Titans #2 - DC Comics

TITANS No. 2, August 2023

Despite not containing any notable super-villain action, unless readers count a short-lived flashback to a time when the Justice League of America easily defeated Brother Blood before the Teen Titans could even break through the door of the cult leader’s nefarious church, Tom Taylor’s narrative for “Out Of The Shadows” still probably entranced the majority of its audience with a number of perplexing puzzles. In fact, this entire twenty-page periodical appears to have been penned simply to provide any perusing bibliophile with a plethora of long-running riddles.

Foremost of these canny conundrums is unsurprisingly the murder of Wally West – albeit the bloody corpse littering the floor of the super-group’s new headquarters is thankfully revealed to be a future incarnation of the Scarlet Speedster as opposed to the team’s current lightning-fast member. Such a serious mystery would arguably dominate many a less well-written publication, but the Australian author actually goes a couple of steps better by throwing in a series of criminally caused large-scale ecological disasters into the mix, alongside the potentially treacherous behaviour of Tempest; “Which is why I’m so pleased that a Titan has chosen to join our ranks.”

Similarly as engrossing though is the way Donna Troy is suddenly elevated to group leader whilst Dick Grayson is busy investigating the Flash’s demise. This sequence cleverly provides the comic with both some tense action as the likes of Beast Boy, Raven and Cyborg battle a devasting forest fire in Borneo, as well as potentially fans the flames for some conflict between Wonder Girl and Starfire as to which protagonist is more suited to supervision. For now, the matter appears to be resolved by Koriand'r acknowledging her friend as a “brilliant tactician”. However, the fact the Amazonian felt the need to question the alien princess in the first place debatably suggests that “Troia” has some issues about the situation in her own mind at least.

Just as good as this book’s storyline is Rachel Scott’s pencilling, which does an excellent job of selling the significantly sized cast’s emotions with some wonderfully expressive facial expressions. This ability, most notably demonstrated when Logan helplessly witnesses a family of orangutans burning to death before his eyes, is highly persuasive that the characters in the comic are ‘real people’ with ‘real feelings’, and resultantly adds an additional connection to the heroes as they enter this “new era for the Titans”.

The regular cover art of "TITANS" #2 by Nicola Scott & Annette Kwok