- or, "The One In Which Nothing Happens." No, really. Nothing happens. Certainly this "Red Robin Reborn!" stuff from the cover:



doesn't happen.

We do learn that earth-time and azarath-time move differently, and in earth-time it's only been a few weeks since Phantom Stranger sold Rachel Roth out to Trigon, but it's been a much longer time, possibly years, for Raven on Azarath. This may help explain why in earth-time scenes only about five minutes have passed since the very messy end of last issue, while Trigon takes his sweet time explaining the family history to his sons back home.

( Cease your prattle a moment and all will be made clear. )

And looking at that splash, can I just say, I think Trigon prefers Raven 'cause she's the only one of his kids that's pretty?

"Next Issue: The Teen Titans Battle The Brothers Trigon - With The Fate of NYC In The Balance!"

Wow, nobody's posted Suicide Squad yet? Okay then. It's part 1 of 2 "Discipline & Punish." 4 pages.

( A-okay - 'Weltschmerz' is a word. )

Tag notes: There's no tag for Voltaic; there is a tag for the other character in these pages, but I'm leaving it off for now so's not to spoil the reveal. There's also no tag for writer Ales Kot.

Two panels from the current issue of Birds of Prey, in which writer Christy Marx solves one minor mystery...

( Those are some feathers, pretty bird... )

Four pages from Teen Titans #18 here, in which as with last issue we still have lots of plot threads, but they're moving closer to converging.

( We're the only ones who can save each other. )

BTW, it's a little hard to count pages on this thing since they're still double-page spread happy and the pages aren't labeled, but it's Eddy Barrows and Eber Ferreira on art pages 1-16 and Rodney Buchemi on pages 17-20. By my count that's the last two pages of the Two Teams Fight scenes and the two Times Square pages.

Yeah yeah, I know, I'm on a Raven bender lately with her reintroduction in the DCnU. But it was either this or Steph Brown, and that's a hard one to do without letting "toxic" bitterness creep in; besides, Steph's got plenty of boosters here, I figure.

Besides, I was trawling the used bookstore's comic stash today and came across a copy of Baxter paper series New Teen Titans #43, which amounts to a Raven solo story and a good illustration of the things I loved about her. So I've got 8 pages out of a 27-page issue. A note on the art: the credits give the pencils to Eduardo Barreto, but the cover claims - and the DC Database confirms - it's Curt Swan. I'm not a huge Swan fan, and this is serviceable art, but I'd love to see what, say, Gene Colan could've done with this same material; something to keep in the imagination while looking these over, no?

( Are paranormal powers any more difficult to accept than man's sometime cruelty to other men? )

- or, "Prologue to A Tale of Light and Dark," which is the Titans' next big arc, apparently. 3 whole pages and 2 partial pages for a total of 4, and man did I have a hard time cutting it down to just that. This is a bridge issue, tying up the Death of the Family crossover story and putting pieces into play for this Light and Dark thing, so there's a lot going on here.

( Can we go back to the awkward silence? )

Can't swear to it, but I think I may be looking forward to the War of Light and Dark thing.