Recent Comic Roundup: Teen Titans Special

Wanted to get a quick one out today (that’s what she said) and talk about some recent comic releases, something I haven’t really done thus far. Plus what’s coming up for the site next month. Here we go. Collectors be warned: You may actually want to pick up the seemingly pointless Teen Titans Special, in stores today. I have no idea if this issue will catch heat, depends on what in the issue actually sticks, but it could very well be a key moving forward. You have been warned…

Okay, based on a recommendation from Bleeding Cool, I checked out the issue early, and hastily added it to my pull list. Based on what happens inside, it may become “hot” or rare. These things all depend on the fickle nature of fandom though; consider that this is the same hobby where The Ice Cream Man # 1 from Image became a $10 book on release day. Anyway, TT Special consists of 3 (4?) vignettes about various members during their day off: Robin (Damien), Red Arrow, and the two Wally Wests/Kid Flashes. Damien tries to stop a gang from robbing a Lebanese restaurant; Red Arrow confronts her mother, the assassin Shado; and the two Wallys stop an attempted kidnapping by Harley Quinn, then go to Nobu or Mr. Chow’s or whatever for dinner. The issue was alright, if not exactly high art, but a couple notable things possibly happened. To discuss them I need to SPOIL it, so here’s your warning, for a comic that’s out today…

First of all, it contains what might possibly be the first appearance of Lobo’s daughter, Crush, who’s joining the Titans in their next proper issue, # 20. The problem is, she only appears in one out-of-context panel. But considering how hot new female characters have been catching on lately, if this character becomes popular, this very well could be the first appearance if not cameo. I know you might laugh, but these spin-offs really seem to catch fire. Did anyone really think the first appearance of Peter Parker’s Korean-American classmate Cindy Moon (Silk) would be worth anything, until Sony announced she’d be getting a solo movie last week? Spider-Gwen went up in value AGAIN when she appeared in the Spider-Verse trailer last week. The point being, you can’t predict these things. If Lobo ever shows up in a movie- and he will, make no mistake- his daughter might too, or just become a new DC breakout. She’s already being eagerly anticipated, so just a head’s up this might be her first app. Fandom usually seems to go with whichever issue is underordered, so it’d be this one. While you’re at it, I’d also grab Lobo’s first appearance in Omega Men # 3 while you still can; it’s a steal right now at under $50 bucks, and that’s one that will go up as soon as he appears in some DC property. Anyway, there’s a couple other reasons this book might be desired. Heavy spoilers now ahead.

In the Robin story, Damien kind of/sort of/maybe kills Batman’s longtime arch nemesis, Black Mask. As I’m sure you all know, Black Mask is a big fan-favorite character that isn’t too well known outside of fandom, but he’s really beloved by a certain segment. A childhood friend of Bruce Wayne, Roman Sionis was the heir to his family’s powerful Janus Cosmetics fortune (which of course had a blink and you miss it cameo in Justice League), and went nutty when he was dropped on his head as a baby. Continuity differences change the origin a bit, but in most of them, he basically kills his parents and runs Janus into the ground by putting a killer cosmetic that burns the skin onto the market, and asks Brucie to bail him out. When Wayne refuses, Sionis goes nuts, and puts on a carved mask to become a crime lord, the mask ostensibly being made of pure ebony from the casket of his parents or something. At the end of his first adventure, usually Batman causes him to be stuck in an area of extreme heat, and the mask permanently burns onto his face, becoming his “true” visage. I would actually recommend the little-known version of the origin in the interactive “Murder in Wayne Manor” book by Duane Swierzynski (no relation to J. Michael) and David Lapham from about ten years ago. Anyway, he’s kind of a big deal. I don’t think he’s really dead for one second, but if he is, this book might be the one you’d want. Damien shoots him as revenge for firebombing the aforementioned restaurant and killing the owner, and the story just ends on that ambiguous note. Interestingly, the comic seems to definitively state that Damien is Lebanese, which would make that the ethnicity of Talia and grandfather Ra’s. I always thought they were supposed to be Arabic, with Talia part Asian as her mother was a Chinese woman Ra’s met at Woodstock (I didn’t make that up! Check out the “Birth of the Demon” graphic novel). But I guess “Arabic” is not a true ethnicity so yeah, it makes sense. But most artists just give up and draw Damien like a midget Bruce Wayne, so there’s that.

Also in the issue is the character of Emiko/Red Arrow (I’m not as familiar with these iterations, I mainly just know Speedy) fighting her mother Shado; and a tale of the two Wally Wests (one black, one a ginger- don’t ask) taking on Harley Quinn and what looks to be the tattoo guy from the movie on the Santa Monica pier. Harley keeps it classy as usual by grabbing white Wally’s ass, and the two heroes bond over their mutual experience as Kid Flash. The reason why THIS story might be of note is, and I might be reading too much into it, but the person the Wallys save from Quinn shows up dead at the end. The implication is that poor innocent Harl and/or Mrs. Waller killed her, but I read it as a hint that ginger Wally might’ve had something to do with it. This would seemingly tie in to DC’s next big event series coming in September, Heroes in Crisis, where a ptsd sanctuary house for the heroes comes under raid and everyone is murdered… and the main suspects are Harley Quinn, Booster Gold, and redhead Wally. Apparently. It’s Identity Crisis 2.0, but now with Tom King’s confusing tangents! Is it weird that the thing in the solicitations that threw me the most was the idea that Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman were the ones who set up the sanctuary house for their fellow heroes? It seems… out of character. Superman wouldn’t want to believe anyone needs help and would want to think the world is full of rainbows and sunshine, Wonder Woman wouldn’t care about setting it up for any males, Batman would guffaw at the notion that ptsd is a thing while he continues to live out his denial in his rubber play suit. I kid, but only sort of! Anyway, that’s three big things; might as well pick it up for a fiver, if you’re of a collector mindset. If you thumb your nose at “floppies” and only buy trade paperbacks, please ignore me; the latest “classic” from Ed Brubaker is no doubt waiting for you, and Doomsday Clock will be ready for your shelf in only three short years!

Speaking of, how ’bout that Doomsday Clock so far? I want to review each issue one by one until I have them up on each new release day- if I start putting them up soon I should be caught up by #6 or 7- but I don’t know where Geoff Johns is going with it. It started out as one thing, is turning into another, and is taking so long to get going that the delays are even more interminable. But I kind of agree with the consensus, which is that the bi-minthly schedule absolutely killed any momentum, and each issue is a bit dry on its own. It started out with such promise, but now I kind of just want to get to the end. It’s supposedly set a year ahead of the current continuity, but that leads to some problems. For one, in the current Superman titles by Bendis, Lois and Jon are mysteriously missing, but they’re right back with Clark in D.C., so there goes that. Batman and Catwoman are getting married in his own title, but in D.C. he’s back to living alone brooding with just Alfred, with no sign of Selina; so that’s a pretty strong clue the marriage either doesn’t work out, or they don’t get married at all. Plus, the entire thing is based around the world not trusting superheroes due to the “Supermen Theory,” which posits the United States created all the DCU meta humans on purpose to stay the world’s leading superpower. But this leads to problems, as plot points are not being seeded at all in the main titles, such as the world’s mistrust of the heroes, mass protests in Gotham against the Batman, and Lexcorp doing a corporate takeover of Wayne Enterprises… when presumably it’s only a couple months away in comic book time, since D.C. is set in 2019 of OUR time. They need to start setting it up throughout the titles now, like the shebang being kicked off with Metamorpho and Kirk Langstrom admitting they were indeed created by government intervention, and Black Adam defecting to Kabul. They’re running out of time! We shall simply have to see, but I get the sneaking sense Johns did not coordinate with the rest of D-diddly-C at all, so they’re just going to wait until issue 11 and dump all of this in the books the month before the final issue catches up to “real time.” If they do at all. Suspense!

Other books of note: Did you hear that Rogue and Gambit got married last week in X-Men Gold #30? It was supposed to be the wedding of Kitty Pryde and Colossus (which absolutely nobody cared about), but Marvel pulled a bait and switch and had Remy propose to Sugah (I refuse to call her “Marie”) and they got married by Kitty’s rabbi in the exact same issue. Well that was fast! I’m just glad to see the two of them get some love after being mistreated for ten years; Gambit was utterly character assassinated when Marvel shuffled him off the playing board by having him break bad to be sour grapes, and Rogue has been depowered and shunted in place of giving the spotlight to the interminable Ms./Captain Marvel. Come on, y’all! I know everyone has a hard-on for ’70’s Marvel because of the MCU, but Rogue was always a more interesting character than ol’ Carol, who was mainly just known for being the one Sugah got her powers from, and/or giving birth to her own son. I don’t see why Rogue had to be thrown away to prop Carol up, besides the fact that Marvel hates the X-Men and actually went out of their way to weaken the IP to get back at Fox. Which is stupid, since the merger is happening any day now (which I assured you of months ago on this very site, hint hint).

They’ve been pulling this crap for years now, like making Cyclops a traitor, a terrorist and a psychopath before finally killing him off so they could bring Jean back and not worry about a potential dramatic conflict. Look at what they made Cyclops do! He killed poor sainted Charles Xavier in cold blood, became the new Dark Phoenix, formed his own evil X-Men team with Magneto and White Queen, became a militant freedom fighter for mutant rights at any cost (Scott Summers? Really?), and was somehow responsible for releasing the Terrigen Mists that pissed off the Inhumans, or whatever. I especially resent them having Scott be the one to kill Xavier; this smacks of them wanting to kill Charles anyway, and someone in the writer’s room at Marvel saying, “Hey, you know what would be ironic? If Cyclops killed Charles! The last thing you’d ever expect! What a twist!” It’s like having Smithers kill Mr. Burns or something; yeah, I guess it’s “obvious,” but it’s still stupid! Anyway, Rogue and Gambit are now wedded, and are being spun off into their own series, Mr. and Mrs. X. In case you thought Marvel was passing up any chance they could take to milk every last bit of marketing opportunity from this. The Mighty Marvel Money Making Machine at its finest!

Other odds and ends: I did indeed see Incredibles 2 a few weeks ago, and I know I said I’d review it, and didn’t. Why the hell not, when I’m reviewing things like 13 Reasons Why on a site called Comic Genre? Well, I truly, really had nothing to say about it. Like nothing. I didn’t hate it, but thought it was boring and just kind of sat there with nothing new to offer. It felt like Brad Bird had literally no idea what to fill the plot with, so he just looked around and said, “You know, women got the vote… I’ll make it be about something something female empowerment, Elasti-girl will frontline it, it’s gold!” But they just made her the lead character, and then it had zero bearing on the plot. The twins recruit her to head their PR campaign for no good reason, and it didn’t factor into the story later. Why not pick Mr. Incredible if they were going in the direction they were with the “twist,” leaving Elasti-Girl to be the one to save the day at the end? They didn’t utilize the family elements at all, and for an animated movie, the action scenes were pretty rote and unexciting. It was just kind of dull, with not too much to say about anything. What exactly was the point of the Tommy Lee Jones FBI agent who mind-wipes the doof boyfriend, or fashionista Linda Hunt popping up for one single scene? But everyone else seemed to love it, so I’m sure it’s just me. Check out that racist Bao short beforehand though, which I insist should have ended after the Mom gobbles up the Bao, and made the audience break out into laughter. The end, cue the wacky Randy Newman music, and endless self-congratulatory Pixar credits.

Next month, I’m going to try to run a list of the greatest comic covers of all time, and then the top 10 greatest comic characters of all time. Or vice versa. Yay! I’m kind of wondering how to do it- I’m thinking I should run the covers alphabetically split into four articles, as the list would enormous and too much to take in at once. For the characters, I kind of like the idea of doing one a day for ten consecutive days, but due to how the latest news item goes on top, this would mean the list would forever after appear in chronological order instead of counting down, defeating the purpose of trying to get you to keep clicking! Oh well, I’m sure I’ll figure something out. Lots of fun ahead.