someone because our Titans are confronted by two old school villains of theirs, recreated for this in the form of Honeybun and Ding Dong Daddy and they and Neil Richards seem to be a part of the same organization called Diablo and it also seems that their mission statement at this point in time is "Death to all Titans".  

That's it for this issue of Titans Hunt and even though we get a lot of explanation about what's going on in this series, it seems almost like our characters were talking a lot, but not really saying anything because overall, even with this pseudo explanation of the series.......... nothing seems to make sense.  On top of still not being sure about what's actually going on in this story, now we've got these re-imagined Teen Titans villains entering the story, who seem to want to save the world from Mr. Twister by killing his doorway into it and that just happens to be our heroes, so at this point I'm completely lost with what's going on because even though it appeared that reality itself was changed in the previous issue instead of our heroes simply having their minds wiped, here it seems that a shit ton of people know what's going down.............. and, and, and.

We've got two issues left to this series and I don't know how everything is going to be tied up so that this story makes sense, I just hope that Dan Abnett does it because we have the Titans coming into Rebirth and I don't want to start out whatever that is with continuity that doesn't make any sense.  As always though the art in this series was great and the colors really made every page interesting to look at with how vibrant it made every character look.  All in all, there is some stuff in this issue that's really fun on top of the awesome art and there's still a possibility that all my gripes could be explained away by the end of the series and because of that I could still allow myself to have a good time while reading this, even with the problems that it's created.

Bits and Pieces:

In this issue of Titans Hunt we get a explanation about what's going on in this series...... kinda.  Yeah, our characters talk a whole lot, but in the end I'm still left scratching my head at the inconsistencies with the New 52 continuity and with what this series tries to convey.  It's not a bad issue, especially if everything is cleared up in the next two issues, it's just not being very forthcoming with it's information about how reality, or our heroes' minds or time itself was actually affected because with every issue it seems that it could go between either of those things when talking about why none of our heroes remember being Titans.  The art was fantastic though in this issue and I still enjoy reading about the Titans that never were.

6/10