Written by Adam Glass, Christopher Priest
Illustrated by Bernard Chang
Published by DC Comics
“I can hear you breathing kid. You going to sit in the shadows all night?”
It was bound to happen eventually. And it finally has.
The sun is setting on Mercy Hall, and the sh*t has hit the fan.
First however, we get a whole issue of prelude. And I like the set up.
There are a number of elements to any good mystery story. The crime of course. The betrayal. A good cast of colorful characters. Secrets. Dysfunction. An unfolding patchwork of potential motive and unexpected backstory. Red herrings of course, some of them well-developed, others more than a little clever and sneaky.
Helps to have a moral compass in the mix. Helps to have a crisis of faith. Sure doesn’t hurt to have a really big distraction. Maybe a deception. Maybe a little smoke and mirror.
But in the end, it comes down to two things. A process of elimination. And the wild card. The piece of information you didn’t have, or the one you didn’t know you had, the one that changes everything when you see it for what it really is and what it means. And lays the final secret bare.
We haven’t gotten that last piece yet. But we’re close.
The crime on the other hand, may very well be at hand now. Or anyway, in its final rollout.
And as for the process of elimination…
The excellence of this book has always been to a great degree embodied by its characters. Or more precisely, by the interactions between the characters.
There have been any number of developing plotlines and subtexts between our cast of adolescent heroes since author Adam Glass took the reins of the Teen Titans, and just about all of them are addressed in this issue. Which itself is immensely satisfying, and says a lot about the craft that Glass has put into the roll-out of the series to this point. One that continues to be matched in style by the bold lines of Bernard Chang’s expert penciling. It’s been a good production so far.
There’s the bro-mance of Kid Flash and Roundhouse. The unconsummated actual romance simmering between Robin and Djinn. The distress that causes Crush, and in counterpoint to that, a rather well-scripted surprise for our own crushing and apparently perpetually-hip-but-clueless Roundhouse. And an even better scripted surprise for Djinn.
Of course, that’s all nothing compared to the position Wallace West finds himself in after discovering Robin and Red Arrow’s secret prison last issue.
You’d think that would be it. Game over right there.
And yet, because of Deathstroke, Kid Flash finds himself between conflicting instincts. And that slows him up long enough, it seems, for other things to run their course.
As for Deathstroke himself? Well who the hell knows? That’s the fun of it after all. There’s really no figuring Slade Wilson out is there?
Except it’s already been made abundantly clear that if he didn’t want to be in Robin’s dungeon, he wouldn’t be.
And sure, given his history with the Titans, it’s an easy jump to assume the worst about his intentions. He certainly seems eager enough to push Robin over his moral edge, or at least all the way right up to it.
And there does seem to be more than combat psychology going on in Damian Wayne’s head right now.
But while it’s clear Deathstroke’s version of help might not be anybody’s cup of tea, we’ve now got more than his say-so to suggest that he actually kind of likes Robin. (See last week’s Deathstroke #48 to see what I mean.)
So maybe it’s not Deathstroke himself we need to be worried about. Or anyway, his agenda might not actually be what we’d otherwise expect.
Except, that might very well be what a good mystery wants us to think at this point.
We just can’t know yet. We’re missing that final piece. And that might take any form, even something from completely out of left field. Anything is possible.
But while there’s plenty in this issue to allay our suspicions that certain members of the team may know more about that, than we, or the rest of the Titans, do at this point – still, there’s definitely something going on.
Someone still in the shadows.
Someone who either has an exceptional mastery over tech… Or an exceptional mastery over reality.
And at this point, I’m not laying down any bets on which one of those it is.
Next Issue: After the Fall
