Comics! Teen Titans #9

Teen Titans #9

Scott Lobdell: plot
Tom DeFalco: script
Ig Guara: penciller
JP Mayer: inks

The Solicitation
• "THE CULLING" finale!• THE TEEN TITANS and THE LEGION LOST duke it out with N.O.W.H.E.R.E. and the madman known as Harvest to stop the slaughter ofinnocent children.• This issue leads directly into this month's RAVAGERS #1!• Continued from TEEN TITANS ANNUAL #1 SUPERBOY #9 and LEGION LOST #9!

Preview

The Comic
Obviously you should read the other tie-in parts. Obviously you are missing a big part of the story. But this issue essentially boils down to Harvest getting his Culling or not. The Culling, if you remember, is a rip off type of story line from movies and books like The Hunger Games and Battle Royale. So what do we get for a conclusion for this story presented in this crossover?

The Culling is stopped. We learn that Harvest has technology from the 31st century. Harvest is human, but we don't know his identity.

So all this huge air of mystery about everything since issue #1 of this book has been about building up Harvest as a threat, and stopping the Culling from happening.

From all of this, I just feel that this book has been a big let down. I get that characters are supposed to have this air of mystery about them in order to keep you coming back next month, but it just seems like everyone is hiding something and none of the characters really know about their own background. When that one hook is used on multiple characters and that consists of half of your team, I really wonder if the writer even knows where he really wants to go with each character.

The crux of a good team book for me is getting the characters into the same room and letting their different approaches and outlook into the world around them help drive the story. Here we have a team who doesn't trust each other, save for one or two character relationships, and they are being forced to work together. And they are surprised that after 9 issues that they are finally started to work as a team. I'm not.

And this ending is trying to match a vibe from the TV show Lost. Keep the mysteries coming without ever actually answering anything directly. Only give the audience big sweeping clues that don't tell you anything and will probably never be explained.

Even the blurb for the next issue says "the mystery of mystery island." How much lamer could this lame story get?

The Art
This book was about having characters pose and look like they are fighting. With gritted teeth. Or yelling mouths. At least there were a couple of pretty pictures. But I wasn't impressed. I couldn't get a sense of where the characters were and didn't know what the fuck was going on.

The Cover
The cover matches the story in the sense of I don't know what is going on and its a complete mess. It matches perfectly with the idea of having the characters do nothing but pose with the backgrounds having no meaning though.

Grades
Words: 2/10
Pictures: 3/10
Recommend: As a single issue itself, and as an "event" with a weak ending, highly not. There were multiple times where the book referenced picking up a future issue of such and such series to see more of the story. Which tells me that this isn't really a conclusion to the story.
Buy Next Issue: I've been looking to clean up the books I pick up each month. Teen Titans, you are cut.

Previous Issues