Teen Titans #28

Legacy Part Two: Impure Thoughts

Guest Writer Gail Simone
Guest Artist Rob Liefeld
Guest Colorist Matt Yackey
Letters Comicraft
Assistant Editor Jeanine Schaefer
Editor Joan Hilty

Our cover is another ugly example of Rob Liefeld's work. Kid Flash and Wonder Girl have the exact same expression on their face, and Robin, Hawk, Dove and Cyborg all share another expression. Everyone's gloves are ridiculously big, nobody really has a neck to speak of, and all feet are carefully hidden. And what's going on with Hawk's butt? It's like her body has been completely snapped in half. Not to mention Kestrel's elbow somehow sliding right through her nonexistent neck. The more I look at it, the worse it gets.

Our story picks up with Kestrel somehow stealing Raven's soul self, followed by a hasty retreat to his inter-dimension hideout with his two female followers, Aja and Christina. Raven is in bad shape, and nobody quite knows how to help her. Kid Flash scours the area and finds a few fragments of Raven's soul self, but that doesn't seem to help. Beast Boy blames himself for cracking jokes instead of going after Kestrel, and I'm still wondering why Kid Flash didn't reach him last issue.

Robin melodramatically announces he'll go after Kestrel alone, but Cyborg says all the Titans will go after him. He tells Hawk and Dove they got Kestrel's target wrong, and he offers to let them fly back to Georgetown with the T-jet. But Hawk and Dove insist on staying and helping save Raven. So Cyborg has Wonder Girl put Raven in the T-jet's sick bay and tells her to call Starfire to look after her, while they journey to Kestrel's base through one of the portals he inadvertently left open at the tower.

We see Kestrel sitting on a throne, holding Raven's soul self with a special leash. Aja and Christina are at his side, little more than mindless slaves at this point. Kestrel is excited to use Raven's soul self to become a Lord of Chaos ... somehow ... but first he dispatches his girls to battle the Teen Titans.

Our heroes enter the portal and Kid Flash offers to scout ahead, but Cyborg tells him to stay with the group, saying this isn't Metropolis (which is an odd thing to say, since Cyborg should know that Bart doesn't and hasn't ever lived in Metropolis). Cyborg blasts down a door, which leads into a decaying whale's carcass. Beast Boy finds a mirror that shows him as a big fat guy, which is apparently his greatest fear, but it actually just makes him laugh. Dove is more worried about the disgusting black liquid they're standing in, and Christina calls it misery juice — distilled from the tears of innocents.

Everybody starts fighting Kestrel's girls. Aja has weird glowing globe-things that Kid Flash takes away from her, and that seems to negate her powers. In the chaos of the fight, Robin slips away to confront Kestrel personally. Kestrel wonders aloud how Robin's mentor will feel after burying another sidekick, and he conjures an image of Tim's father, Jack Drake. Jack says the last thing he remembers is being killed by a boomerang, and he urges Tim to go home, take off his costume and never wear it again. Robin can't tell if that's his real dad or not, but he decides to ignore him and attack Kestrel directly.

Wonder Girl starts beating Christina to a pulp, but Christina begs her to stop and offers to make a deal. Our heroes soon join Robin in the fight against Kestrel. Beast Boy turns into a Tyrannosaurus rex and makes a Jurassic joke. Hawk gets in a good hit, but Kestrel manages to slice off Cyborg's leg, knock down Wonder Girl and grab Bart's neck, threatening to blind him. Robin and Dove hit Kestrel with a combined attack, and Robin manages to strike a nerve cluster on Kestrel's neck that will prevent him from moving his arms for a day or two.

With Kestrel essentially paralyzed, Christina uses his own claws against him, slicing open his chest. Wonder Girl and Dove restrain the psychotic Christina, who laughs hysterically as Kestrel dies. Cyborg frees Raven's soul self and everybody goes home. Starfire tells them Raven's fine, but wants to be left alone. Bart makes her swear that Raven's going to be OK, and Starfire gives him her word. Cyborg invites Robin to another round of bowling, but Tim says he'll spend the rest of Father's Day with Bruce and Alfred. And our issue ends with Cassie checking on Raven. Even though she initially wanted to be alone, Raven does accept her company.




I'm so glad this is over. Besides the terrible art, this was a lackluster story that really didn't go anywhere. What was the point of bringing in Hawk and Dove if you're not going to have them do anything? They didn't even get to tell us anything about Kestrel. Cyborg and Robin inexplicably knew more about him than those two. And to make matters worse, this was a story dealing with the vague abstractness of Raven's soul self, other dimensions and Lords of Chaos. I don't like any of those things, and I didn't like anything about this two-part filler arc.

Next time, we'll start preparing for Infinite Crisis with Supergirl #2.