Titans #33 Review

Things turn ugly in “Broken Promises,” the newest storyline in Eric Wallace’s all villainous Titans group. The expected betrayal finally happens, as on a mission in the South Pacific, Slade’s band of misfits and villains finally show their true colors. They are supposedly on a job to bring down a man called Drago, who runs some kind of gladiator arena. What Slade soon learns is that it’s a set up from the start. Drago, in addition to being a skilled fighter, is telepathic, and evades Slade’s sniper shot. Cheshire and Arsenal also turn traitor, attacking Deathstroke from behind, eventually wearing him down with skill and poison. Cinder tries to help but is rather embaressignly defeated by men with souped up fire extinguishers.

All this has a few cut away scenes to Osiris dealing with the resurrected Isis, who seems to either be possessed or suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder. Apparently, killing to bring back a goddess of life has thrown Isis’ powers way off. She finally flees, with Osiris in pursuit. Their conflict did a lot of damage to Slade’s base, and we see a bloodied hand reaching from the wreckage, calling out “Father?” We also see Dwarfstar, recovering from the beating Giganta gave him in Secret Six, getting interrogated by the Atom. Atom learns of Slade’s involvement in Ryan’s death, and goes off to do something about it. The last big reveal is that Drago is another former ally of Slade’s who feels he was betrayed- seems to be a running theme with Wilson. Drago ends the issue by plucking out Slade’s remaining eye.

What I liked and what I didn’t:

Slade failing made sense- he was given bad intel and then literally back-stabbed by two of his team. The team is weak, since Ink quit and Osiris is busy dealing with his sister. They finally acknowledged the story in Secret Six that was part of the aftermath of Ryan’s death. And we finally saw why it’s a bad idea to count on murderers, liars, druggies, etc. We finally saw the start of the reveal of whatever secret Slade’s been keeping down there, which was long overdue.

This is the first time Slade called his team “Titans,” and it came out of nowhere. It still makes no sense to me that he’s using the name of a group that have been among his longest standing enemies. And the way Arsenal is shown continues to make no sense. Someone on heroin can’t function as a normal, let alone fight at the level Roy is.

I still can’t believe Slade trusted Cheshire. Let’s look at some of her highlights. She’s nuked a country. She’s a hired killer who killed what she believed is her own father. And she turned on her previous team, the Secret Six. Really, at this point, one of the world’s best tacticians trusts her to the point where his back is to her in combat? Bad call, Slade.

This seems to me like it should be the beginning of the end of both the team and the title, as I don’t see them coming back from this… but we’ll have to wait and see.

Tags: Deathstroke Eric Wallace Isis Titans