Titans #14 Review and *SPOILERS*

Et Tu, Pizza

Written By: Dan Abnett

Art By: Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund, Andrew Dalhouse, Josh Reed

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: August 9, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Oh, there's a traitor in the Titans and it's time to find out who!  Previously, we saw Omen visit Psimon at Rikers Island Prison, where she learned of a traitor among them and that there's a darkness coming that apparently she's the omen for........ but all of the Titans are omens in my mind after dealing with everything that got this series started in Titans Hunt so I don't worry too much about things like omens and what they may mean........ especially since darkness has been foretold since Rebirth began.  Anyway, let's jump into this issue and find out who our traitor is so hopefully we can whoop their asses and get back on the hunt for Bumblebee's stolen memory.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with the Titans taking on the Trident Three, who are Atlanteans that Garth went to the Silent School of Magic with back in the day before they were expelled for going too far and as we see from this issue, they're still going too far because they planned on poisoning New York through it's Pizza Fish pizza, which if you've seen the billboards in the background of the previous issues, you'll understand the people's love for their Pizza Fish.  Pizza Fish aside though, this issue really acts as the deconstruction of the Titans team as all of their jealousies and fears come out in the open, which started when Nightwing accused Omen of being the traitor in the previous issue, which really got Garth's dander up since he's in love with her.  This continues during the fight, when Arsenal decides to start throwing out accusations to Wally about stealing the girl he liked since we saw Roy witness Wally and Donna's kiss a couple issues back.......... and really, the team isn't acting like a team at all in this issue and it's pissing me off.  For all the friendship and family motifs we've seen through this run so far, you'd think that they'd be better at dealing with one another and I hope that there's some outside force causing this to happen because it just feels wrong.  

Throughout this issue, we're shown flashback about how Nightwing plans on weeding out the traitor with some special gear from Spyral that will detect if someone has been compromised and after everyone is scanned, the pizza poison fiasco goes into play, getting our heroes to their current predicament.  Eventually, after the team starts getting at everyone's throats, Garth has had enough and summons up the power he learned during his days at the Silent School and unleashes some magical energy that takes the Trident Three out of commission, but we also learn through Lilith that Garth had promised never to use this power again because he apparently lost someone during his days at the school and possibly through his use of the magic.  So yeah, Garth has some unwanted memories swimming throughout his head now.

In the end, the Titans return to the Tower and Nightwing goes to discover the results of the test and we find out that everyone else is clean, but it's Dick who's the actual spy of the group and he deletes the information before anyone can find out about it.  

That's it for this issue of Titans and while I was genuinely shocked at who the traitor of the group was, the majority of this issue felt like a retread of everything we've been dealing with since the end of the Lazarus Contract with the team falling apart and while that does add a bit of drama to the book, it's becoming a bit old for me and I wish we could move on to something else.  The art in this book is great, but I felt the transitions between the fight and the flashbacks were a bit jarring and actually took out some of the momentum of the book.  All in all, I like the idea of a traitor in the ranks of the Titans and that it's Dick, but I really wish the team would start acting like friends again because that was the main draw of the series to me and with that gone, my interest is on its way out too.

Bits and Pieces:

While I'll always love what comes out of the art team on this book, the story is getting a bit old to me and just seems like forced drama for the sake of forced drama.  Yeah, there's an interesting twist at the end that I can't wait to find out more about, but the majority of this issue just felt like a retread of things we've read about already.

6.8/10