New Titans #38
"The Spirit of the Amazon" Prologue
Writer: Tate Brombal
Artist: Sami Basri and Bruno Abdias
Colorist: Adriano Lucas
Cover Artist: Taurin Clarke
Publisher: DC Comics
Welcome to the new Titans, Static. Hopefully you don't turn into a total jerk like the rest of the team seems to be.
The Nickel Tour
Yara Flor, Wonder Girl, is having what appear to be prophetic dreams. Whatever they are, she wakes up in a panic. Not helping matters is android teammate Eva floating through her walls and invading her privacy on multiple levels, which leads Yara to yell at the well-meaning girl.
Elsewhere, Superman (Jon Kent) has brought Static (Virgil Hawkins) to Mount Titans so that the hero of Dakota City can consider joining the team. They first encounter Red Devil (Eddie), who doesn't seem to get along with Jon very well. Oh, and Static is hiding that he's having issues controlling his powers.
Nightwing (Dick Grayson) is training Batgirl (Stephanie Brown) to lead the team, but he's not very happy with her decision-making process and is applying a lot of tough love to her. Meanwhile, deep below them all, Cyborg (Victor Stone) is conducting some sort of secret experiment on something called the Heart of the Cyborg. The only person aware of what he's doing down there appears to be former teammate turned villain Terra, who advises him that keeping secrets from one's teammates never goes well.
As the day progresses, personalities continue to clash until tensions boil over and multiple confrontations start at once—but they are interrupted by the appearance of a battered female and her winged horse, stating that the Amazon needs its Wonder Girl...
Dramatis Personae
Credit where credit is due, New Titans #38 did a good job introducing the new Titans team—especially for someone like me, who's picking the title up for the first time.
That being said, no one came across as very likable here.
Yara Flor is the newest Wonder Girl, and I freely admit I don't know much about her. I was pretty thrown by just how mean and cold she came across to Eva throughout the issue, though. I understand that the android floated through the walls and just showed up in her room, but talk about a bit of an extreme overreaction. Maybe she's being affected by her dreams somehow? I didn't totally understand the driving need for water and air when she wakes up the second time towards the end of the issue; maybe it has something to do with that?
Red Devil doesn't seem to be very likable at all. I remember when he was Kid Devil, and he was so likable then. Apparently, growing older has made him embrace the devil side a lot more?
Nightwing is the one that I think bothers me the most. I get that he's training Stephanie to lead the team, and that it's serious business, but Steph has always been a more light-hearted character. And really, most of what she was saying wasn't too far removed from something that Tim Drake would say. I know that Nightwing's real name is Dick, but he was really acting like one here.
Cyborg is conducting secret experiments in the basement that only Terra—who's here as part of the Villain Amnesty program—knows about. That doesn't sound like it'll end badly or anything. Also, it makes him a bit hypocritical when he yells at Superman for not telling people what he's planning before he does it.
Speaking of Superman... he's really the throughline of this issue, as he's giving prospective team member Static a tour of Mount Titans and the 411 on the rest of the team. It's through this impromptu tour that we get a glimpse into the affairs of all the other characters. I thought that Jon was a little bit too exuberant and clueless throughout the issue; there were several times I thought he sounded more like Conner Kent than himself. Also, I thought he was Tomorrow Man now, not Superman? He makes reference to TM, and the footnotes say this issue takes place after that particular story arc of Superman Unlimited, so that confused me a bit.
Lastly, we come to the big attraction for this issue, and honestly the reason I picked the title up: Static. It's been a while since I read anything with him in it, so I can't say if he feels perfectly in character or not, but he did seem close for the most part. However, the fact that we're starting off his time in the book with the overdone "I'm having issues with my powers, I can't control them, but I'm going to act like everything is fine and not tell anyone about it—what could possibly go wrong?" trope annoys the hell out of me. Here we have a great character with his own built-in fanbase, and for the start of his tenure in the book you're giving him one of the most cliched, CW drama plotlines possible?
As you can probably tell, I wasn't super crazy about this book. It's frustrating, because based on the cast alone it should be right in my wheelhouse. But characterization of almost everyone here just feels wrong somehow, and it makes the whole thing very off-putting for me. I do get that this version of the team is pretty new, and that they were brought together by outside circumstances, but at the end of the day the Titans are supposed to be friends first and a team second. I am just not getting that feeling from this issue at all.
Teenage Angst
Writer Tate Brombal does a really good job introducing the various teammates and telling us a little bit about them, making it easy for a new reader like me to quickly understand what everyone is all about. However, his characterization doesn't really make any of them seem very likable. I admit to being only passably familiar with about half of the cast, but if the half that I do know always acted the way they do here, I would not be a fan of them. It's like everyone woke up and took their jerk pills this morning. It's very off-putting. The actual pacing of the issue is good, considering it's mainly a talking-heads story. He keeps things moving from scene to scene without it ever feeling like he's rushing, and we end with a solid cliffhanger. It's just that the character bits in the middle of it all are pretty rough.
We have a two-person art team on this issue, consisting of Sami Basri and Bruno Abdias. Normally when you have two artists on an issue, the transition point is pretty obvious. Here, their styles seem to be so similar that I never registered when the pencil changed from one artist's hand to the other. For an issue that is mostly people standing around and talking, they keep things interesting by messing with the panel structure and page layouts. There are lots of tilted camera angles to help keep the multiple conversations from looking too visually boring. Static's powers do see some use in this issue as well, due to his difficulties controlling them, and those look good overall.
Complementing the artwork are the colors, which maintain a brighter palette primarily throughout the issue. The exception seems to be the pages depicting Yara's dream, which are much darker in color and tone. Again, there aren't a lot of power effects here since it's largely talking heads, but the ones that we do see—things like super-breath and Static's electrical bursts—all look good and stand out like you'd expect them to. This is one of those issues where the colors are never flashy, but they're done well and add to the overall look and feel of the book.
Hallway Conversations
New Titans #38 is paced very well for an issue that is almost all conversations, but unfortunately none of the characters come across as terribly likable here. The fact that Static's first storyline appears to be "I'm having issues with my powers but don't want to tell anyone" is incredibly frustrating and actually detracts some from my enjoyment of the book. The book has a good cast of characters overall; I'm just hoping that their actual characterization improves and they become at least somewhat likeable, or my time with this book is going to be a short one.