Aftermath
Teen Titans #14
Cover Date: Februrary 2016
Released: 2nd December 2015
⋅ Writers: Will Pfeifer
⋅ Pencilers: Noel Rodriguez / Scott McDaniel
⋅ Inker: Art Thibert / Johnny Desjardins / Paolo Pantalena
⋅ Colourists: Tony Aviña
⋅ Letterer: Corey Breen
⋅ Editors: Eddie Berganza / Mike Cotton / Paul Kaminski
Luckily the cover is a big fat lie and the issue isn’t about more division among the Titans, really it’s quite the opposite!
We start with the team being escorted out of the prison by The Alpha Centurion and guards, as Red Robin gives us a quick update on roughly what happened. This sounds like a fairly argued intro so its ended with a bit of old-fashioned police brutality, just in case we might have any feelings that Alpha Centurian’s side is roughly right!
It would be a short issue if the team was just shipped off to jail, so the convoy of vehicles is attacked by some character, apparently Doomed is a kid infected with Doomsday spores in another comic I’ve not read. Despite the treatment of the guards Red Robin, the only character we’ve seen so far, takes time to save them. Doomed goes straight to Wonder Girl, and we meet the rest of the Titans and Alpha Centurion, who attacks Doomed. He’s generally shown throughout the issue as being pompous and a little wordy as if we’re not meant to like the character or something!
The Titan’s, now working as a team, work to first take down Alpha Centurion and then his allies the Pax Galactica. Tanya does get a lovely full-page spread as she again grows to giant size and smacks down Alpha Centurion, whilst saying what we’ve all been thinking about being a windbag!
Apparently, in all the confusion the Teen Titans fled to a safe location, as we see from a team shot, that for some reason feels the need to work in a butt show, this time from Tanya! Being outlaws has it seemed brought the team together, as they decide to rest up and work out what they should do next.
We end with a quick close of Red Robin watching the arrest of a Robin in this month’s mini-event, something called the Robin War, though that’s one for another time…
As far as I can tell this comic has no reason to exist other than to pad out the last story before we briefly pop into Robin War and blackout into the next storyline. It’s not terribly told, and it’s nice to see the team actually be a team finally, but it’s a bit of fluff. It doesn’t help that half the issue is a giant fight, a rather messy one with weirdly escalating stakes before it’s bought to an end with a giant Power Girl. I mean it’s good that we get some good Tanya action, especially to end off the month, but it’s weird when it is built around making Alpha Centurian some kind of pompous joke character.
Really it’s been an uneven story with some much set-up, with so like substance, before this stronger ending when the Titans are bought back together. The thing is the author was so set on setting up the conflict they didn’t take the time to give the baddies any kind of motivation or show why Manchester Black was doing what he was doing. It’s all built on the assumption we know these characters and just expect them to be bad, it’s the kind of thing people say when comics are reliant on years of continuity you need to know.
It’s a shame we’re moving back to “our” Pee Gee as it feels, and I could be completely wrong obviously, that the comic is moving in a better direction, but we’ll see when we get back to these next year…
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