Reading Comics 232 "Titans Season One"

I finally caught up with the first season of Titans from late last year.  It was pretty great.  Titans is one of those online streaming series, in this instance available via DC Universe.  This release method probably explains why the "f" word is spoken roughly every other line of dialogue (I wasn't overly bothered by it).

Eleven episodes explain how Dick Grayson (Robin), Rachel Roth (Raven), Kory Anders (Starfire) and Gar Logan (Beast Boy) end up becoming a team.  The arc is similar to the first season of Heroes, following each character as their journeys converge, with a central problem being Rachel's powers and where they come from (her dad, the demon Trigan), and Kory's mysterious past, not to mention her powers.  Most of it, though, is following Dick as he reconciles life post-Batman.  He's become concerned about his increasingly violent tendencies, believing that he's become too much like the Dark Knight, so he's gone off on his own.  We meet him as a detective in Detroit, where he meets Rachel after she's been brought in following the mysterious death of the woman who turns out to be her foster mother.  She's being hunted by agents of a shadowy conspiracy, and Dick turns out to be her best option for safety and sympathy, though at first Dick is reluctant to commit.  Kory has amnesia, but feels she's better than the circumstances in which she finds herself, and eventually she joins up with Dick and Rachel, and is the first person who really seems to understand the latter.  They find shelter with Gar's family, the Doom Patrol, but then strike out on their own, hoping to find Rachel's birth mother, who turns out to be secretly in cahoots with Trigon.  Then Kory gets her memory back and briefly tries to kill Rachel, but eventually realizes that Trigon's the real problem.  The season actually ends on a cliffhanger, Trigon left undefeated.

Part of the journey also incorporates tangents with Hawk & Dove, who in this iteration have no superpowers but are rather vigilantes inspired by Batman and Robin.  Dove was an old flame of Dick's, but now is committed to Hawk, and both are anticipating retiring from the superhero game.  Dick also reunites with Donna Troy, who likewise has stepped away from her role as Wonder Girl, and unexpectedly meets Jason Todd, who has inherited the role of Robin since Dick left Gotham.  Honestly, this is probably the best material of the season, with Donna Troy and Dove providing standout performances from Conor Leslie (Donna Troy) and Minka Kelly (Dove).  Alan Ritchson's Hawk is likewise inspired acting.

The show's depiction of Batman (never seen directly) is significantly less sympathetic than other depictions, which makes things all the more interesting.  The focus on Robin, meanwhile, is the character's biggest live action spotlight ever, putting the focus almost totally on him even in a team setting (the season's final episode depicts Trigon's efforts to traumatize him by giving him a perfect life and then viciously taking it away), which trumps his appearances in the later Burton/Schumacher films, in which he has prominent roles.  This version effectively exists on his own and is not reliant on Batman to explain his significance. 

The second season has already gotten underway, so I look forward to catching it later (likely on home video, like I did with this one).