Titans Hunt #1

It's a good thing this hunt isn't being performed by OMAC.

Can we all agree that Titans Hunt is a lousy title for a comic book? Dan Abnett either got hit in the side of the head by a cricket bat just before pitching this idea, or he came up with the title using a focus group composed of a three year old, Tarzan, and a man named "Ty Tans" in the process of transforming into a werewolf. I suspect this story will be about hunting. Whether it's performed by Titans or to hunt for Titans, I guess I'll find out. Probably both.

The issue begins with Roy Harper and a bunch of narration boxes. I admit it scared me for a second even though Dan Abnett is writing and not Scott Lobdell. Then as I began to read them and realized they were by an omniscient narrator, I felt like I had just been shoved up my mother's vagina and back into the womb. Which is probably the most uncomfortable way to say that I felt comfortable. Oh how I missed you! And by "you" I mean the omniscient narrator and not my mother's womb! The Narrator explains how Roy Harper gets freaked out by the sight of a water tower that barely looks like Titans Tower but I guess it's close enough to make Roy feel funny. Funny and scared. So scared that he goes to a nearby store to buy a bottle of whisky. He's served by Gnarrk who he doesn't recognize because this is a different universe than the universe that is trying to elbow its way into Roy's head.

Maybe Gnarrk named this series?

The name of the convenience store is "Ice Age" if you didn't notice it plastered all over every panel. Because where else would a cave teenager wind up working? Roy leaves the store with all sorts of familiar Preboot things running through his head where he decides to hang out, drink his whisky, and watch the tornado plow through town.

Meanwhile in New York, Dick Grayson is dealing with some Spyral business. He also preempts the omniscient narrator to take over so he can make a whole bunch of comparisons between life and the circus. Things like they're both full of clowns and neither one is ultimately as fulfilling as everybody would want you to believe. The group he's after deal in black market human organs and they call themselves Harvest. This is the part where I'd make fun of Dan Abnett for trying to be clever if he wasn't actually being so clever. That's clever.

Life is a circus so sometimes an Atlantean probably named Garth appears from out of nowhere and kills everybody under the Big Top. The Atlantean is also after Harvest but in a far more deadly way than Dick Grayson will commit to. Dick avoids dying and almost gets a Preboot memory as he watches the Atlantean disappear under water in a whirlpool.

Donna Troy? If so, she should be okay. She's had plenty of experience with disappearing timelines, alternate memories, and retconned origins.

Down in Los Angeles, Buddy Baker presents an award for Best Original Score to Malcolm Duncan. He's at the ceremony with his pregnant wife Bumblebee. Of course neither of them are currently heroes or ever have been heroes or know anything about having been heroes. But once again, memories of another time and place begin to seep into their lives. I think this scene matters less than the others because Mal and Karen are basically West Coasters. Nobody living on the West Coast is ever taken seriously in DC Comics.

While Dick is lounging around in a towel, Lilith comes to visit him. That's a problem because Lilith shouldn't exist. Unless she was actually Omen although why would I even bring up Omen? Those are memories that should be forgotten while the memories the Titans are dredging up are the ones that should be remembered. Just let the old Titan history pour in to replace the Lobdell, DeFalco, Nicieza, and Mackie bullshit from the beginning of The New 52.

Lilith tells Dick that he needs to find them and then he needs to find her. After Lilith leaves, Dick looks at his penis in confusion.

Lilith works as an addiction counselor. She counsels Roy and keeps a file on all of the old Preboot Teen Titans. She also talks to somebody who is always watching and trying to take the Titans. It's all a big mystery because this is just the first issue and questions are only raised in first issues, never answered. Unless the writer is writing incorrectly, or engaged in some kind of experimental writing. But then the comic book becomes Jeopardy with the answers given without the questions so the answers technically become the questions looking for the questions to answer them.

Titans Hunt #1 Rating: This issue featured a Roy Harper that didn't annoy the fuck out of me, so it probably deserves to be ranked around #20. The Teen Titans have been the most horrendously written characters of The New 52 aside from every character written by Ann Nocenti. Any attempt to fix them is appreciated because it will either end up in the Titans being fixed or just leave them with one more shitty story they were involved in. So at least there's a chance that they can be interesting. Although hopefully nobody tries to make them more like Marv Wolfman's Teen Titans because those guys were worse than I ever remembered. I never should have started rereading the 1980s run of the Teen Titans because now I remember how much I hated Dick Grayson, Changeling, and Cyborg. It's possible now that I've gotten to the issues where Danny Chase is a member of the team, Danny will make me appreciate the other characters because he's awful. He's worse than Scrappy Doo and Cousin Oliver combined.