“Titans: Rebirth” begins with Wally’s voice over. He is remembering his time as a Teen Titan with Garth, Lilith, Donna, Roy, and Dick. Wally is now clothed in a dark red costume and he is in Dick Grayson’s apartment. He is here to repair the damage of the lost time and soon he finds himself face to face with Nightwing. Wally calls Nightwing Dick and Nightwing attacks him. As Nightwing reaches for Wally, a discharge comes out of Wally’s hands and hits Dick knocking him back. Suddenly Dick remembers Wally. He just does not remember how he remembers. Before Wally can explain the other Titans, Wonder Girl, Tempest, Arsenal, and Lilith arrive and immediately surround Wally and Dick. The Titans open up with an attack on Wally who uses his super speed to evade them. Nightwing desperately tries to get the others to end their attack.
Roy Harper is the first to make contact after Lilith is able to mentally confuse Wally. When Roy punches Wally, the same sparks that hit Nightwing hits him. This sparks a memory of Wally West for Roy, when they first went to Roy’s apartment away from Green Arrow. Donna attacks Wally from behind demanding what he is doing to her friends. When she touches him, she too is hit by the sparks and she remembers. Her memory is of a time when she and Kid Flash were planning to prank Roy with water balloons. She is insisting that they should be training and not fooling around while Kid Flash is trying to get her to lighten up.
Garth and Lilith both grab Wally thinking he put Donna in a trance. When they do, the sparks hit Lilith and she too remembers. She and Wally appear to have had a relationship. He is holding her as she talks about the difficulties she is having hearing everyone’s thoughts. Garth grabs Wally in a reverse bear hug and the sparks hit him. He remembers a time when he and Wally were on the shore. Garth wants to return to Atlantis because the surface world does not accept him. Wally says that none of them are totally accepted by the world but with the Teen Titans, Garth is not an outsider.
When it is all finished the Titans are confused about their new memories. Wally says that the Speed Force must have sparked the memories in each of them. Nightwing recounts that the memory that was sparked in him was the time he and Wally took the Batmobile for a joyride. The Titans embrace their missing friend and Wally can start explaining. Wally says that he was outside of time looking in. Donna does not understand how they could not have known that Wally was missing but Dick says that they did know, they were not able to put a name to the missing until now. The Titans recount how they finally got together after forgetting each other. Wally says that 10 years have been taken, but centered on the years that the Titans got to know one another. Dick thinks it was Mister Twister who Wally does not recognize.
Wally came back to warn the Titans. He thinks that the time stealing could happen again now that the Titans have found each other. He is certain that the Titans will figure this out together.
I liked this issue. Not much happened here but it did give a lot of good character beats for each of the Titans. It was interesting that Wally apparently had a relationship with Lilith while we know that Donna and Roy were a couple which we do not see much evidence in this issue. The question is will this series be the search for what caused the New 52 universe to be formed and where will this series lead? It appears to have a direction and I want to see where it goes from here.
My second question is will we see Mal, Karen, Hawk, Dove, and Gnarrk in this series a as well as they rounded out the team in the previous Titans Hunt story that this is spinning out of?
Overall, the battles were good but quick and a lot did not really happen here other than Dick’s apartment got trashed.
[wp-review id=”34819″]
