Titans #4 Review and *SPOILERS*

Throwback

Written By: Dan Abnett
Art By: Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund, Andrew Dalhouse, Carlos M. Mangual
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 26, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Wally West has come back to us and with him, the hope we were all missing.......... Well, maybe not all of the hope, but certainly a good portion because Wally West is fun as hell and I always loved reading about him.  So Wally, what's up with this Watchmen shit?  I mean, you've been back for five months now and we still don't know shit about why or how you're back and what you really know about the Universe being robbed of ten years.  Okay, now that I've got that out of the way, let's look at what we got in the previous issue.  It seems that Kadabra isn't too happy about Wally West and Linda Park possibly getting together because it doesn't match up to his version of how the future should be and it seems that old Kadabra knows some shit about the calamity or invasion that Wally was briefly talking about when he returned from the Speed Force and needs to up his time table so he's not interrupted with his big "I have to destroy Wally West" plan.  So as we closed out the last issue, we saw the villain kidnap Linda Park right in front of Wally and now we'll see what our hero is going to do about it.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Kadabra just making Wally West look like a little bitch because not only did he just snatch his lady love right in front of our hero, but not he's "poofing" back and forth around Wally, just taunting the hell out of him before completely leaving.  Now, while I love these heroes and love seeing them together in this team....... They're just a little too sappy here.  The rest of the team show up to try and console Wally and to also come up with a plan so that they can get Linda back, but it's a bit over the top with how much they tell each other that they're friends and how much they love each other.  I've loved this interaction previously in this series, but here it just comes off like a very special episode that's trying to teach us the quality of friendship.  After everyone is all calmed down and filled with love, Omen uses her telepathy to try and find Kadabra's location, but he's shielded himself and he comes up as being in three different locations.  With this, the team decide to split up and tackle all three locations at once so that they make sure that Linda is found safe and sound, but of course this is all part of Kadabra's plan and he sends his teen doppelgangers, now all super charged on techno magic out to these spots to take the Titans down.

While the Titans fight they're younger selves, Kadabra lets us in on his plan with his monologues to Linda Park about how he plans on making sure that Wally never comes back by making him go fast enough to become one with the Speed Force and he believes that without Linda Park, Wally won't be able to find his way back........... which comes off odd because we already saw him come back thanks to his connection to Barry in the Rebirth Special issue. 

In the end, the Titans are defeated by their doubles and to add to this Silver Age styled story, Kadabra ups the ante by teleporting them further away and tells Wally that they're all about to die, including Linda and he'll have to choose who he's willing to save and who he's willing to let die because he won't be fast enough to save them all........... but Wally has something to say about that. 

That's it for this issue of Titans and while I've loved this series so far, I have to say that this issue was a bit of a let down because we just had more of the same with Wally complaining that he should have stayed in the Speed Force because now that he's back he's only causing his loved ones harm and the fact that we're fighting the Teen Titans doppelgangers once again.  This whole issue feels like it's something from the Silver Age of comics with Kadabra's plan to get Wally to run too fast and while I do enjoy a throwback from time to time, the ideas in this just feel kind of stale and the story doesn't move much.  As always though, I loved the art in this book and each issue just proves to me how talented this art team is and how they're some of the best in the biz.  Ultimately though, this issue just doesn't go anywhere and our heroes came off a little too sappy with their interactions.

Bits and Pieces:

While I've loved this series so far, I have to say that this issue was a bit of a disappointment with its character interactions and with the lack of progression we've been getting in the story.  Even the big dilemma that our heroes are put in seems like such a rehash of something that we'd see fifty years ago, but I did love the art and thankfully that never seems to disappoint.  

6.5/10