About Heroes

Authors: Marv Wolfman & Geoff Johns
Pencils: Todd Nauck
Inkers: Sean Parsons, Norm Rapmund & Marlo Alquiza
Cover: Tony Daniels

I've been writing toy reviews and manga reviews for a few years now. I never liked reading people's reviews that started with sentences such as: Let me tell you how much I love so and so writer or; Let me tell you how much I hate this writer. So I wasn't going to do that with this review, then I said fuck it! So let me tell you how much I loved Wolfman and Perez's New Teen Titans. This was to me as good as the Uncanny X-men glory days of Claremont and Byrne. So to me teaming up Wolfman and Geoff Johns would be like teaming up Claremont and Whedon on an X-men book. So I was really excited about this book when I got my hands on it.

Spoiler Free Review
This whole issue takes place during Infinite Crises issue 5 when Nightwing is left at the Titan's Tower all by himself while all hell breaks loose everywhere. He ends up teaming up with Superboy and they have some nice bonding moments, not Brokeback Mountain (that movie is now a part of our vocabulary) bonding either. Superboy puts all the original Titans on a pedestal and Nightwing explain that they made mistakes too. This makes me wonder if this was probably an unintentional analogy to how Johns feels about Wolfman; it would be interesting to find out. In my mind I would like to think that Wolfman wrote all of Nightwing's dialogue and Johns handled Superboy.

Todd Nauck returns as a guest artist for the second month in a row and does a pretty decent job of portraying the characters, with the exception of the adult characters. For some reason most of the grown-ups look a bit awkward. He seems to have a hard time drawing Nightwing's body specifically his torso. Could be because this issue was running late and he needed to be rushed. Like I stated before though, he can keep up a monthly schedule. Yes, Tony Daniels can draw some kick ass panels, but he has always had schedule conflicts leading all the way back to his days on X-force.

Without going to much into details, I will of course leave that for the spoilers, I'm going to try to describe what happened in this issue. The beginning at Titans Tower, Nightwing and Superboy prepare to leave for the Artic, and the questioning begins. Both of the characters don't know how to act around each other. Superboy doesn't want to screw up in front of Nightwing and Nightwing feels unsure about working with someone who can't face the truth. Superboy makes a statement that it feels like he is hanging out with his best friend's older brother. The two of them discuss their pasts and their possible futures as they rescue an ocean liner crew from death. While all this is going on Nightwing is wearing his old duds so he can glide, very nice to see him in that old Titan's outfit.

Ares makes a deal with Wondergirl, because something happened and there is an odd scene with Wondergirl and Superboy that left me going: Huh?! I am assuming that all of that was explained in the Annual that was late this month. A really good story with some nice scenes, even though some of the things that were revealed in this book should have been revealed in the Annual. Which is a shame, because it seemed like a pretty big deal and the scheduling really messed that up. Wolfman was a nice addition to the book and I really look forward to reading his Annual. A-
Click here to read the review with spoilers.