Art by: Lucas Meyer
Colors by: Adriano Lucas
Letters by: Wes Abbott
Cover art by: Chris Samnee
Cover price: $3.99
Release date: March 19, 2024
Titans #9 enters the first phase of Dark Ravens to enslave the Titans when she slowly begins manipulating their thoughts and actions. Meanwhile, Amanda Waller makes a deal with Trigon.
Is Titans #9 Good?
Yep, the description above says it all. Beast Boy is still licking his wounds due to the public outrage over his involvement in the Beast World incident, so Dark Raven uses his hurt to put him under her influence. Elsewhere, Waller makes a deal with Trigon at his behest to eliminate the possibility that the Titans could sway Dark Raven into becoming good.
And that's about it. Sure, there's more to it. The Quintessence sends Hermes to warn Donna Troy about Dark Raven, but he's quickly banished by Dark Raven with a convenient cover story. We get a self-insert rendering of Tom Taylor (sans hat) by Lucas Meyer during a mildly amusing scene with Peacemaker. But all the points just mentioned are inconsequential to the end result.
There won't be much more meat to this review because, honestly, there's not much meat to this issue. It's all foreshadowing and setup, but if you look at where the last issue ended and this issue ended, the amount of forward progress on the plot could be measured in inches.
What's great about Titans #9? The push-pull tension of Dark Raven ascending to become a Dark Queen of Hell or possibly being swayed into being a good person has potential. Plus, Trigon's orchestrations in the human and demonic realms are intriguing.
What's not so great about Titans #9? The Dark Raven pretending to be Good Raven storyline has been done to death. Amanda Waller staring down Trigon is too much to swallow (plus, Meyer gets Trigon's horns wrong), and Hermes's defeat at the hands of Dark Raven is much too easy.
It's hard to pick on big problems with this issue because very little of note happens, so Taylor gets a mild pass by forfeit.
How's the art? Lucas Meyer at least gives readers engaging visuals with plenty of Dark Raven's magical shenanigans. Barring the mistake with Trigon's horns (they should look like deer antlers), this is a solid comic.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.
Follow @ComicalOpinions on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
Bits and Pieces:
Titans #9 is all setup, foreshadowing, and moving players in place for whatever comes next, but the lack of plot movement gets shortchanged in the process. Still, the potential is intriguing, and except for a ridiculous chest-puffing contest between Trigon and Waller, the character interactions serve the setup well.
How's the art? Lucas Meyer at least gives readers engaging visuals with plenty of Dark Raven's magical shenanigans. Barring the mistake with Trigon's horns (they should look like deer antlers), this is a solid comic.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.
Follow @ComicalOpinions on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
Bits and Pieces:
Titans #9 is all setup, foreshadowing, and moving players in place for whatever comes next, but the lack of plot movement gets shortchanged in the process. Still, the potential is intriguing, and except for a ridiculous chest-puffing contest between Trigon and Waller, the character interactions serve the setup well.
6.5/10
The Titans are very incompetent for the responsibility they have been given, sadly there is no getting around that despite how much I wanted them to actually be an interesting successor to JL because they are constantly being used as pawns in others' games without using their numerous resources or intelligence that they have displayed before to counter that. They haven't been shown to be successful or the best at their job so that now we see them getting pushback and struggle, we would want them to prove others wrong.
ReplyDeleteAlso I have an issue with how Gar's story is getting handled here. I don't have a problem with Gar wallowing a bit in angst, but how the story veiws what happened is not sympathetic. I explained throughly in this week's Nightwing review so I will just put that section here as well:
you remember how when Hulk goes berserk and makes life hard for Bruce Banner we want him to get back up and be happy but also understand why people are afraid of him ? Well none of that here! Sure, Gar did get mind controlled into a huge beast who took possesion of people and turned them into mindless beasts who ate people and hurt their loved ones and were hunted down by government on a global scale, a lot of lives were lost or put in danger or scarred, sure! But have you considered that Gar really feels put out by the fact that people aren't his fan anymore? Have you? Those blind blind bigots who simply can't understand that he is a hero who saved the world!(by turning into a beast who took over the world and turned alot of people into cannibalistic beasts shhhhhh). Sarcasm aside, they nullify any interest garnered by Beast World in what happens to Gar by having others constantly putting the fear people have down as something irrational and stupid, so instead of a tale of how Gar clears his image and gets back up and proves that he was innocent in this, instead of him feeling for people being scared of him (children even) and proving he is a hero and who was really to blame, we get him whining about the unfairness of his situation and other heroes constantly affirming how great he is and how "manufactured" the pushback against him is. Infuriating stuff. This arc has been done before multiple times in superhero stories so we know when a poorly done version of it comes along.
Thank you for this, as well as explaining why current DC seems to miss the point of JL and the Titans in the NW comments. I want a decent Titans book again but the Titans here just seem incompetent or full of themselves towards people who actually have a legitimate reason to be scared especially with this team's track record of traitors and how many powerful members they do have (and one of them still evil). Yes Gar has a perfectly good reason to be upset but so do the people who probably witnessed who knows what during Beast World that went on for several days. He's starting to come off as whiny and selfish which makes me wish he died at the end of Beast World and we focus on other Titans again.
DeleteYour welcome, and thank you for your kind response.
Delete