Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Teen Titans-The Hunt for Raven NCCW

Confession time:  Before this, I had never read a Teen Titans book.  I had watched the Teen Titans Go! cartoon and enjoyed the heck out of it, but had never picked up the comic that inspired it.  I say inspired, because based on The Hunt for Raven, they are pretty different.  I think Go is based on the team from the 80's. 
The Hunt for Raven was written by Felicia Henderson and illustrated by Joe Bennett. The artwork is pretty standard with some great individual pieces scattered throughout.  The writing suffers from super team writing.  It is hard to tell a story that includes a cast as large as the titans in 32 page issues and make it flow.  This is especially true when you are trying to make the team book about everyone on the team and while not necessarily giving them all equal time, making sure each character gets some developmental nugget.  The story comes across as rushed.

As a new reader, this issue is mostly accessable.  It starts on a crisis of leadership from some previous issue with Cassie being the reluctant leader.  There were some characters that I wasn't familiar with and I don't think I was properly introduced.  Anyway, the team doesn't seem like much of a team, almost like they are trying to pull together and develop the bonds that make them a team. 

Overall, it was an okay book, but I wouldn't recommend starting off here.  There is def. some character history going on in these pages. 

4 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

I read Teen Titans all the time as a kid. Find some older comics - those stories rock.

MRanthrope said...

I was more into Marvel growing up. I did read some major DC stuff though, but pretty much skipped the Teen Titans.

Budd said...

I may have to find some of the older ones, alex. Mr Anthrope, I was the same way.

DEZMOND said...

unleash the titans ... I've always wanted to say that publicly :)