Today, I continued reading Teen Titans with issues #1/2 and #8-12. These are collected in the book Teen Titans vol. 2: Family Lost. In this story, the Teen Titans search for their former ally, Raven. As demonic forces are unleashed in San Francisco, the Titans race against time to find and save (or maybe stop) Raven. To make matters worse, Slade Wilson (a.k.a. Deathstroke) is on the Titans’ trail, hunting them alongside his daughter Rose.
Enter the Ravager
This story starts with Teen Titans #1/2, a short story that follows Rose Wilson. She is the estranged daughter of Slade Wilson (a.k.a. Deathstroke the Terminator). After living a life on the run and in fear of the outside world, Rose is beginning to settle down. She is now living with a foster family who loves and cherishes her, and she loves them back. She feels that she has finally found a home and a family.
In less than a page, that all ends. Rose’s parents are brutally and swiftly murdered in front of her. The killer? Her uncle Wade (a.k.a. the Ravager). His mission? To kill Rose. Wade has been alerted of Rose’s location by an anonymous benefactor. Thankfully, Rose is not alone, because the Teen Titans show up at her house to protect her. The manage to subdue Wade, but a smoke bomb knocks them out. When they wake up, Rose and Wade are gone.
Elsewhere, Slade Wilson comforts Rose and gives her the opportunity to kill Wade in revenge. Rose complies, killing her uncle and embracing her father. Though she now knows that she can never find a home to belong to, at least she has a purpose… to make her father proud. In the last, eerie panel of this issue, we learn that it was Slade who sent Wade out to kill Rose, and this was all part of his plan to bring her by his side.
Raven is Back… Or So We Thought
In Titans Tower, the Teen Titans are briefed on Raven’s background. They learn that she is the daughter of the demon Trigon, and that her entire life, she was been prohibited from showing emotions. Because of this, she grew up feeling nothing but hatred toward her father.
As the Titans continue the search for Raven, eerie events start to occur, including water turning into blood, a giant skeleton attack, and hospital patients floating in mid-air above their beds. Beast Boy realizes that Raven is trying to contact them and leads the Titans to her location.
Raven is being held prisoner at the Church of St. Sebastian, where a cult led by Brother Blood wants to use her to usher Trigon’s return. But the Titans are not the only ones searching for Raven. Slade Wilson and his daughter Rose (now calling herself the Ravager) are also searching for Raven, so they can kill her and prevent Trigon’s return.
The Titans must get through Bother Blood’s minions, Deathstroke & Ravager, and a horde of demons in order to save Raven. After succeeding, they invite Raven to live with them at Titans Tower, to prepare for Brother Blood’s return.
‘Family Lost’ is Dark, Violent, and Unsettling
I am not a big fan of occult themes in stories. But any story that features Raven will inevitably touch on that topic. She is the half-human daughter of a demon, who struggles with the darkness inside her and wants to escape her past. Though she loves the Teen Titans, she inevitably hurts them with their presence. These struggles are conveyed through the pages of ‘Family Lost’. In just a few panels of dialogue, we get to feel Raven’s suffering and understand why she just wants to go away.
The good writing doesn’t stop at Raven, we get to see the other Titans continue their respective plot points, such as Tim (a.k.a. Robin) struggling with having to lie to his father about his double-life. However, unlike the first volume, ‘A Kid’s Game’, Family Lost does not take an ensemble approach to the comics. The main character is clearly Rose Wilson (a.k.a. the Ravager). We get to see her dynamic with Slade and her motivations to make him proud. While the story teases a potential redemption, it ends with Rose cutting out her own eye to become more like Slade, which is a twist that I was not expecting.
The violence and adult topics in these issues were a bit over the top. The cult of Brother Blood provides very bloody scenes, with blood sacrifices taking place in an underground lair lit by torches. The red tones of the cult’s lair give those scenes an unsettling appearance. Overall, there are a lot of weird themes, especially considering that Brother Blood is a teenager in this story, has a weird fixation on his ‘Mother’ (who is a random follower selected to do his bidding), and is desperate to marry Raven.
Despite this, the story is still entertaining and even though I disliked the overall tone, the writing and the art managed to achieve their purpose.
Score: 7/10
The usual Titans Action is present here, but the amount of blood and dark themes can make this teenage hero story unsettling.
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