Titans #2 Review and *SPOILERS*

Puppet Master

Written By: Dan Abnett

Art By: Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund, Andrew Dalhouse, Carrie Sirachan, Carlos M. Mangual

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: August 24, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

While I've personally enjoyed the hell out of this series so far, it seems that Titans has the power to get people to pick this book up even if the reader is still on the fence with it because while it looks amazing and features awesome sidekick characters all grown up, it also has the advantage to possibly be really important for everything we saw in the DC Comics Rebirth Special....... especially since it features Wally West straight from the all knowing Speed Force.  I'm sure we're going to be strung along before any real revelations are given, but I'm all for it as long as we're strung by bad ass heroes taking down bad ass villain........ Pretty much, I'm looking for a bad ass time and since we saw Abra Kadabra "Rebirthed" back into existence....... or whatever happened in the previous issue, it looks like we'll get just that, not to mention Kadabra is taking credit for making Wally West disappear in the first place.  Let's jump into this issue and see if the futuristic wanna-be magician was simply talking out of his ass or if we'll all be shocked at what he reveals.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with a storm in Keystone City and the intrepid reporter Linda Parks trying to get to the bottom of that strange man, who came to her from a burst of lightning and who told her that they knew each other.  That's right, Linda's really getting into obsession territory, but with her site "Super News" not really being the leader in headline news that she wants it to be, I'm guessing she has time on her hands...... and it's a good thing too because she's about to have the story of a life time.  Like I said, there's a storm in Keystone City and from that storm comes the Titans........ at least the Teen Titans of yesteryear.  I'm talking about Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Speedy and Wonder Girl appearing out of nowhere and knowing little to nothing.  That is until they go crazy and start attacking everyone.  Yeah, Kadabra is out and about and looking to make a big come back in the way of villainy because what better way to make our heroes look like the bad guys, while also calling them out than creating high-tech/magical doppelgangers of the way Kadabra remembers them looking?....... I'm sure there are better ways, but this is still really bad ass.

 

Eventually, our heroes show up and this issue begins making up for the first issue and the Rebirth issue just having our heroes sitting around and talking because goddamn is there an epic fight between the Titans and the Teen Titans that never were, while also giving us some revelations between our heroes, like Roy being compelled by faux-Wonder Girl's lasso of persuasion into admitting that he loves Donna.  We also get a strange part to this story where the Faux-Omen uses her psychic abilities to tell Kadabra that Wally West loves Linda Park, which causes Kadabra to go into a tizzy because with his future knowledge he knows that Wally and Linda aren't supposed to know each other yet........... The only problem with that is, I have no idea what this means since Wally was previously erased from the timeline and what timeline Kadabra actually has knowledge of....... I just need more information about what happened to Wally and how time travelers can know about him in the first place, if he was plucked out of time........ I'm so confused.  

In the end, our heroes seem to be pretty evenly matched even though as Roy points out, they should have experience over their doppelgangers, but who knows how long the younger versions will be around because Garth goes to the source to shut this shit down, but it looks like before Wally could push him out of the way, Kadabra got the upper hand and possibly killed Garth before he ever had a chance to prove to us that Aqualad is cool.

That's it for this issue of Titans and I have to tell you that I really appreciated the large helping of whoop ass that we got with this issue because if you could fault this series for anything in its short run so far, it would be the lack of action, which this issue rectifies big time.  We've got a great foe in the mirror match versions of our heroes, since they're not mindless zombies and actually seem to have the thoughts and memories of our Titans team...... Yeah, they're twisted thoughts that are all about evil, but it's an interesting foe for our heroes to take on.  As it has been since Rebirth, this issue looks great and this artistic team continues to be one of my favorites because they're constantly knocking these issues out of the park with their slick take on our heroes and how well they can deliver an all out brawl featuring a shit ton of characters, not to mention their doubles........  It just looked great.  If I had to say anything negative about this book, it would be the lack of information given about what Abra Kadabra's return means because I left this issue puzzled over his knowledge of the future and what that means for a character who's been outside of time like Wally West.......... Hell, I'm still not even certain how Abra Kadabra was "Rebirthed" in the first place.  This was an exciting issue though with a great cliffhanger and I can't wait to see what we get next.

Bits and Pieces:

Hey, if you wanted some action, well you've come to the right place because goddamn did this issue turn the excitement level up a bunch of notches from what we've seen so far.  Our heroes finally get out into the world and show it what they've got, it's just too bad that they seem to be evenly matched here.  Like it's been since Rebirth, this series continues to be one of the best looking titles that DC has to offer not to mention it also offers up some of the best heroes they have as well.

8/10