Written by Dan Abnett
Illustrated by Clayton Henry
Published by DC Comics
“Mother is! MOTHER IS!”
At least they know who they’re up against.
Terrific issue.
Terrifically drawn, terrifically written.
I mean, I’m ready for the action, don’t get me wrong.
And this issue isn’t that.
Even though our team is currently neck deep into Unearth orcs, that particular storyline has been put on hold this month, while this issue takes a step back to give us some much-needed backstory, specifically, the recent life and origin of DC’s newest serious, reality-threatening danger, Mother Blood.
Normally I wouldn’t be much of a fan of the revamp – Brother Blood is a classic DC and Titans villain, and he was always plenty psycho-dangerous enough – but in this case it works.
That’s in part because of the scope of the upgrade, and the ambition of Mother Blood and her new Blood Cult. Ambitions which benefit from a new, clear, cosmic aerial view of the multiverse, and the current Source Wall crisis.
That view, in fact, is a direct result of a Source energy transformation, one which elevates newly-recruited Blood Cult acolyte Sonya Tarinka into an omega-level Avatar of the Red, one which clearly surpasses Brother Blood himself in vision, in power, and it would appear, in psychotic fervor, as well.
Not good, Titans. Far more than you know.
It’s a fascinating genesis story, and it’s well told. Not only does it clear up what has been happening behind the scenes with a Blood Cult that so suddenly seems to have a new look, a new leader, and a new, pretty serious m.o., (or anyway, some of what’s been happening), we’re also given a behind the scenes view into how the whole situation ties directly into the next-level Universal threat of the Source Wall crisis, and the exact sort of dangerous fall-out the new Titans team was founded to address.
Too bad the Titans don’t have a mysterious scrying mirror like Mother Blood’s to keep tabs on what that really means in this case. Oh well.
Because this isn’t the same old Blood Cult the Titans think they know, and what Mother is, is another level of crazy dangerous altogether. After all, what is our team supposed to do with an evangelical goddess of the Red, with control of the very blood running through their veins?
Good question. But right now, that’s least of their problems. Because Mother Blood does have scrying mirrors. And she has ambition. And she has a plan.
On that note, I’ll just end this review with the exact words I used to end last month’s review.
Why? Because on the same day that Donna decides it’s time to aggressively target the Blood Cult, and M’gnn pinpoints the location of Raven’s soul-self in the Unearth dimension, the ‘Parliament of Red’ apparently decides to use Gar’s… abundant natural resources… to somewhat gruesomely convey a dire warning that Mother Blood herself is making a play for multi-universal domination through this exact self-same Unearth dimension.
So then, naturally enough, the team decides to open an interdimensional portal to a locked-away world made entirely out of Source Wall energy, across the interstitial Bleed connecting all dimensions in the multiverse, with the help of the team’s Irons-Rubel Capacitor, a device specifically designed to channel, store, and control Source energy itself.
What could possibly go wrong?
Next Issue: Let’s find out.
