TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS #51 & #52

"THE JERICHO IMBROGLIO!" | "JERICHO'S STORY"
Co-Creators/Co-Editors: Marv Wolfman & George Pérez
Pencils: Rich Buckler | Finishes: Bob Smith (#51) & Mike DeCarlo (#52)
Letterers: Ben Oda (#51) & John Costanza (#52) | Colorist: Adrienne Roy

The Plot: (issue 51) The Titans bust up an international gunrunning operation and make the front page news. When this publicity reveals to the world that Jericho is with the group, a Middle Eastern president named Marlo uses him to find his mother, and hires Cheshire to kidnap her.

Later, Cheshire attacks Adeline Wilson in her home, killing her elderly aide in the process. Cheshire defeats Adeline but Jericho arrives to challenge her. She takes him out as well and escapes with Adeline. Meanwhile, Nightwing visits the Pentagon and learns that Jericho and Adeline may be involved in the weapon smuggling ring. He calls Changeling, the only Titan near Manhattan, to investigate. Changeling heads for Adeline's apartment and finds Jericho, who refuses to go with him to turn himself in. Jericho defeats Changeling and goes into hiding.

Later, the Titans debate what to do about Jericho while Cheshire questions his mother. Meanwhile, in Alaska, a group of S.T.A.R. Labs scientists find an alien starship which crashed centuries earlier.

(issue 52) Jericho and Amber, an employee of his mother's, travel to the Middle East to rescue Adeline. The Titans opt to leave Jericho alone to complete his mission and head for S.T.A.R. Labs to drop off some notes kept by Cyborg's late mother. While there, a winged being emerges from the unearthed spacecraft and approaches Lilith.

In the Middle East, Jericho and Amber are captured by Cheshire, forcing Adeline to submit to President Marlo's interrogations. But the group soon escapes and confronts Marlo and Cheshire. Jericho lets the villains go, choosing to save Marlo's priceless art collection from destruction rather than kill them as his mother insisted.

My Thoughts: Besides the above synopses, there's a lot going on in sub-plot land in these issues, too. With the Terra and H.I.V.E. storylines wrapped up, Wonder Girl's wedding complete (she's still on her honeymoon here), and most all of the previously ongoing sub-plots concluded, Wolfman has begun some new threads.

First off, the trial of Deathstroke is approaching and Changeling shows an unhealthy interest in the proceedings, as he still blames the Terminator for Terra's death. Also, Nightwing finally addresses something I thought of some time back -- namely, if Deathstroke knows his identity as Dick Grayson, he has most likely deduced Batman's true identity as well. It's great to see Wolfman visit this idea and hopefully it will go someplace in the future -- though I don't believe we'll see anything of it in the issues I have left to cover.

We also learn that Cheshire has a special interest in the Titans because one of the male members impregnated her. I know who this is, thanks to the YOUNG JUSTICE cartoon series, and I believe it's someone who is not actually an active member of this iteration of the group. Nonetheless, Cheshire believes her assignment to capture Jericho's mother will get her closer to the Titans and therefore closer to the man she's after. I should note that I still really like Cheshire. She's a pretty cool-looking lady, and I'm a sucker for femme fatale types.

As can be inferred from the summary, Lilith is still hanging out with the Titans following Wonder Girl's wedding. I don't know if she's just filling in until Donna's honeymoon is over or if she intends to stick around -- but if it's the latter, she might consider investing in a costume and codename because she looks kind of silly running around with the costumed Titans in her street clothes.

On the artwork front, I was surprised to see that the Buckler/Smith and Buckler/DeCarlo teams are both fantastic; nearly as polished as Pérez and Tanghal -- though Buckler relies on far too many tiny panels sometimes. But this could be due to Wolfman cramming too much story into the plot and Buckler having a limited amount of space to cover all that ground. In any case, I've never found Rich Buckler to be that impressive an artist; being usually serviceable but rarely rising above that level. Here, however, his characters are very nicely drawn.

I wasn't expecting much from a bunch of fill-ins, created solely to kill time until TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS could start reprinting the stories from NEW TEEN TITANS volume 2. So I'm unexpectedly pleased to say that so far I'm enjoying this little run quite a bit.