Teen Titans #22
Written By: Scott Lobdell Art By: Jesus Merino, Eddy BarrowsTeen Titans #22 marks the disappointing conclusion to an arc that, up until this point, had some great moments. The greatest pitfalls of this issue are the inconsistent tone, lack of a genuine threat and art that fails to capture the scope of the story.
This issue gives us a silly opening page that defeats the whole purpose of not having a recap page. Here we have Beast Boy explain the plot thus far. While DC aims to be accessible, I feel as though with the conclusion to any story arc, it’s the reader’s responsibility to pick up earlier issues.
Beast Boy delivers a couple head-shaking lines, which would be fine for an all-ages book, but within the same instalment that Trigon tells Red Robin he’ll “spit hellfire” on his grave, the tone doesn’t quite match up.
What felt like a large-scale, high-stakes battle, ended with a set of mechanical wings to the face, rendering foreboding lines like “it’s going to conclude with the end of everything you hold dear,” silly.
The breakdown between Merino and Barrows’ art isn’t clear, but in the end, the pencils are muddled in fight scenes. In particular, we don’t see specific character abilities very well, like Superboy’s tactile telekinesis.
Teen Titans #22 doesn’t successfully live up to the promise of previous issues, and unfortunately leaves Trigon an unthreatening and uninteresting nemesis for the team. Walking away from this issue, it feels like the Titans haven’t changed a bit from this encounter.
