Teen Titans #8

Where some characters act creepy.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Wally (cousin of red head Wally that will now be called NuWally) is struggling with the fact his dad was Reverse Flash and Barry kept it from him. Slade lures him in with his car and the two spend time together. Maybe it's just me but I got strong stranger danger vibes from that. Made all the worse with previous canon Slade sleeping with 15 year old Tara. The TT are worried because NuWally is late which brings us to the next creepy part: Damian's behavior.

I never bought the idea of him being the leader of this team of mostly experienced heroes. Many of them have worked with his brothers who all show much better leadership skills than Damian. Why are they letting themselves be bullied around by this 13 year old that has no idea how a team functions? He has no clue how to talk to others. Instead of making them more determined he has to dramatically announced that Kid Flash/NuWally is probably dead already. He tracks all his teammates and spies on the other Titans. Damian has no sense of boundaries and ignores Kori when she protests how wrong it is.

Wally (the red headed one) tries to save his cousin but gets knocked out. NuWally freaks out when he discovers the creepy guy he just befriended kidnapped him. Going on about not being able to trust anyone until Slade literally tells him to grow a pair. I admit I laughed at that as NuWally was getting a little too emotional with the villain. Slade does a spiel about them both losing people they love and how they can set things right. He makes NuWally the same deal he previously made the other Wally. Help him get Grant back and Slade will stop killing. Which should already Inform the audience that Grant is staying dead since Slade wouldn't be gone for good.

The Titans (as in Dick's group) have no leads to find their Wally. Lilith knows Dick knows who is behind it but for some reason isn't pressing the issue. Even though their friend's life is on the line. She and Donna only demand the truth once the over powered Damian undermines Dick's leadership to play part of a recording of an encounter with Slade. Damian actually admits as much as he quickly labels Dick a traitor.

It seems Damian gets his stalker control freak side from Bruce as Batman installed a camera into Dick's Robin suit. Damian has been going over the footage and conveniently decided to bring it up now. Like an amateur Damian decided to jump to conclusions even though he couldn't get the entire video to play.

Donna gets tired of his crap demanding he just explain what he means. She also points out he should have respect for Dick and says that Damian is just pretending to be Robin. While this isn't how classic Donna would act I'm glad someone isn't putting up with him. They almost get into a fight because of this until Dick admits he made a deal with Slade. Only then does it occur to Dick that their kind of in a rush to find their friends. Something they could have done faster if Damian just told Dick Kid Flash was missing too instead of throwing a hissy fit based on limited information.

I liked seeing Garth and Jackson talk. I don't think these two have talked in comic canon before this. Having Garth offer his help was a nice moment. All too brief though. Kori and Donna wonder if they should be leading. I'm sure this was meant as a joke but after seeing the leadership in this crossover their more fit to be the leaders. Especially Kori. Damian acts high and mighty over Dick "betraying" them. Dick points out they took a chance on Damian which he quickly pushes aside. They find Wally who's worried about NuWally.

NuWally was convinced to help Slade. I'm not sure why Slade needed to convince him if he can just take what he needs. At least I think that's what was implied. We end on Slade having NuWally's power.

I've seen comments about Percy and others involved in this making Damian act like a psycho while praising bat books. No, this problem is in the bat books too. Part of it is making him ridiculously overly skilled at everything. He not only kidnapped most of his teammates he kidnapped Jon in Super Sons. Damian has stalked Jon, has attacked Jason/Tim and never retains a lesson his family try to impart. Damian Wayne is only interesting if he's grows as a character yet time and again he's reduced to a walking Napoleon Complex that gets away with everything.

He isn't a good leader, he could have wasted valuable time with a pointless fight, was a poor detective and an unbelievable hypocrite. Stalking, spying on others and suddenly drops his faith in Dick because of limited/questionable evidence. Simply informing Dick that their speedster was missing could have saved so much time. Damian doesn't deserve to be the leader but I fear DC will ignore all these problems like they usually do. That makes Damian a stale character because he fails to become something greater. I want to like his character again but he keeps getting worse.

I don't know if I can buy that Dick didn't know about Bruce installing things in his suit. Tomasi had Damian knowing about the tracking device in his costume. And if Bruce had the footage he'd either know about the deal or trusted Dick. Either way Damian should know better and trust in others. Seriously people talk about Jason or Stephanie being "bad" Robins? They weren't. Damian has continued the trend from Robin Wars of being quick to start conflicts and being dim. If it was anyone else he'd get kicked out or fired.

NuWally is gullible in a believable way though he's far too quick to trust the weirdo that kidnapped him and another Flash. Dick was dumb for not telling his team Slade was involved. There's some details like how or why things happen that wasn't really clear.

There's too many characters for this crossover and it shows here. This issue was more annoying than Titans mainly because of Damian. That said so far this is still better than the last crossover I read.



Questions Raised?: How was Slade able to plant the tracker on Damian? That makes no sense. Alfred was able to track Damian previously but Slade would have to get closer to do this.

How did Dick not discover the spying from Damian? Either Damian is supposed to be better than him (no) or Dick knew but just let him do it.

Why was Damian even being an ass about bringing Wally back to consciousness? To the best of my knowledge they never met. Damian would just know him from spying on the Titans. Which means he just wants to an excuse to smack him because he's an ass.



Say What?: "Just a small shock" doesn't apply when you lit the room up with the electrical current you ran through someone's body.

Over in Titans Donna mentioned calling the Justice League for help. No one answered her making me assume they were ignoring her. This issue says that they did off panel.

"Kori and I might be old friends" really Roy? You two were more than that or do you want to hide that from Donna? I'm not sure if Dick knew.

Did you get the call outs? Slade tempts NuWally to REVERSE the mistakes he made. Then says he can understand that IMPULSE. There were more groan inducing lines like NuWally causally and awkwardly mentioning time travel at the start.

Roy telling Gar off for making jokes. Yeah Gar isn't funny but I miss when Roy used to have a sense of humor.

Kind of heavy handed Raven and NuWally pairing. Which is weird since she use to be older Wally's age and in old canon she had a weird emotional thing with him.

Bruce could get footage from his Robins? I don't think it's canon anymore but if Bruce installed devices in all Robin suits he'd know what really happened with the Felipe situation.