Teen Titans Annual #1

I read recently about how funny it is that most of the Titans villains are ex-members, and it is true here. I actually wondered if Cyborg was turning evil after he killed The Face in TT #69, but at least that didn't happen. Cyborg is just being controlled by a different ex-member turned villain who has been plaguing the main Titans book for a few months. I was amused at how easy it was to take out Kid Eternity, I guess if he can't speak, he can't switch places with a dead hero? Very strange. In fact, who controls the dead hero? Are they themselves or is Eternity just animating their form? Bombshell comes off well in this, I enjoyed seeing her and Wonder Girl work well together. Static steals the show. "Cyborg" tries to pass his attack off as a training exercise, and asks Static to sit out the fight. He goes along for a bit but then takes care of business when things turn sour. Static pretty much singlehandedly takes out possessed Cyborg and saves the team, not bad for a new member. Cyborg should have remembered "Don't start none, won't be none." I'm very happy to have Static back. The story is one of the better "attacked by your own base" type tales, but it still has some pretty big limitations when the villain is off-panel and mostly just talking. It was better than I expected though.

The sad thing here is that Sean McKeever is starting to write in a little less bloody style that I'm enjoying and now he's off the book. I've got to figure the editorial guidance is pretty darn heavy on the Titans books, since Dan DiDio handles them himself. If you take a look at this cover, this is a pretty darn strong lineup. I could definitely see myself really digging things going forward, but at this point I can't be confident of what direction we're going to get besides fill-ins.

Fernando Dagnino is very inconsistent. Some panels and pages look fantastic (Aquagirl on page 1, Kid Devil watching cartoons) and some look just odd (Static waking up in bed). He has great potential though, the pages where he's on look a lot like Joe Bennett's tight pencils.

Fair