New Comics!: The "Culling" Edition (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Superboy #9:  The most obvious problem with this issue is that we're dealing with A LOT of characters.  Between the Legion, Titans, and Crucible kids, we're juggling 18 protagonists.  We also have 13 antagonists, Harvest plus his Ravagers.  Needless to say, keeping track of 31 characters isn't easy.  Lobdell and DeFalco actually manage to make it work, but it comes at the price of the characterizations.  All the characters here, from established ones like Superboy to new ones like Ridge, are pieces being moved across a board, given lines meant to advance the plot with little left to give a sense of who the characters are.  For example, of the Ravagers, only Warblade distinguishes himself as a villain worth fearing in this issue; we know Rose is from previous issues, but we don't really see her achieve much here beside trade insults with Red Robin and Timber Wolf before being defeated off-panel.  The result is a fairly formulaic story with a fairly formulaic script.  Lobdell tries to throw a bone to "Teen Titans" readers by making it clear that the mystery of Kid Flash's past lies in the Legion Lost's future, but he never really has the chance to develop that further.  Hopefully the next issue of the cross-over event, "Legion Lost" #9, will address the mystery of Harvest, since I think it's high time that we get this show on the road.

Legion Lost #9:  Lobdell and DeFalco implied last issue that answers may be forthcoming in this issue, but we never actually get them.  Harvest hints that the purpose of including the Legion and the Titans in this Culling was because he needs even more powerful Ravagers than normal for the "great battle" set to come and Timber Wolf realizes that Harvest's control of 31st century technology has something to do with the Echo organization with which Chameleon Girl is revealed to be affiliated.  Yeah, I have no idea either.  Harvest goes so far as to claim that he manipulated events so that the Legion would get lost in our time, but, as Wildfire himself notes, it's entirely possible that he simply used his telepathic powers to realize that this claim would be the most psychologically distracting to the Legion members.  As such, we still don't know Harvest's motivations, despite his claims that he is working for altruistic purposes, and we still have no idea what his connection to the 31st century is.  The best moment of this issue is Harvest's surprising ability to hack into Tellus' telepathic link; the panel depicting the shock of the members of the Legion and the Titans was priceless.  The worst moment?  It could be Wonder Girl expressing her gratitude over the Titans finding one another in time to take on Harvest.  It seems a weird thing to identify as a "worst," but it seems totally outside Cassie's character for her to make this statement.  Before this cross-over event began, Cassie was perhaps the most ambivalent member of the Titans.  Nothing we've seen here has really done anything to show us why she changed her mind.  I think that we're supposed to believe that she's so repulsed by Harvest that she realized the value of the team, but, given that Lobdell and DeFalco haven't really paid that much attention to Cassie across this event (again, the 31-character problem), it still falls flat to me.  All in all, this issue felt like a filler issue for me, one needed to force "Legion Lost" into the event.  Hopefully, Lobdell will do something in "Teen Titans" to save this event, because, right now, it's done nothing more than convince me that the $5.98 a month I'm spending on "Superboy" and "Teen Titans" is wasted.

Teen Titans #9:  I'd like to say that Lobdell delivers the finale that I wanted here, revealing Harvest's master plan and showing his 31st-century connection.  I'd like to say that.  Unfortunately, I can't.  Instead, we learn that Harvest's "master plan" was merely to get the Legion and Titans to free the kids from the Crucible so that they can sow "fear, chaos and confusion in their wake" and inspire the public to call for the creation of an organization like N.O.W.H.E.R.E.  Um, yeah.  Are we really supposed to believe that Harvest created N.O.W.H.E.R.E. so that the Legion and the Titans could destroy it so that people would eventually come to demand it be created?  Sure, whatever, Scott.  The Titans also call shenanigans on this allegation, an understandable position since Harvest previously claimed that the whole purpose of this exercise was to recruit the Legion and the Titans as his new Ravagers for the "great battle" coming on the horizon.  Lobdell also clearly wants us all excited about this great battle, but I find myself frustrated with yet another comic that expects me to wait for years to see some plot device that isn't as interesting as the author thinks it is to come to fruition.  We also never get an explanation of how Harvest is connected to the 31st century, a sub-plot that really held no interest for me.  Honestly, I just don't know where to go from here.  We seem to have gotten my wish, that Superboy would join the Titans sooner rather than later, but I'm just not sure if Lobdell hasn't already done enough damage to make me drop these series and wait until they get a new writer.

New Comics: "The Culling" Part 1 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Teen Titans #8:  It took me some effort to get through this issue, because DeFalco fails to provide the reader any sugar as Lobdell forces down a spoonful of exposition.  We're treated to "Omen" using her "womb" to reveal the image of the Titans' darkest selves, though the result is muddled at best in terms of the lessons we learn from it.  For example, with Red Robin, Omen lays bare his "greatest fear:"  becoming who he wants people to believe he is.  (He's afraid of becoming himself?)  But, with Cassie, Omen merely states information that Cassie already knows, that her powers come from her armor and her lasso is apparently killing her.  (This moment feels completely expository, given that Cassie, as I said, already knows the information that Omen "reveals," making it news only to the reader.)  Omen fails to learn anything, really, from Skitter, who tells Omen that life on Earth is doomed if she doesn't undo her splitting of Skitter into her Celine and Skitter personnas.  Finally, Kid Flash gets stripped of his power-controling uniform and escapes, so we only get a chance to see Omen confirm what, in this case, both we and Bart already know, that he's hearing voices.  Looking at these moments, I'm left to wonder how they have anything to do with one another.  Sometimes Omen is revealing fears, other times truths, other times secrets.  It makes you wonder what her power really is, other than exposition.  Moreover, we never learn what she was doing in using her powers of exposition.  She's in theory preparing the Titans for some event that Harvest is planning, but Lobdell never draws the line between Omen's actions in this issue and how they prepare the heroes for said event.  It just feels like a vague attempt to torture them for no real purpose (other than exposition for the reader), particularly since Harvest has his lackey, Leash, merely grab them and disappear at the end.

Teen Titans Annual #1:  OK, so, even with the "Hunger Games" parallels doing a lot of the work for me, Lobdell doesn't do much to resolve some of the questions I had from last issue.  In fact, he only adds questions (and not in a "ooo, the plot thickens" kind of way).  We learn that the children held in the Colony are not only meta-humans, but also regular humans and infected victims of the "hypertaxis virus" (something apparently explained in "Legion Lost" #8).  But, we aren't even given a hint of Harvest's plans for any of these groups.  First, we don't learn why he chose regular humans (like Artemis) to participate or why he felt the need to use the hypteraxis virus to add to his Colony numbers.  (Moreover, his use of this future virus raises questions in the Legion's mind about his connection to the 31st century, as does his use of advanced technology that manages to block Gates' power.)  We also still haven't learned the point of the Culling.  Yes, he's separating the strong from the weak with his gladiator competitions in the Crucible, but we don't learn what he intends to do with the victorious strong, other than turn them into "Ravagers."  What does he plan on doing with the Ravagers?  For me, personally, the addition of the "hypertaxis virus" and, in fact, the Legion itself were distractions, a clear attempt to create an arbitrary connection to avoid this event "just" happening in "Superboy" and "Teen Titans."  Other than the mandatory "superhero team fighting another superhero team thanks to the machinations of the mysterious villain" sequence, the Legion  doesn't really do anything here that couldn't have been done just by the Titans, except expand the scale of the conflict.  In so doing, Lobdell cuts off areas of characterization, leaving the fact that Superboy has joined the Titans essentially ignoreed in the chaos.  I'm hoping that, when the dust settles, we successfully leave behind this N.O.W.H.E.R.E. business for a while and focus on the Titans themselves.  Given what Lobdell is doing in "Red Hood and the Outsiders" with the All Caste, unfortunately, I'm doubtful that it's going to happen.

New Comics!: The Teen Titans Edition (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

Teen Titans #7:  OK, this issue is more like what I thought we would be getting in this title.  Maybe it's because Kid Flash and Superboy banter in a way that reminds me of the old "Teen Titans."  Maybe it's because Bunker quotes "The Princess Bride."  Maybe it's because they fight as something like a team for the first time.  Maybe it's because I'm reaching.  But, I enjoyed the fact that this title finally felt like "Teen Titans."  I'm not saying that it's all good.  I still have serious concerns about the way that Lobdell portrays Tim, to the point where I wonder if Lobdell isn't confusing him with Jason.  Tim has always been a tactician, but I've never seen him portrayed as cold, as Lobdell does here in Tim's conversation with Solstice.  Tim exists as a character because he was more emotionally centered than Batman, who needed him to stay on an even-keel after Jason died.  But, Lobdell continues to portray him as keeping himself removed from people, a mini-Batman, dedicated to the cause but not to the people.  He feels like Superboy does to me, a character I used to know but now have to accept is someone different, despite the fact that, in both cases, I'm still having trouble doing that.  But, hopefully, the apparent addition of Superboy to the team is going to accelerate the process of the Titans becoming friends, and, in a few issues, we might start to see the guys we used to know.  Hopefully.

Superboy #8:  I think I'm going to have to re-read "Superboy" #7, because it seems like that issue and this one take place after "Teen Titans" #7.  Grunge attacked Superboy at the end of last issue, implying that he had already been sprung by the Titans by then.  (You'd think they would've managed to order these issues correctly.)  At any rate, the battle with Grunge is interesting, mostly because it forces Superboy to learn how to use his powers.  Grunge is also fun, in an arrogant, good-looking kind of way, and he serves as a better foil for Superboy (who's also fun in an arrogant, good-looking kind of way) than any of the nemeses that we've met so far.  I'm a little worried that this "Culling" cross-over event sound like a poor man's "Hunger Games," but I guess we'll see.  I'm really quite over the Fairchild and Rose stories, because I still have no idea where Lobdell is going with them.  I get that Fairchild coddled Superboy, but has she decided to turn completely against N.O.W.H.E.R.E.?  I vaguely remember her or someone else implying that she was working undercover to take down N.O.W.H.E.R.E. from the inside, so maybe her anti-N.O.W.H.E.R.E stance makes more sense than it initially did when I read this issue.  Looking at Rose, she doesn't seem to be motivated by undermining N.O.W.H.E.R.E., but, after eight issues, I'm still not really sure what motivates her.  Basically, I'm eager to see this book transition to supplementing Superboy's appearances in "Teen Titans."  I'm OK with Fairchild and Rose being part of that (though I'm assuming that they'll leave to take up the soon-to-be-launched "Ravagers" series), but we need to spend more time focusing on them and their back stories for that not to feel like an unnecessary distraction.