The Four Color Media Monitor

The Titans Tower Monitor reports that Judd Winick is being assigned to write another relaunch of the Titans starring a couple of the original members as we know them. And giving Winick the job may be their biggest mistake, as I notice that he seems to otherwise be the only writer they're willing to assign to books like these. He may use a "lighter" tone on this new volume, as they say here, but that doesn't mean it'll be any better.

There's also a reader comment here that sums up something I was thinking about recently:

See, I'm not sure I like the idea of this series at the moment. Not because I don't want to see the old Titans back together, (I was very disapointed when the previous THE TITANS story was cancelled as well as YOUNG JUSTICE) but I think DC is getting really bad with their team timing.

Characters seemed to be jumping from team to team, like crazy. The team rosters have no stability. In one issue a team is given a new roster, and in less than 5 months later, the roster is completely altered. And sadly, that doesn't leave us with much in term of character developement.

Only a couple of months ago the Titans were composed of Robin, Wonder Girl, Cyborg, Ravager and Kid Devil. Suddenly Raven and Jericho are re-introduced and a few months later, those players up and leave and are replaced with Blue Beetle, Supergirl and Miss Martian. Good additions, yes, but I wanted more Raven and Jericho developement out of them.

Not to mention some characters are going to be pulling double duty again, like Red Arrow and Flash who are both JLA members. Didn't they try this once with the Flash, and if memory serves, he had to quit partically because of the added work in involved.

I miss the times where teams invovled the same characters for several years of issues. It was in those books that we got some good character developement and stories and made these characters beloved.

Yep, that's a telling problem that not just team books like Titans have suffered from recently -even some of Geoff Johns' writing seems to suffer from the problem. I cite his run on the Flash, where, during the first part, there were some interesting elements featured, including Linda's parents, and even the possiblity that Fiona Webb, who almost became Barry Allen's second wife, might make a reappearance, but in the second part of the run just about all these ideas were abandoned and never seemed to be explored again. And that's also when Johns' run on the Scarlet Speedster's title began to go downhill. The way he handled Teen Titans was an extension of the awkward way he dealt with Flash, and must've fallen apart even faster, after just several issues. And it certainly didn't provide for much in ways of character development. I don't think even the Avengers changed their rosters that abruptly, and certainly not as forcibly.

It contradicts the whole claim that DC is really trying to be "realistic", if they can't give the heroes any proper time to grow.

Labels: dc comics, dreadful writers, Titans