Open Mike Night - Raven #1

Raven #1

Written by: Marv Wolfman
Art by: Alisson Borges
Colored by: Blond
Lettered by: A Larger World

Published by: DC
Cover Price:  $3.99

Mike Weaver: This issue follows Raven, formerly of the Teen Titans, as she tries out a “normal” life with her aunt’s family in San Francisco.  She starts going to high school, where she finds herself getting uncontrollably ill because of someone scanning her.  She senses this happening again just as she’s starting the painful process of joining social circles, and spots her tormentor, but she gets distracted by said tormenter striking one of her classmates blind.  By the time she ensures that the blinded classmate is okay, the girl doing the scanning/blinding is gone.  She tries to force an encounter later, and gets beat pretty quickly.  It’s revealed to us, but not to Raven, that her adversary is a part of the social circle that she was trying to join.

Mike Maillaro: Two things about this issue jumped out at me.  It picks up basically where Teen Titans ended, everyone thinks Tim Drake is dead (I actually read the funeral issue of Teen Titans before I read the issue Detective Comics where you find out that Ozymandias kept Drake alive), and the team is scattered.  Teen Titan Rebirth next week is supposed to “fix” that with Damian taking over Tim Drake’s role.

I also love that they went with a more “classic” look for Raven.  The feathered look she had been using in New-52 just never worked for me.

I was pretty torn on how I felt about this issue.  I did like the stuff with Raven’s aunt and her family.  But a lot at the school and carnival felt a little hard to follow. Some of the dialogue felt real clunky, and I was having problems telling characters apart...and if I needed to know who was who.  Wolfman never really did a lot with actual young people in his New Teen Titans, and I am just not sure that is a strength of his.  Especially thirty years later…  

Weaver: I realize that at this point, the Titans are pretty much teenagers again/still, but I have a certain amount of weariness with thrusting people who were teenagers in the 80’s back into high school now.  I felt the same level of difficulty with getting into the high school/carnival stuff.

Maillaro: It doesn’t help that New 52 is so inconsistent about the Titans characters’ ages.  Cyborg and Starfire seem far older than Raven, Robin (Tim, not Dick), and Beast Boy..and none of them were Teen Titans before New-52...  

Weaver: I also generally liked Raven’s experiences with her aunt, but again, some of it felt a little false, knowing that she’s had some experience with the Titans and other Earthlings.  It felt like they were playing up the fish out of water card harder than they really should.  A few times, I wondered if this was actually set before Titans, but they very clearly tell you it isn’t in one panel.  Possibly because I wasn’t alone in that thought.

All in all, I’m vaguely disappointed in this issue, but the positives of it make it hard to just come out and say it’s bad.  

Maillaro: My other gripe with this issue is that it doesn’t quite feel accessible.  It is very possible that some Teen Titans Go! fans make check this out.  Raven looks more like she does in the cartoon than New 52, and she’s a very popular character there.  They throw a lot at the reader here without quite explaining enough of it.  

But, I do think maybe this is just a problem of having way high expectations for this book.  I have long been a Raven fan, and this is basically the first time she’s ever had her own book.  

Weaver: I didn’t think of this being a quasi-gateway from Teen Titans Go! fans.  I’d think there would be a ton that would need better defining from that lens, since they severely dial down the messed up nature of Trigon and such.  But yet, it probably will get some TTG fans, because she is a popular character there and is front and center on the book.  I even had some problems accessing it, and I’m at least sort of familiar with classic Raven.

Maillaro: Same here.  Familiar with classic Raven, and read most of Teen Titans News-52, which was awful at times.  And still didn’t feel it was quite accessible enough.  Not sure why DC is so adamantly against “Previously in…” pages.  This has long been an issue for me…

So, scores.  I loved Raven’s new look, but a lot of the characters ended up looking the same and hard to tell apart. That had a huge impact on my enjoyment of the book.  And the story was good for the most part, but not quite accessible and definitely didn’t feel like “high school.”  I think a 3.5 for the writing and art are fair...though maybe a little high….

Weaver: The characters all looking the same confused me several times, where I wasn’t sure if someone had already appeared or just showed up at that panel. Also, to add to “didn’t feel like high school”, it’s clear that Wolfman is of an older generation where high school girl’s worst fears are getting pregnant. That felt really out of touch to modern high school life.

I’m going to bump them both down to 3.  3.5 feels too good for this.

Summary: Real inconsistent first issue.  Starts strong, but quickly gets bogged by weakly written attempts at high school drama.  Love Raven's "new" look, but the art thoughout this issue could have been better.  For Raven's first solo mini-series, it just feels like this could have been a much stronger book.   

Final Scores

Maillaro: A few contenders for next week,..kind of all building on past columns.  We got Josie and the Pussycats (set in new Archie, not Afterlife with Archie universe) or Teen Titans Rebirth… Or we can do the last issue of the long running X-O Manowar.  I actually reviewed the first issue way back in the day…

Weaver: I’ve never read X-O, so I’m going to suggest we don’t do that last issue...I won’t be able to bring the right perspective to it.  I’m going to suggest Teen Titans Rebirth, since I’m really interested in what that’s going to be like.

Maillaro: Works for me!  I am hoping that they finally have a handle on Teen Titans.  That has been a huge issue with New 52 so far.