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| Titans #18; October 2009 | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jul 18 2009, 04:35 PM (6,027 Views) | |
| that25lyne | Oct 16 2009, 01:09 AM Post #46 |
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Lieutenant Commander
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Who's the mother? ![]() Um, I haven't been into comics for nearly that long. Only, like, almost three months maybe? So if any of my questions are noobish, well, that pretty much explains it. |
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| craZy | Oct 16 2009, 03:28 AM Post #47 |
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Noo! He stole them! Lol. Wally's wife and mother to his kids is Linda Park a television reporter. All I know about her. You can read a lil' bit more on her here.
![]() I'll get those last two scans up, and don't worry I'll be careful next time. Plisken does have a point, about how even in the AS Raven wasn't throwing kungfu chops or anything of the sort. But I guess it is safe to say that the new writers have been taking liberty of using the AS a refference and building on their own ideas perhaps. Like you said, Raven doesn't really have a solid base so the writers are left to improvise on their own. In the end, lack of research on the writers part. |
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| Ravisk | Oct 16 2009, 07:46 AM Post #48 |
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Sergeant
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OMG I THINK I JUST LOLED till I pissed on my pants on the 4 scans of Raven fighting Envy especially the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and the 4th scan, OMG LOLS at the Shoryuken on the 1st scan, Kyo's Koto Tsuki You Elbow on the 2nd, Benimaru's Shinkku Katategoma on the 3rd and the last hit of Iori's Infamous 3rd hit of his Aoi Hana on the 4th scan, lools Raven's probably has been playing SF and KOF lately XD or she joined some MMA classes XD |
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| GhettoMac | Oct 16 2009, 12:24 PM Post #49 |
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Marshal
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Actually, she did throw down some moves, just not as frequently as in this issue. If my memory serves right, she throw some high kicks and punches with Mallah on "Hide and Seek", more high kicks with Thunder in "Forces of Nature", and then there's layin the smackdown on Slade with her powers on "The Prophecy". And pretty sure she sometimes casts her black arua around her hands as boxing gloves on some episode on some season. But even so, I think AS Raven only takes 60 or 50% of the blame. My theory is that Miller tried to experiment on Raven with her new identity/power over Pride, rather then going over board with the her AS self. Normally when you think "Prideful heroes" or heroes full of themselves (in a somewhat good way), they're usually brawlers, fighters, loners, or just have personal issues or problems. I'm guessing since Raven is now dubbed the Sin of Pride, it automatically makes her fighter. Speakin of Sin, there was something about Envy (or Jesse, I think his name is) that seemed off. Jesse sees into the head of his victim, and transforms himself into the thing they envy most, right? Yet he transformed into her mother, and I kinda doubt Raven had any issues...well, at least not bad ones, with her. In fact, Arella was probably the one in her blood family she loved, hell, she even took on her last name. Plus, Jesse states that Raven is jealous of others having a mother's love and guidance, soooooo, why didn't he just turn into one of those said others??? |
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| dl316bh | Oct 16 2009, 12:35 PM Post #50 |
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Man, I hope not. The last thing I want to see is Raven turn into a generic action heroine. That would blow chunks; she's far more interesting as she always used to be. I'm still not sure what I think about these "sin" deals with Raven and her siblings; her having siblings I can deal with, because it doesn't seem so far out there that Trigon would have sired more offspring, but the sin business I'm iffier on. I thought it was being dropped, but I guess not. I wonder if it will eventually be tied to Shazam and the Rock of Eternity. As I recall, the manifestations of the sins reside there; since Judd wrote Shazam, I'm surprised he didn't go the route of tying the concept in there. |
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| GhettoMac | Oct 16 2009, 12:47 PM Post #51 |
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Marshal
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Oh, I doubt this is gonna be permanent. She may have been comatose throughout TT#75, but Henderson didn't show her goin all Street Fighter on the monster. I think she knows what we like. Plus, we got Kurl and McKeever writting the next few issues, they know how to do Raven.
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| SparkyX | Oct 16 2009, 01:14 PM Post #52 |
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Co-Owner
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I hope you're right.
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| Plissken | Oct 16 2009, 02:04 PM Post #53 |
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Knight Champion
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I didn't feel that Miller was trying to experiment with Raven here, that he was trying to reinvent her or anything. I feel he really either A) was misinformed or misunderstood what Raven's abilities are, or B) he simply didn't realize or know how Raven would approach and fight in a battle, and so just assumed she can do martial arts (this isn't a wrong assumption in that you imagine most heroes do indeed know something of hand-to-hand combat). Raven's fighting in this issue may just stem from the very simple, very base motive of Miller just trying to make the fight interesting and exciting to watch. That may be it; he may not have realized while he was writing the issue that this was so over-the-top for this character (and I think this is especially true when you have a new writer who has only really dealt with a hero like Bat Girl, who is a martial artist). Otherwis, I think all of this was more a result of ignorance rather than intentional reinvention. In part also because I think that if you were trying to reinvent the character, you wouldn't do it in a single issue that you are writing as a guest writer, right before another write picks up the character for her ongoing. By this I mean respect for your peers. That'd be like... giving Nightwing laser eyes in an issue of JLA right before a new writer comes in on his solo title. Out of peer respect, I think the problem here is that Miller misunderstood or was ignorant of the character rather than purposely trying to change Raven this way. Now I do agree that maybe he did see that Winnick made Raven the sin of pride, and decided to use that as part of the character. But that brings up another point I was trying to make-- Winnick, more than the AS, is probably to "blame" for this. Now, I'm not going to wail on the guy, I'm not trying to make him the blame-all for everything in his series. No. What I mean is that Miller was here for one issue, that was probably assigned to him, and he's writing a character he obviously isn't familiar with. So what does that mean? That he probably went back and read or had an overview of what Raven has done in Winnick's series so far. That's what the presence of Envy, the way Raven is acting, and the rehash of Raven as pride insinuated to me. That miller, who was just doing a guest issue and had a deadline, read or went over Winnick's previous issues, and created his story based on those. Think about it for a moment--most of what happens this issue is just a rehash of the events of the earlier arc. The baddie is one her brothers, and the "dilemma" is the question of family, which she already asserted in issue #6. I think all Miller did was re-read Judd's series and take it on faith that this is how Raven should act, and went ahead with writing the issue. That's why I don't blame him personally. Can we really fault him for relying on Winnick's previous issues when he had to write this character? Can we really expect him to know 20+ years of continuity or to do that research for a single guest issue he was assigned to write within a deadline? No, its not fair to think that. As a writer, he had to trust that Winnick was writing the character the way it should be, and so we should not come down on him for just writing her the way the previous writer was writing her. In fact, I'd say that while Raven is out of character in terms of her personal history, she is very much in character for the way Winnick wrote her. The way she is here is very much the Winnick take on the character, only with more kung-fu action. So can we blame Miller for that? I don't think so. I think he did his research--the problem is that the character he was writing was already altered; he was just continuing with what was given him. His research was from whatever this series did, not what her entire history has been. In addition to that, we also need to think about the artist. And yet we are always so quick to forget them! They are important, though, as this is a VISUAL medium. Remember that all of our complaints come more down to the visual presentation. We don't know to what detail Miller wrote this issue in. Unzueta may have interpreted a lot of the imagery entirely on his own. Example--Miller may have just wrote "RAVEN punches ENVY and he falls back." Unzueta, to make that punch seem exciting, then turned it into the shoryuken upper cut. When Raven is standing victorious over Envy--Miller may have just wrote "RAVEN stands over ENVY, whom writhes in pain on the floor." Then it could have been Unzueta who decided to put her in a victory pose. So we need to consider the artist in this, too. The dialogue is a bit bland and cliched in some cases--"What I don't ENVY is how you never SHUT UP!"--but most of our criticisms fall to the visuals. And that's the artists' department. Unless we can see Miller's script, we can't assume he was in control of every visual detail, especially in fight scenes. Some writers leave it entirely up to the artist to create the smaller details of the fight. They don't usually go into great detail of what type of punches should be thrown unless its important to the story/character/situation. So to be fair, Miller may have had a much more subdued (though perhaps still action-filled) sequence in his head when he wrote the issue. Unzeta may be the one who went all out for this.
I'm not sure--is it clear that Envy SEES into peoples minds to see what's most envious to them? At first I think the intention was more that he could control the levels of envy within people--make them envious of things they weren't actually envious of, but just sort of force them to feel that way. I mean, he is Trigon's son, so the fact that he knows about Arella isn't surprising. Either way, I think the intention isn't that she was envious of her mother, just envious of the love and guidance that (some) of the other Titans have have from their parents... which already actually reveals a bit of a hole in this--almost all of the Titans' parents are dead (Gar, Vic, Kory, Donna, Dick, Roy--hell, none of them have living birth parents except Wally). But I think maybe he just meant envious of people in general who have that closeness and guidance with other people. So, no, I don't the implication was that Raven had mommy issues. Arella just happens to be Raven's only blood relative we've ever seen besides Trigon himself, so to try and drive the point that Raven needs and wants a family, he chose Arella. I guess he could have gone with something else... but like i said, most of the Titans' real parents are dead, so Raven wouldn't recognize them anyway. Maybe he could have become one of the Titans themselves or something... like a human looking Starfire (might have been interesting) or a blond-haired/white-skinned Gar (that might have been really interesting), but I do think Arella was the most obvious choice for what he was trying to do. I just wish Raven sort of realized that was the image of her mother and didn't have to have envy tell her for her (or us).
I think when Winnick did create the Trigon Brothers, that's really what he had in mind. I think it was just sort of a pseudo-reference to Captain Marvel, a character and series I think he did enjoy working on. It was sort of like... a personal reference. Like the character Silent Bob in the Kevin Smith movies; its there as a wink to fans of his other work. And you know what? It may never come up again. I mean, Raven doesn't have much of a rogues gallery, right? Like I said, Miller may have only read Winnick's previous issues for ideas. If that's the case, he probably just chose these guys because they are the only enemies he probably knows of. Its not like Batman where you have a whole plethora of well known villains to choose from--when you think of Raven's personal villains, who comes to mind? Brother Blood and Trigon. That's... about it. She doesn't have the variety more well-known baddies have, and maybe Miller didn't want to just make up a villain for the issue. The only other one that may have been used on that level would have been Psimon--but its been so long (literally, not since his first appearance) that we saw him interact with Raven or Trigon that most people don't even remember his connection to her anymore. So that's all this may have really have come down to--he was strapped for ideas, and decided to reuse a villain that appeared earlier in the series. |
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| dl316bh | Oct 16 2009, 02:52 PM Post #54 |
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Oh no. Absolutely not. He's not deserving of the full brunt of the fault here. But I think some of it may still have been him. Take the helicopter sequence for instance. I doubt that was artistic liberty or anything. Miller probably wrote that in. So he had to have had a hand in SOME of the ridiculous elements. How much of the over the top nature though is his fault though is admittedly up for debate.
Half of this is why I'm not even outright angry about the whole thing anyways. As I've parroted before, he was a guest writer. Sadly, s*** like this tends to happen in those cases. As mentioned before, even a consummate pro like Gail Simone had an off guest stint on Teen Titans (though, as I recall, Rob Liefeld was on art and that never helps anyone). |
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| Plissken | Oct 16 2009, 03:12 PM Post #55 |
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Knight Champion
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Yeah, again, my own anger about the issue centers more on the missed opportunity to finally get a look at who Raven is. And the main reason I got my hopes up in the first place was because of how well all the other day-in-the-life issues turned out. I really thought that DC had clamped down on this series a bit more to ensure the issues were going to be well-done, especially since each one focused mainly on a specific character. Up until now, they were good, but Raven just got screwed hard with this. I thought the editors were going to provide more guidance since all the others ones seemed very well contained--this one is just, insane, especially in comparison. And, again, it fails what was supposed to be the whole point of this entire exercise--to give us a chance to take a look into Raven's head, who she is, what she's feeling, and where she might go in the future. By I mean where she might go in the future, I mean as a character, not the whole move to Teen Titans thing which at least does come up. Though you gotta wonder why they would bother making it a cliff hanger if we knew even ahead of time from solicits and interviews that Raven was definitely going to the Teen Titans. But, yeah, I felt Raven just got cheated out of the character treatment Vic, Kory, and Gar all received. Ideally, they probably should have had Felicia write this issue (give us a chance to see how her Raven is going to be like). Though I imagine they didn't because she's new and they wish to ease her in. But dammit if it all wasn't just a huge let down. |
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| dl316bh | Oct 16 2009, 03:24 PM Post #56 |
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Well, I haven't read most the the issues, but did the others really give all that in depth a look at the mindsets? The only one I know really delved into things was Kory's issue. Which dealt with the ramifications of her time as an unwilling Justifier during Final Crisis and the reality that she's not as over Dick as she thinks she is. What I heard of Gar's issue didn't sound like it really got into his head, aside from Vic giving him a small talk. I don't even KNOW what happened in Vic's. Then Tempests dealt more with what he had been doing since we'd last really seen him. |
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| Plissken | Oct 16 2009, 03:59 PM Post #57 |
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Knight Champion
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Sorry, I didn't mean in-depth to the point of a psychological profile. What I mean to say is that each issue really showed you were the character was standing at this point in time. Each of them did that rather well; I felt like I could say "This is where Vic is at right now, what's on his mind, and where that might lead." I don't really consider the Tempest issue to matter all that much. I mean, he wasn't on the team, he hadn't been seen until then, and he was dead right afterward in BN. I felt almost like they did it here both to fill-up an issue and then also to reintroduce us to the character here right before they killed him off. Vic's issue was actually very good, and the best the character has had in the longest time. Might have been the best day-in-the-life so far, compared to the others It reintroduced some new insecurities about Vic--basically that he had been becoming something of a non-entity around the team and Gar has noticed. When he wasn't locked away in his lab, he was only hanging out with other meta-humans or battling villains. Gar thinks he needs to get out (he refers him to a dating service, actually) because he thinks Vic is loosing sight of who he is. What we also discover is that he has sort of a separate online identity he uses to express himself--by that I mean he's like most other people when they're online, acting more outgoing than they are in the real world, really sort of relaxing and being himself. Anyway, I don't want to give away too much, but the issue mostly deals with Vic finally getting to meet new people and how he's insecure with himself in that regard, and how he desires to overcome it. What was good about it is that it reintroduced Vic's old insecurities WITHOUT it centering on his cyborg nature. He's not insecure because he's half robot, he's just insecure because of his situation and his age and his personality and so on. All real human reasons that happen at times. It also stops from demonizing technology, in fact it sort of does the opposite. Kinda balanced approach to the issue (that newsletter he's reading in Raven's issue is related to the events in this one). It sort of twisted Cyborg around in a believable way; technology is actually a benefit to him now, and its his humanity that has caused his detachment. I think they also purposely played with the idea that Vic has been "absent" from the series in a lot of way. He's there... but no personality. So the reasoning is that he's sort of hidden himself away around other people, and only lets go online. It was good. Starfire's you know enough about, again I think it did help that we see her recognize that she's too attached to Dick. For Gar's issue--same thing. I think by the end of it, we know where Gar is standing and what has been going through his head. With the exception of Raven's and Donna's reactions to him, its otherwise well done. Most of his issues stem form the fact that he feels like he's stuck in the same place he's always been and can't move forward. Part of it because of the way the team sees him (mostly Roy and Wally--I think that's why we see Vic talk to Roy in TT#75), part of it his own unwillingness to move forward. He's comfortabel, yet antsy to find a way to move forward in life. It also touches on the fact that his acting career hasn't gone anywhere no matter how hard he tries to pursue it, and that in the end he's been forgotten as nothing more than a child actor from a campy sci-fi series. When he comes across the Titans, his inner monologue points out a lot of the mistakes they're making--one's he's made himself, of course--and how he has learned how to move on from tragedies. So in the end, he gives up his acting career by dropping his agent, and he looks out from his hotel room to Titans Tower. So, yeah, I think it was a surprisingly good issue. It had some laughs, and for the first time I think we got a better look at what Gar was going through and what he wanted to do, and especially what he wanted to prove to himself and his friends. So, the scene with Raven aside and Vic's spiel about her being a Terra replacement, great issue. I think the scene may not matter even in that issue--there is a panel before Raven leaves that she turns around to look at Gar, so I think that was meant to insinuate guilt. And we know where it looks like its going again no, so I think we can read past those parts and take the issue as it was. EDIT: Well, there is a point in the Vic issue where its implied that Gar has been using the dating service after Raven broke up with him. Its not clear--I think people read it that way, but it could also be read that Gar just picked up the card and was thinking about it. I think it'll be ignored, though that coupled with Vic's words in Gar's issue were what were making me think Gar and Raven might be set up as close best friends rather than being in a romance. Since they are just guest issues, and indications from Felicia seemed otherwise, I'm not too concerned about them now. Still, it can be a little disheartening. But I think it'll be largely ignored in TT. |
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| dl316bh | Oct 16 2009, 04:13 PM Post #58 |
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I think the whole Terra thing was just a half-assed attempt to bring her name up in the Beast Boy issue, to help transition into Blackest Night. Any time Gar's been used recently - since Blackest Night started, I mean - it feels like they need to play up the Terra angle. They're obviously overcompensating for the fact that Gar hasn't even thought about her for the longest time by bringing her up in everything he shows up in the past couple months. I honestly think that's what that scene was. I mean, seriously, the Terra crap came completely out of the blue anyways. Everyone knows it. I mean, Gar was pretty much over her. But, alas, I suppose that couldn't do if they were going to use him in Blackest Night. |
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| Plissken | Oct 16 2009, 04:24 PM Post #59 |
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Yeah, I'm inclined to agree. I also think it was just there to foreshadow and set up her reappearance in BN, again putting BB/R in stasis until afterward. But beyond that, seriously, the Vic issue was really good. I do recommend picking that one up, as gar does come off as a good guy and, honestly, that was the first time I've seen the two of them act as best friends and not just friends. I liked the end too, when he's scared of walking into a restaurant to meet his date and wishes the Fearsom Five would show up. Its a nice issue. Oh, and Vic returns to that school for disabled children and he has a conversation with Sarah Simm! That was the first time we've seen her in forever, and its shown that he still drops by to help out, though I think it was a couple of months since he last showed up. Trust me, it was good. Gar does act a little goofy, but it works because he's purposely doing it to try and show Vic how high strung, impatient, and stressed out he's become. Some nice lines between them, especially as Vic tries to brush it off by saying people are intimidated by seeing a big tin man, to which Gar replies--"Dude. I'm green. Time to get over yourself." It was a good read, and Gar comes off as great friend in it, too. |
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| dl316bh | Oct 16 2009, 04:31 PM Post #60 |
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Eh, I've got no problem with stasis. After all the crap we've been through, we finally seem to have a brighter horizon. I can wait a bit. I find the Terra foreshadowing kind of funny though. They kind of overdid it a bit. I mean, the foreshadowing only works if it's done beforehand, but the issues where her name starts being brought up released AFTER Blackest Night: Titans. Sure, it'll read as proper foreshadowing in the trade, but it's pretty funny that right now the foreshadowing is coming after the fact. Hopefully Terra's never brought up again though. I'm tired of that plotline being brought up or rehashed. The general fanbase seems to be tired of it too. It's time to just put her to bed once and for all.
I believe you. I may end up just picking it up. I'm skipping the trade; in fact, I think I'm skipping Titans in trade altogether. I'll probably try and grab #5 and #6 in back issues though. I thought of getting Old Friends, but I still remember that first arc pretty clearly. Didn't sound like a good read to me. |
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