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New Teen Titans: Games
DC Comics
Marv Wolfman, writer
George Perez, artist

I've been thinking about getting back into the habit of posting reviews, and I have a number of them lined up in the coming weeks. But when I decided I definitely wanted to resume the blog, I wanted to wait until I'd had a chance to read this book and review it as my first entry back.

It was the New Teen Titans by Wolfman and Perez that got me into serious comic collecting, so it seemed appropriate. After all, this book was begun in the mid 1980s when the Titans popularity was at its height and finally saw completion and release in time for the group's 30th anniversary celebration. I'll let you look elsewhere on the web (or even in the foreword and afterword of the book itself) for the details behind that long creation process, but this book has been rumored and promised many times and very anxiously awaited by fans of the series.

And it does not disappoint.

These two creators who have worked on so many characters over their respective careers have flawlessly returned to these characters, bringing them to readers in a way that feels like visiting old friends. Much has happened in the intervening years in the fictional lives of Nightwing, Starfire, Cyborg, Troia, Changeling, Raven, Jericho and Danny Chase. They are all very different characters today, the ones still around, but this is not meant to be a contemporary story, and these are YESTERDAY'S Titans.

The story doesn't fit quite perfectly into the existing continuity of the time; fans so inclined would have difficulty trying to place the events of Games firmly between two issues of the regular Titans series of the time. It obviously would have to happen before the tragedies involved in the Titans Hunt story line yet after Raven's redemption and adoption of her white costume, and after the arrival of Danny Chase. Much pinpointing beyond that would be difficult, but should not diminish what is a wonderful story.

If you were a fan of the Wolfman/Perez Titans in the past, do yourself a favor and seek out this book. If you've never read a Titans story from that era, but enjoy more recent incarnations of the team, I imagine you'd still like this glimpse of what came before. And even if you've never read a Titans story before, but enjoy a good superhero thriller with elements of espionage and mystery thrown in for good measure, you could do a lot worse than this tale.

This is one of the great ones, Kiddie Cops!

Be back next Tuesday for more.