Teen Titans Academy #2

Teen Titans Academy #2

DC Comic 2021

Written by Tim Sheridan

Pencilled by Rafa Sandoval

Inked by Jordi Tarragona

Coloured by Alejandro Sanchez

Lettered by Rob Leigh

The questions mount around the new school formed by the original New Teen Titans: What dark secret is Raven’s new pupil Dane hiding, and who’s masquerading as the new Red X?

The opening here is extremely dynamic and interesting and it does precisely what its supposed to do. It grabs your attention, makes you want to know what is happening and want to see more. I will say the love triangle between Kory, Dick and Barbara is getting a bit old and tired and if he’s with both of them like it appears than he’s a slut. I’m not sure what is going on with Cyborg either he seems more robotic and less human than ever before and it’s not really all that appealing to be honest.

What I do like is that we’re seeing more of the outside world and its influences alongside the beginnings of this training which right now is pretty much mishegas. I understand that Red X is a huge part of the story right now and Bolt’s association with Task Force X is being brought to life, though she made it quite clear she wanted nothing to do with them and this side of Waller is unpleasant to say the least, but in all honesty it doesn’t feel like the Academy itself has been thought out or executed very well as of yet.

The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented fairly well. The potential here is extraordinary but it needs to come together more quickly as an Academy, see school. The character development is nice to see as we’re getting a good look at a few of the new characters but not nearly enough of the students are being shown and utilised as of yet. Perhaps such a large class shouldn’t have been brought in all at once. The pacing is nice and as it takes us through the pages we do get to see some very interesting dynamics at play.

How we see this being structured is pretty nice to see and the layers within the story need to be broadened because we’re focused on one or two characters when there’s so many more things going on at once. How everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is well achieved.

The interiors here really have some great moments and mainly when dealing with Bolt which has a completely different feel to the work than the rest of story. Otherwise what we get is this comic book style work that doesn’t give us any real definition, I’d like to see cleaner, crisper and stronger linework when it comes to dealing with these characters. Also we gotta watch heights of the character because they’ll change from panel to panel and it’s a bit disconcerting. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a decent eye for storytelling. The colour work is beautiful and how we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is extremely nice to see. Raven’s hair for example has beautiful gradation and it just stands out.

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There is so much potential here that needs to be focused on and tightened up and quickly. If not then it’s just mish mash of individual stories playing out one after the other and not really involving any kind of teaching or getting to know the kids and what they are capable of. That’s a huge part of the appeal here to, getting to know these new characters and their motivations in being here. Plus we need the ORIGINAL Titans to be on staff, with music, science, sports, theatre and more at their disposal it’d be a shame not to take advantage of those characters.