(COMIC) THE RAVAGERS #1

STORY: Howard Mackie
ART: Ian Churchill and Norm Rapmund


If you (at all) have been following my coverage of Superboy and Teen Titans since January, you'll know how much I've come to dislike both series for their condescending narrative tones oddly juxtaposed against overly-complicated plots. These issues have been persistent since the 'New 52' relaunch back in September when each series relied on one another to keep a single, but painfully fractured story moving forward. Of course, two series wasn't enough for Scott Lobdell who pens both TT and Superboy - over the past month, "The Culling" has spanned both of Lobdell's series as well as Legion Lost to (not really) flesh out a story that ended with a fizzle. Apparently, even that wasn't enough and now, The Ravagers takes some of the most disposable characters from Lobdell's ridiculous imagination and spins them out into their own title.

Fan-favorite Caitlin Fairchild from Wildstorm's Gen13 takes center stage as she attempts to keep the victims of Harvest's culling safe in the real world after the Titans and Legionnaires managed to annoy him enough to make him run off to one of this other super-awesome underground facilities. Notice I did not say they defeated him. Other characters include the mysterious, lizard-like Ridge; the brother and sister duo, Thunder and Lightning; along with Terra and Beast Boy, two characters who have panel time only as fan service and nothing else. Seriously, both Terra and Beast Boy are little more than cardboard cutouts placed into panels so other characters can talk at them. They rarely interact with anyone else, and they go off on their own within the first five pages. DC pulled a big grift with this one, pulling buyers in with the promise of two beloved characters from an awesome TV show. These two will be the main reason I read The Ravagers at all, but if their panel time continues to be this sparse, it won't be worth the effort at all.

Thunder and Lightning are pretty stupid too. I mean, I'm no expert - nor even a scholar of Lobdell, and now Mackie's, work - but shouldn't these two have developed more control over their powers if they'd been fighting in the Scarlett Letter The Crucible all those years? A lot of tertiary characters are out of sight and out of mind, as well. Fairchild led dozens of kids away from Harvest, and now we only get to see six or seven of them.

What's worst about The Ravagers is that it's boring. When N.O.W.H.E.R.E. agents arrive and offer a surrender, many of the kids go off on their former captors, spewing ridiculousness like "I'll make you pay!" and "I'll have my revenge!" While Mackie doesn't insult the reader with his charmless syntax and diction like Lobdell, his overall narrative is so long in the tooth that it seems pointless to read it again. Why would I need another series about emotionally scarred super-kids to follow? I've already got countless X-Men titles, the constant awkwardness of Teen Titans, and the amazing quality of Young Justice over on Cartoon Network to keep me sane.


The Ravagers is just unnecessary, and that's a big weak point when it comes to a series that's supposed to be all-action all the time. The series is called The Ravagers, yet these MAIN CHARACTERS are not Ravagers! Rose Wilson and Warblade are Ravagers, and they appear and attack Fairchild & Co., but the entire title of this book is a total and complete misdirect. Who knows, maybe Mackie has amazing plans for this title down the line and I'll just need to sit it out and wait. Unfortunately for me, I have to endure characters like Ridge until DC gets it's shit together.

GRADE:

C

(COMIC) TEEN TITANS #9

STORY: Scott Lobdell and Tom DeFalco
ART: Ig Guara and JP Mayer

"The Culling" has been a mixed bag when it comes to crossover events. While the series connected to the event - Superboy, Teen Titans, and Legion: Lost - haven't really been the critical achievements DC probably hoped they would be (except Legion: Lost - who knows why this book is around), this crossover between the three has made for a compelling read. I mean, what better way to introduce a whole cadre of characters into the 'New 52'? But instead of bringing "The Culling" to a satisfying conclusion, Teen Titans #9 wades around in it's own ridiculous plot so long it becomes tedious.

Harvest has, so far, been an enigmatic villain. With no backstory and only minute references to his true agenda, it's hard to find any sense - and thus, meaning - in anything he does. Villains need just as much motive as heroes to affect their actions, and Harvest has no motive, so to speak. It's incredibly frustrating as a reader because Harvest simply flies away after the Titans and Legionnaires destroy his base (or whatever compound of weirdly-named locations he traipsed about.) There is literally no conclusion.

Basically, Caitlin Fairchild gets all the metahuman teenagers out of the Scarlett Letter the Crucible and the two teams go all-out on Old No-Eyes. The fighting isn't even satisfying because throughout the pages and pages of brawling, Harvest keeps blathering on about his new world order, or whatever it is he talks about. He's basically reduced to a super-annoying demi-god with no real purpose. Supposedly, he meant for the kids to escape so they can be dangerous in public so the government will need organizations like N.O.W.H.E.R.E., not only to curb the rise of teenage metahuman crime, but also to placate the job demand for silly name acronyms. Then he flies away. That's it. Oh, then the Titans wake up on some island?

If you look back at my review of Superboy #9 and even Teen Titans Annual #1, you'll see that I was actually enjoying this story more than I have for either series thus far. But this sloppy, uninteresting "conclusion" is so weak, it drags down the entire crossover.

GRADE:

C-

(COMIC) SUPERBOY #9

STORY: Scott Lobdell and Tom DeFalco
ART: R.B. Silva, Rob Lean, and Iban Coello

It came as no surprise to me when I found Superboy #9 to be one of the best issues of the series. While Scott Lobdell still finds ways to make really silly mistakes, those instances are minimal this issue. This month, Superboy, Teen Titans, and Legion: Lost are all part of "The Culling", a crossover event that pits the Titans and Legionnaires against Harvest and his team of Ravagers. Superboy #9 stands as Part 2 of the four-part epic, giving it a 'will-they-wont-they' approach to the fates of these kids against a psychopathic paranoid monster.

The Titans and Legionnaires - along with other, unaffiliated metahuman kids like Beast Boy and Terra - find it difficult to work together, let alone trust one another, a sentiment that can be easily felt by readers who pick up Teen Titans every month, but not Legion: Lost, or vice-versa; if you don't readily recognize these characters, you find yourself agreeing when Red Robin doesn't want to include the Legionnaires in his strategy, for example. The actual 'Culling' is basically your "Battle Royale" scenario - most famously grafted onto a post-apocalyptic world for this year's infamous The Hunger Games - where the children are forced to fight each other to the death in order to see who has what it takes to join the ranks of Harvest's Ravagers.

"The Culling" storyline began last week in Teen Titans Annual #1 and served mostly to introduce (and in some cases kill off) characters like Terra, Beast Boy, Artemis, Thunder, Lightning, and others - all of whom had some connection to the Titans before the Flashpoint event. Superboy #9 takes the next logical step and features the main battle between the teamed-up Titans and Legionnaires squaring off against Rose Wilson and the other Ravagers.

My opinions concerning origin stories and Lobdell's handling of the Titans and Superboy thus far set aside, if you're going to pump your titles full of fights, you better make them awesome and in the case of Superboy #9, they are. Basically, it boils down to Superboy vs. Warblade and Red Robin vs. Rose Wilson with a few other heroes helping out here and there. By the end of the issue, all the other Ravagers have been taken out, and Harvest descends to take on all the teenaged superheroes by himself. It's a pretty awesome moment to end on and leads directly into Legion: Lost #9.

GRADE:

B+

PS - Seeing as Legion: Lost #9 is the third act of "The Culling", followed by part four in Teen Titans next week, I figured I could give you a little information about LL#9  if you don't regularly read it, just in case you want to know what's happening when you pick up TT#9 next week.

Basically, Legion: Lost #9 is an issue-long battle between the combined forces of the Teen Titans, the Legionnaires, and the other Culling participants against the awesome power of Harvest, who seems to be deflecting and countering any and all attacks made against him. Also, the issue is littered with instances of Harvest referencing the 31st century, knowledge of the Legion, and Bart Allen's true history. In fact, Harvest explains that the Legionnaires were never lost - he had called for them. In many respects, LL#9 makes it seem like "The Culling" is more or less the endgame to the origin story for the Titans, Superboy, and the lost Legionnaires, providing a platform with which to reveal secret information, make or break alliances, and finish up all this ongoing-epic stuff that has lasted a whole 9 issues for all three of these series.

(COMIC) TEEN TITANS #8

STORY: Scott Lobdell
ART: Ig Guara and JP Mayer

As the creative force behind Teen Titans, Superboy, and Red Hood and The Outlaws, Scott Lobdell has a lot of room to create fantastic stories that involve a great lineup of characters that could possibly evolve into a sort-of mini-universe within DC's larger mainframe. Unfortunately, Lobdell has completely squandered both Teen Titans and Superboy with trite dialogue, a ridiculously convoluted tale about the organization called N.O.W.H.E.R.E. (a pet peeve of mine is unexplained acronyms) that captures/recruits teenaged metahumans for some mysterious use. Also, some weirdo mutant thing called Harvest is the ringleader of the whole thing.

Apparently, Lobdell is building toward some 'official' crossover between Teen Titans and Superboy called "The Culling". By dictionary definition, a culling means a trimming down, a reduction. I can only assume this is the central idea behind Lobdell's crossover because there's been absolutely no indication of what this culling actually is. This month's Superboy carried the same "The Culling: Prelude" tag as this issue of Teen Titans, yet there's nothing to in either issue that points to this event - the exception being the cameos of Beast Boy and Terra at the end of Superboy #8.

This month in Teen Titans, the team is somehow already balls-deep in a fight with Omen, a metahuman teenager who can manipulate reality and...minds? Maybe? It's not really explained, like most things in Teen Titans, so I suppose I should stop complaining, huh? Mostly, Omen brings out the insecurities and fears of each team member, using these feelings to pit them against each other. But at the end, it turns out that the entire issue was a dream being collectively shared by the team. They've been strapped to steel lab beds the entire time, all of their struggles simply a made-up reality courtesy of Omen.

Honestly, it feels like a lot of wasted time. If all of it was a just a hallucination of-sorts, what was the point? What purpose did this entire issue serve? And with painful dialogue like, "Wha--? Last thing I remember was writhing in Omens grip...and now I'm dressed like Superboy's prom date. And bound to this table, to boot. Super strength would normally be enough to break free but..." This monologue by Wonder Girl made me literally cringe while reading it. Nobody talks like that ever. It's an affront to basic intelligence to make a character literally say what they are thinking. It's abhorrent and Lobdell better start taking a look at how he treats this title or he will lose all of his readers.

Also, Superboy is on the cover, yet not in the issue. This is sooooooo aggravating I cannot tell you.

GRADE:

D