Review: Titans Vol. 1: Out of the Shadows trade paperback (DC Comics)

Tom Taylor’s Titans Vol. 1: Out of the Shadows perhaps overcorrects on a variety of issues that have plagued Titans titles for a while, even comics in general. The result — a concern I’ve leveled at a variety of Taylor’s mainstream DC titles of late — is a book that both manages to accomplish a lot of great things and also feels rather milquetoast.

I applaud Taylor’s approach — free of angst, with the Titans acting like professionals, and presenting a new breed of superteam concerned with more than just punching bad guys; the question is whether all that can be done in a book that also grips the reader.

[Review contains spoilers]

The Flash Wally West dies in this volume — at least for a second or two, until it’s discovered he’s a Wally from the future. That’s about the extent of the angst in the book over its scant 100 pages — even Linda Park-West trying to kill her husband and then vomiting a tentacled alien boasts a single, sedate page. On one hand, I love it — some panels in Flash Vol. 20: Time Heist, which I just read, has the characters' faces bent in histrionic rictus of emotion, and so credit here too to artist Nicola Scott as well as Taylor for drama that’s more mellow than other titles' “melo-.” On the other hand, bickering is verily the Titans' love language, and without any interpersonal conflict, characters like Starfire and Cyborg slip to the background, mostly just following Nightwing’s orders like automatons.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

Taylor continues the romance between Raven and Beast Boy; it’s bizarre when Taylor has Nightwing ask them about their sleeping arrangements out in front of a crowd of people (though it does evoke Marv Wolfman and George Perez' depiction of Nightwing and Starfire’s “shared accommodations” once upon a time). This still feels weird to me, being someone who remembers when Raven was old enough to be, well, too old for Beast Boy nee Changeling; equally strange to see “young Raven” in a classic Teen Titans flashback.

New to this Titans iteration, I think, is the idea that Beast Boy can transform himself into swarms of creatures, each a “piece” of himself, or even multiple, separate, different animals at once. This is presented as having always been the case, though it’s not; I imagine we’ll learn more than enough about Beast Boy’s powers during the Titans: Beast World crossover, though as it stands that’s an awful big change to offer as business as usual.

Beast Boy is clearly a focus, both given the crossover that follows and that he serves as the site of the Titans' progressivism within the book. The way Taylor’s runs have been going, in the Titans taking over for the Justice League one assumes they’ll do as well or better than the League and not fail miserably; on the decision to move their trophy room off-site, Cyborg notes, “We decided to learn from the mistakes of other teams” (also “Because we’re not idiots”). The same is true of Beast Boy advocating for the Titans to aid reforestation where they’d previously stopped a forest fire. Taylor posits his Titans as seeking to do things differently, stopping problems but also helping find solutions.

In that same sequence, as thrilled as I was to see Taylor using Swamp Thing Levi Kamei, it sure is unusual to see Swamp Thing offered Titans membership. Again, this is likely the Justice League effect — if the League would offer other heroes membership, why wouldn’t the Titans — though I admit if a character is not an original Titan or a legacy character/sidekick, I’m not so sure they warrant Titans membership. From a real-world perspective, “sidekick team” is what makes Titans interesting; if Swamp Thing, Blue Devil, and Silencer join up, that ventures into “just another super-team” territory. (Though also that would be awesome.)

This is ostensibly a five-part story, but “Out of the Shadows” is wonderfully fractured, focused at times on the threat of a new Cult of Blood, at others on Beast Boy’s plan to restore the tropical forest or the marauding alien parasites. It’s all tied together, cleverly, in a Titans villain stew — something that involves Tamaran and Brother Blood and Trigon — but the book manages to make the different aspects feel separate. If Titans fails to offer real character depth, I like at least that the story is episodic, a five-parter and a trade collection that doesn’t feel limited to one villain and one storyline. That’s a win where other books, even other Titans volumes, have failed.

There’s much here to like in Nicola Scott’s work; I’d point out specifically tough guy Peacemaker storming on scene, the subtly smoother Teen Titans flashback, Swamp Thing and the spiny aliens. At the same time I was reminded of Barry Kitson on JLA: Year One and etc. — great artwork, but perhaps a bit too much similarity in faces and head shapes and hair. Nightwing and Tempest both sport a split-down-the-middle hairstyle that for Nightwing, at least, seems off-model; character eye gazes sometimes seem to be looking past and not quite at one another.

Again, Tom Taylor’s Titans Vol. 1: Out of the Shadows jettisons a lot of what we don’t want from a Titans title. That Starfire’s not pining over Nightwing is a blessing for the Starfire character, but it’d be even better if Taylor gave her something to do instead. Still, Taylor’s got Phantasm’s cloak hanging in the Titans' trophy room, and if you ever need a shibboleth for a real Titans fan, it’s Phantasm’s cloak hanging in the trophy room. The real test of all this will be what the title looks like once the Justice League is inevitably back and Taylor’s moved on.

[Includes original and variant covers, character designs]

Rating 2.25