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10/16/2003: Technis Imperative
I've read the JLA/Titans x-over Technis Imperative, and it was fun though I'm clearly not the intended audience for this one. I'm not nearly enough of a DC or Titans geek to fully appreciate its teeming cast (not yet anyway, I mean it's been only this year that I got sucked into this quagmire fascinating universe). Most of the time I was like "Who? What? Who's that? I think I've seen this one before -- maybe. What was this one's name again? Hey, I know that one at least!"
I mean, how many Titans are there anyway? Okay, I knew there were a lot, but I was sort of overwhelmed by the masses. I knew some (more or less at least), like Kory, Arsenal, Tempest, Cyborg, or Donna and had at least seen some others before, like Changeling, Argent or Raven. But Risk, Prysm, Fringe, Terra, Red Star, Panthera, Wildebeest (and what kind of silly spelling is that anyway?), Damage, Impulse, Flamebird, Herald, Bumblebee, Omen, Mirage, Joto, Minion... it went on and on and on. And I was unfamiliar with a number of the JLA people too. I knew Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter and of course Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman, but Barda, Orion, Steel, Zauriel? It had something of a "Where's Waldo?" book... Should I ever read NTT and familiarize myself with all those people, I'll probably read this one again.
OTOH it sure was more entertaining than to read a list of (Ex-)Titans, and the story conveniently included a way to list all their names, aliases and powers because that moon-swallowing thingie Cyborg had turned into was really into cataloging stuff. And I never knew the Titans had so many different headquarters.
Unfortunately the page layout sometimes made it really hard to figure out the sequence in which to read the panels, which is just bad, because each time I have to stop to think about the reading sequence I'm thrown out of the story.
Still, there were a lot of good scenes, I enjoyed (those where I did know the characters), for example Nightwing butting head with Batman is always fun to read. And at least now I know why Cyborg is golden in the art of The Titans series I've seen that follows this x-over.
