I started out - four long issues and many moons ago - bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, raring to love this series. Like a not-great backup story that somehow devoured its A-plot.
I don’t know… Billy Batson is in a couple of pages?Īs I said earlier, Teen Titans #4 reads like filler.You’re allergic to character development.You like poorly done metatextual parody.
I won’t say the look of this issue is bad, or even sloppy - but I’m definitely not a fan. I think they tried to make up for this by adding various textures to the coloring, but it doesn’t really help. The aesthetic of this issue has more of an indie comic flavor, which matches the tone of the writing well enough. Lieber seems to have decent comedic artistic chops, but it’s hard to tell since many of these jokes (both visual and narrative) land with a big moist plop. There isn’t much action in this issue, nary a spread nor even a half-splash to be seen. TTA #4 is drawn/inked by guest artist Steve Lieber. Why else would anyone bother to keep reading this series? ART The humor in this is bad, folks… Hey, at least there’s a stinger at the end. We do, however, learn that the hologram that taunted Nightwing in the first issue was created by Bratgirl for… reasons? (Because of course, it doesn’t bother to explain why she did it.) What do we find out from all of this investigating? Nothing. The comic plays this off as cute and/or funny. And torturing - yes, they torture another student.
The Brat Pack picks a seemingly arbitrary list of suspects and spends the rest of the issue stalking, spying on, and rifling through the rooms of, their classmates.
Speaking of the “story”, there’s not much there. Maybe I’m reading into it, but who is this for? Why are these kids acting like they’re in a noir? Why is the issue commenting on itself? Why are they doing all of this nonsense instead of letting us get to know these new characters ?! I’m beyond sick of this series being gimmick after gimmick after gimmick instead of an actual story. This is three idiot kids playing detective and being treated by the text itself as the aforementioned Deadpool-esque parody. How can something provide fun metacommentary on itself without first carving out any sense of identity? Sure, you can make fun of the tropes of a genre, or even a specific instance within that genre - but that’s not what is happening here. They’re maybe going for a sort of metatextual Deadpool-ish parody of… well that’s the thing isn’t it? The series hasn’t established itself. Now, truly setting aside the B-plot nature of this issue, Teen Titans Academy #4 reads like it’s trying to be a good-natured parody of… something.
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