Titans United #2

Titans United #2

DC Comics 2021

Written by Cavan Scott

Pencilled by Jose Luis

Inked by Jonas Trindade

Coloured by Rex Lokus

Lettered by Carlos M. Mangual

Guest-Starring Hawk and Dove! The Titans uncover a plot against them. Someone has been stealing their powers, but who? And what has it got to do with Superboy? Guest-starring Hawk and Dove.

Part of me loves that this is based off the first two seasons of the show, mainly because I haven’t seen the third season yet, and a part of me wishes that Mal and Karen would’ve been a part of this. Regardless, I think the fact that in comics we get that “truer” version of the characters is so much more interesting to me, and we get to see Gar do more than become a tiger. It just fits better this way in my humble opinion and they can do more than we see on the television show. Now I'm waiting for Doom Patrol to get the comic treatment next. So another reason to love this is seeing Kite Man, sure he got an upgrade as seen at the end of the last issue but let’s face it he needs one though after seeing him in the cartoons I love that we’re seeing him here. Again it just adds another element to the book that makes it stand out.

I love the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter keeps their ever changing and evolving personalities in the spotlight. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing more of the story the more we want to see and know.

I greatly appreciate the way that we see this being structured and how we see the layers within the story continuing to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. How we see the layers open up new avenues to be explored is fantastic in how they add this great depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is impeccably rendered.

I am a huge fan of the interior artwork here. The pencils are laid down beautifully and the inks on top of those are so skilled it looks like one person did both and that’s a great thing to see and a huge compliment. How this brings out the attention to detail is utterly and completely magnificent to see. I wish we’d see more backgrounds being utilised but it’s all good since how we see the composition within the panels brings out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story is shown. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows a great understanding for how colour works.

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There are really great moments that we see throughout the book and it blends the show and the comics incredibly well. This is so much stronger than Titans Academy and quite honestly bring in more characters and make this a regular ongoing monthly and I would prefer this over the other series every single time. I mean Karen, Mal, Bette and even Duela, Lilith too for that matter, would be an amazing set of characters for this series to rotate around. At the very least a young Kole would be nice as well. Yes I have a laundry list of Titans in my head I want to see again. As it stands this is exceptionally well written with extraordinary characterisation and some absolutely dynamic interiors which makes this the super group we all want to see more of.