Alright, let’s be fair about this. Having doled out a couple of pretty meaty kickings to Judd Winick’s Titans run so far, it’s only fair that I check in after a few more issues and give it a chance to redeem itself. And despite the mind-numbing awfulness of last issue’s cliffhanger (if you’ll recall, Jericho showed up trapped in the body of Bizarro-esque Superboy clone Match acting like a good guy, while the same week’s DCU Decisions had revealed him as a villain), I have to say… it’s getting better. I mean, only in the same way as being shot through the kneecaps is better than getting shot in the head, but at least it’s an improvement.

There’s no adolescent T&A or bondage wank-fodder. There’s no catastrophically appalling dialogue that somehow thinks it’s funny, or that simply doesn’t make grammatical sense. It doesn’t have the word “brain donor” in it. Best of all, it has an artist who knows how to draw. Julian Lopez doesn’t exactly set the world on fire, but his characters at least vaguely resemble who they’re supposed to, and are (by usual superhero comic standards) realistically proportioned. The storytelling is hardly the most dynamic, but at least it’s clear. All in all, the book finally has the impression of being a halfway competently put-together series, rather than a disaster of Loebian proportions.

Which is not to say it’s particularly good, either, mind. One of the major problems of the Winick run so far – which is that he simply does not understand these characters – remains, and it means that while the book may no longer be offensively bad in the eyes of your average reader, it still manages to wind up Teen Titans fans. From his characterisation, it barely seems that Winick has ever read the Wolfman/Perez series – which makes him a strange choice to write a sequel to it. The most glaring example of this comes when Flash and Red Arrow (who himself, incidentally, was never as integral a part of this team as Winick is making out here - bar the odd appearance, he’s from the Old Teen Titans days) are discussing Jericho, and Wally declares that “he comes from such bad blood”. Not only does this entirely ignore the morally ambiguous history of Jericho and his father, but it reduces everything to an incredibly simplistic moral level – you’re either “good” or “bad”, there’s no inbetween, and you can’t possibly ever change or act differently.

I mean, haven’t comics progressed beyond this sort of thing by now? Irrespective of the fact that these characters have a background of being used in a series that was progressive in terms of its nuanced characterisation and relationships, Winick’s one-dimensional, black-and-white take on things simply has no place in a comic beyond the level of a pre-adolescent brightly-coloured action series, does it? Nor, if you want to be even harsher, does a plot that acts like it’s a lot cleverer than it is – while the moment itself is nicely done, there’s simply no surprise in the “twist” ending, but I’ll bet you anything that Winick thought or hoped that the reader would be fooled. Coming at a time when the previous arc was one great big interminable “possible will-they-won’t-they enemy in our midst” storyline, the whole thing also shows a remarkable lack of imagination. If I thought there was some kind of psychological metaphor behind it all, it might be excusable, but I really just think Winick wants to keep having the Titans go punchy on one-another rather than tackling a credible external threat.

Still, this is far from the worst thing that’s ever been put out with Winick’s name on it, and I suppose there are faint words of praise in that if you dig hard enough. This merely sucks on his usual level, on a par with the likes of his Outsiders, rather than the abomination that was the first couple of issues. Hey, there’s a quote for the trade!

Tags: Judd Winick, Julian Lopez, Teen Titans
Publisher: DC