DCU Comic Book Reviews

TITANS EAST SPECIAL

The Fickle Hand, Part 1:  Go East, Young Man

January 2008

Written by Judd Winick

Pencils by Ian Churchill

Inks by Norm Rapmund, Andy Lanning, Jon Sibal

Cover by Ian Churchill

Synopsis

Then...The Teen Titans battle the Joker, Bizarro, and Gorilla Grodd to save pop singer Jenni.  Now...Victor Stone (aka Cyborg) tries to reunite the Titans, but they turn him down for various reasons.  So, Cyborg decides to recruit some new superhero teenagers, including Power Boy, Hawk and Dove, Anima, Little Barda, Son of Vulcan, and Lagoon Boy, as Titans East.  On their first day, Cyborg assigns the team a training mission.  In the middle of fighting each other, Power Boy is discovered dead, impaled through the chest.  The rest of the team is then attacked.  When Cyborg reaches them, he is literally bombed from above, leaving his body destroyed in a vast crater beside the bodies of Titans East. 

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

There are two parts to this issue.  The first part is useless.  I am not even sure what it is supposed to do.  My first reaction is that it is meant to show how much the original Titans were the perfect combination of family and teammates, something that can not be duplicated no matter how much Cyborg tries.  And, if that was the reason for the flashback, it does make sense.  I am just not sure it works.  In fact, for most people who will buy this issue, they would already know all of this because they would have been fans of the original series.  The sequence doesn’t add anything new to what we already know of the original Titans.  Therefore, there really is no reason to revisit that past, unless it has something specific to do with the killings at the end of the issue.  And unless the Joker or Bizarro (or even Jenni, although that is a stretch) is shown to be the one who killed the new members, I can’t imagine it does.  So, it is a sequence that will be forgotten as the Titans get back together. 

The second part is also largely useless.  Really, it is just an exercise of writing characters in attempt to get us to care about them before they are killed.  But in the space of 22 pages, it can’t be done.  Winick tries, but it has hard to generate sympathy for any of the characters, let alone Power Boy, who was not portrayed nice at all either in Supergirl or even this issue.  Actually, thinking about it, why would Cyborg want Power Boy on the team, especially since he knows what Power Boy tries to Supergirl?  Cyborg even refers to it in the dialogue?  So, Cyborg is willing to let a stalker and potential rapist on the team?  Does that make sense?

I will say this, Winick writes a better Bizarro than most.  At least he understands the concept that everything Bizarro speaks is supposed to taken to be the opposite of what he means. 

The cover states:  “Who Will Die?”  When Power Boy first appeared, it was fairly obvious that he was the one slated to die.  The way in which he first appeared just screamed out:  he is going to die!  Of course, based on the ending, the cover blurb is a cheat because it looks like they all die. 

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