Multiple sources have confirmed a traitor among The Titans! As tensions mount and tempers flare, the team's secrets will be lain bare. With the distrust among them stronger than ever, can The Titans pull together when an old enemy of Garth's rises up from Atlantis seeking to poison the surface world?
The biggest problem with
Titans #14 is that there's too much going on. This is a common problem with team books and Dan Abnett tries to ensure that the entire cast gets a little bit of time devoted to their issues. Unfortunately, the end result shortchanges everyone. Ironically, the worst victim of this minimization is Garth, who is nominally meant to be the central character. Easily the least developed of the Titans thus far, more time is spent on the tension between himself and Nightwing than on the revelations regarding Garth's past or his relationship with Lilith.
This is unfortunate, because Garth's romance with Lilith is far more interesting and seems more natural than the sudden love triangle between The Flash, Arsenal and Donna Troy. This story line, in turn, has gotten more page time than Donna's identity crisis in the wake of the revelation that everything she knows about her past is wrong. And those are just three of the subplots that are touched upon in this issue. There's many more I'm ignoring.
Brett Booth's artwork is similarly mixed. Booth is a fine artist but his poses are often forced and the flow of action from panel to panel often looks ludicrous. Booth seems unable to draw his characters at rest. Everyone's hair and bodies seem to be continually in motion even when they are meant to be standing still, as if there were a stiff wind continually causing capes to billow and hair to blow. The inks by Norm Rapmund and Andrew Dalhouse's colors are fine enough and this is still a good-looking comic. It just appears to be off-center at times due to the continual sense of motion.
The Final Analysis: 6 out of 10. A busy story with artwork that doesn't suit the action at times.
