Review: DC K.O.: Titans trade paperback (DC Comics)

If you did not know that the Titans were friends, John Layman’s DC K.O.: Titans takes every opportunity to remind you.

This volume comes at the end of Layman’s unremarkable Titans run and it’s a full five issues to tie into a DC crossover event, so odds were somewhat against this book from the jump. And it has its moments, sure, but those are largely in the form of continuity notes and premises with big potential that the book doesn’t ultimately take advantage of.

So here’s another where only completists need apply. DC K.O.: Justice League Unlimited at least had going for it that there’s series volumes before and after, so maybe you don’t want to leave a hole in your collection. For DC K.O.: Titans, I can understand the impulse to skip this one and head for next volume’s new creative team relaunch.

[Review contains spoilers]

There’s no small amount of support to be found among the Titans set. Beast Boy Gar Logan reassures Raven that they’ll be successful in their mission, and she praises his optimism and agrees she’ll follow his lead. A few pages later, Donna Troy is worrying over the Titans' separation and her leadership, and Red Arrow Roy Harper reassures her she’s “doing great.” Later, Raven again expresses concern over their friends and Nightwing assuages her.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

It’s an early indication of the tenor of the book. Maybe you don’t have a Titans book without angst, maybe the difference between a Titans book and the Justice League is a bit of soapiness, but the emotions Layman evokes are manufactured — it’s Donna and Raven doubting themselves unnecessarily so others can correct them. That’s not much the audience can join in with, and unfortunately here it ends up with the female Titans being the worriers and the male Titans being the founts of wisdom (see also Beast Girl saving the day and then Beast Boy cautioning her to be careful with her powers).

That’s unfortunate because there’s no shortage of promising ideas here. Rogue Titan Terra is on Gemworld — that’s a brilliant mixing of franchises that I’m amazed hasn’t been done before. Darkseid’s daughter Grail is here, always fun, and in space Layman sets up a Justice League Odyssey reunion with Starfire, Blackfire, and Green Lantern Jessica Cruz.

But the execution doesn’t live up. Nightwing and Raven know their former enemy Terra will be super-powerful on Gemworld, so they bring her with them essentially to appeal to Terra’s better nature while she has the upper hand. That’s a Titans-esque idea, but it has a lot of holes, and even more so when you consider the Titans decide to attempt this during a crisis-level evacuation of Earth! Layman’s got to wrap things up where he can, I grant, plus leading in to Tate Brombal’s New Titans run to come, but it seemed the Titans were stretching magnanimity to recklessness.

The gambit works, of course. But given the historic place Terra and her betrayal hold for the Titans, and her various bad deeds across a variety of continuities, that Layman’s Nightwing and Raven essentially talk Terra over to the side of angels in the span of a page seems very swift, much faster and easier than the significance dictates. On the plus side, Layman makes explicit what’s been uncertain for a bit, that indeed Terra did die in “Judas Contract” but has somehow returned to life (a non-answer answer, but at least we know “Judas Contract” stands).

To DC K.O.: Titans' credit, the book feels full, Layman bouncing between five different ongoing storylines. At points I had to flip back to remember where we’d left this or that hero, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, among the book’s most striking images is Granny Goodness and the Female Furies attacking Starfire’s space armada, and I kept flipping back to remember if she’d defeated them; it happens essentially off-screen when the Green Lantern Corps shows up. Speaking of things that happened or didn’t, in the end Layman manages a Justice League Odyssey reunion and then does nothing with it; they’re just greeting each other once the threat is over.

The book ends with the Titans Annual (2025), Phil Jimenez establishing (once and for all?) Donna Troy’s origin. Good on Jimenez, this one got me teary at the end; I was here some 30 years ago for Total Chaos and the birth of Donna’s son Robert, through Team Titans (with Jimenez), and Robert’s unceremonious death and the sequence of JLA/Titans that Jimenez pencilled and references here, so the emotion in Donna confronting it all is entirely earned.

I was especially glad to be moved by the end because I did consider at points if Jimenez had more pages than story. There’s a wordy scene where Donna is listing all the female Titans and comparing them to individual goddesses that I wondered if Jimenez' interest outpaced the audience’s. The bit where Wonder Girl Donna Troy tells off Batman is fun, if not original, but I was incredulous at some of Speedy Roy Harper’s “locker room talk” around young Donna. The larger premise seemed far-fetched, too, that Donna’s biological father’s partner, Carlos, would send her his letters as if the father was still alive, rather than just contacting Donna to tell her that her father had died but that Carlos had the letters to share.

It’s a high note for DC K.O.: Titans to go out on, even if not a high note for Titans series overall. Must the show go on, I ask again, as I did in my review of DC K.O.: Flash. Obviously DC sold at least a copy of John Layman’s Titans books, because here we are, though whether this was a good thing in the grand scheme of the comics-verse or if DC ought have paused Titans between Absolute Power and now is up for debate. It’s so easy to do the Titans books badly; hopefully in the DC Next Level era, they’re better.

[Includes original and variant covers]

Rating 2.0