Titans #13 Review and *SPOILERS*

HIVE's Endgame

Written By: Dan Abnett

Art By: V. Ken Marion, Norm Rapmund, Andrew Dalhouse, Josh Reed

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: July 12, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

While I love the characters in this book and was pumped beyond belief when it was announced for Rebirth, I have to say that this series has been a little slow lately........ Well, it's been slow a lot and now that Wally West has a heart problem after the events of the Lazarus Contract, I don't see it speeding up anytime soon........  Plus, it seems that one of our Titans is a traitor and after spending so long establishing that these characters are not only friends, but consider themselves family, that's a bit of a harsh direction.  Hopefully everything turns around and we find out that this was all a big ruse, but as of right now, Titans has gone in a direction that I find myself having a hard time being excited about, even though it has some of my favorite characters in the DCU in it.  Let's jump into this issue and see if the Titan's assault on a HIVE facility leads to them getting Bumblebee's memory back or if this is all just a stop for a bigger journey ahead of our heroes.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins at Alton Laboratories, where the Titans are just beating the holy hell out of a bunch of HIVE soldiers so that they can find Karen's stolen memory.  After all the soldiers are defeated, they come across a Mr. Binder, who seems to be the one in charge of this place and while he initially says that they're in a government facility, Lilith knows that he's lying, especially since it was full of HIVE soldiers and with that, Mr. Binder calls upon the HIVE Endgame protocol, which seems to be an A.I. system to bestow upon him a bunch of different powers to take on the Titans.  Yeah, it seems that HIVE was having Meta-Solutions take people's powers so that they could create a system that would allow their Endgame soldiers to access any power they need for any situation and our new villain Endgame is showing the Titans just what it can do.

Essentially, this issue just becomes a big fight scene at this point, where we see that the dynamic of the team has changed since members of the team have started pairing off into couples and also since Wally's heart has become weak.  It's the weak heart that becomes the focal point of this issue to me though because while Wally's supposed to take it easy, he's forced to push himself to save his teammates and it's then that we see that the Speed Force has given him a new power.  While Wally's heart is beating hard as hell, time itself seems to stop around him and even allows him to take out Endgame, but since the feeling of the book as drastically changed, Wally decides to keep this development to himself, like Omen keeps the idea of a traitor to herself.......... Well, she tells Garth in this issue, but asks him to keep it a secret.

In the end, Karen's memory is nowhere to be found on HIVE's hard drives and with that Nightwing decides that there must be a traitor in their ranks because no one else knew that they were coming, but HIVE seemed to have just moved the memory engram and left Mr. Binder there to hold the Titans off.  As our issue closes, each of the Titans wonders who the traitor could be or just thinks the idea is crazy, but Dick looks at Omen and asks her when Psimon turned her. 

That's it for this issue of Titans and while we did get an extended fight scene that usually makes me think that an issue is mostly filler, we did get to use this time to look into the minds of the characters and see what they're dealing with.  Roy's bit of jealously over Donna and Wally, Omen and Garth's budding relationship and even Herald going to Gnarrk for help since he doesn't feel like he can trust the Titans to get Karen's memories back.  So yeah, with that there's a lot of good stuff in here on top of a big ass fight scene, not to mention a new power for Wally West, that just has to end up fucking him somehow in the future.  V. Ken's art in this issue was perfect to takeover for Brett Booth because while he has his own unique style which I love, it also fits right into what we've been getting from this series all along.  All in all, this was a really decent issue that kind of gets me back on the Titans trolley again because while I'm not a fan of turning these friends against one another, I'm all about seeing how this will play out.

Bits and Pieces:

While I was initially afraid that this issue was just going to be an extended fight scene and nothing else, in the end it turned out to be a story that really let us look into the minds of our heroes and see where they are as people in this series, not to mention a bunch of new developments coming our way in the future of this series.  The art was great, the story was fun and we got to see our Titans kick a little ass so all in all this was a decent story that got me back on the Titans trolley.

8/10