The Four Color Media Monitor

USA Today wrote about the new Ravagers series, which features rebooted takes on a few of the former Teen Titans with Caitlin Fairchild of the former Wildstorm universe's Gen 13 series added. It's written by Howard Mackie, who stumbled over a decade ago with the botched Spider-Man relaunch from 1998. And they say:

The fact that they're even alive in Mackie and artist Ian Churchill's brand-new DC Comics title arriving Wednesday is a miracle, after having survived the events of the recent "The Culling" crossover in Teen Titans, Legion Lost and Superboy.

"The Culling" centered on DC's teen superheroes having to fight their way out of the Colony and the Crucible, where Harvest, the head of the organization N.O.W.H.E.R.E., had been keeping captured metahuman kids, training them and forcing each to battle their peers, Hunger Games style, to see who would be in Harvest's group of Ravagers.

With a story title and premise like what the Culling had, clearly, nobody who avoided the new Titans series missed much of anything.

The group — which Mackie prefers to call them, as he's loath to use the T-word — comprises new DC heroes as well as those that are being reintroduced into the revamped universe, such as old Teen Titans members Terra and Beast Boy.

The de facto leader is Caitlin Fairchild, who first appeared in Gen 13 comics back in the 1990s and appeared in recent issues of Superboy as a former N.O.W.H.E.R.E. scientist. She's super-smart but also has the power to increase her mass and strength to become a muscular powerhouse able to put a beatdown on the likes of Superboy.

So now Gar Logan is a refugee from a demonic lab experiment instead of a youngster who received his powers from an experiment his father ran that was meant to save his life from an illness in the Doom Patrol back in 1965. I don't see much humor coming from a role like this, and I'm not sure why Terra is in this story either. As for Fairchild, how strange that she's now depicted as more of an adult (it's unclear if any of the other Gen 13 cast will turn up).

After having worked for years with rival Marvel Comics as an editor on Avengers titles in the '80s and then moving to more of a writer on books featuring everyone from Ghost Rider to Spider-Man to X-Factor, Mackie marks his major DC debut with The Ravagers and is already making his mark, creating a instant-classic character in Ridge with Churchill.

Now isn't that one of the most giggle-generating statements of the modern times. If sales are nothing to write home about now, why should we have to expect this brand new character named Ridge to have much impact? Today it takes time for a lot of new creations to make a dent, if they manage to make one at all. The chances Mackie's new cast member will have an impact are minimal.

The group will have to deal with Harvest's cohorts Rose Wilson — who once was known as Ravager back in the day — and Warblade in the first issue, but will have to deal with different threats, too, facing off in Issue 3 with one of the Teen Titans' greatest foes over the years, Brother Blood.

Oh, there's another sad retcon: Rose Wilson is now apparently more of a villainess, and working for Harvest, the head honcho of the laboratory they're escaping from.

"They don't have a directive right now — they're not going out there to save humankind or gather up metahumans to help them," Mackie says. "What they're trying to do is figure out how to be normal again, quite frankly. And of course, every time they start feeling like they have a chance at normalcy, something else happens to bring back those survival instincts."

Not saving lives? What's the point of this story if they don't do what even the New Mutants did do back in the day? Mackie's premise sounds very wobbly, just one more reason why this isn't bound to make many waves. The worst part is what they've done to Beast Boy, who's now drawn with skin that looks dark gold, and is probably more of a "beast" for real and not so much a character who can turn into various other animal shapes.

Labels: dc comics, msm propaganda, Titans