More Like Teen Titans Than Teen Titans
The cover for this issue is a horrendous mess. It's kind of like this week's Team 7 cover, but on a whole other level. For starters, Superboy's face is incredibly awkward and blocky, and then there's just so much going on all on the same level it just blurs together into a swamp of confusion. There's so much use of the same colors, and thick black lines it's hard to tell what's going on in half the cover. It's just ugly.
Luckily the interior art doesn't suffer from the same problem. We've got Ian Churchill almost entirely back, and at the very least I couldn't really tell what pages Tyler Kirkham did fill-in art on. The action's not bad, but it could be a little better. The facial expressions are nice, and that's what this issue needed a lot of.
Now that the first arc has finally wrapped up, the team is ready to begin as a team. We see them go from selfish individual fighters to a bit of well oiled team after some very nice bonding. Fairchild lets them go out and about, with complete freedom to show how she's not Harvest. She has an interesting, if a little cliche, mother/father dynamic with him; where she is more concerned about their well being and he's a scientist who is solely focused on their potential as weapons, but for good. Each member gets moments to shine in both abilities and character development. Ridge is finally starting to come out of the 'mistrust everyone' attitude and use his knowledge as a former full Ravager to the team's advantage. And the identity of Dr. Caulder's partner is a bit of a weird shock, but makes a ton of sense.
The scene that really hit was when they were out on the town. We really got to see everyone bond, and the dynamics deepened, like Beast Boy's jealousy over the attention Terra gives to Ridge. If Fairchild is like their mother, and Dr. Caulder is like they're father, it's like they're divorced and Superboy is the new stepdad or stepbrother or something that only the mom gets along with and the rest of the kids don't like. But it brings them together. The outside scene reminded me so much of moments in older Teen Titans' issues, and I'm starting to feel like Ravagers is more like Teen Titans than Teen Titans is.
One of the problems here is something anchored a bit more in the rest of the DCU, but it's that DC doesn't seem to know what they want to do with Superboy. This week he was in three series' all over the place. Superboy #14 has him AFTER Legion Lost number SIXTEEN, two months later. When is he getting around to where, and which place is he going to stick? I like him a lot in Ravagers though.
In Conclusion: 4/5
This series had a lot of potential at the start, but it quickly started to flounder about as it tried to establish itself. It somehow managed to wrap up it's setup, and now that it's going forward from it's true beginning it's right back on track.
