Titans #7

Overall- Aww man, I was really enjoying this comic until the end... But before I get to that, let me start at the beginning, that seems logical, no? The first page of this comic book is pretty awesome for us Superboy fans(I'm the only one left aren't I?)as it chronicles the origin of Match, as well as showing Match battling Superboy, complete with Superboy's horrible 90's haircut and earring! Hell, for me just that first page was well worth the price of this book!

We discover that Jericho is still trapped inside the body of Match and is now unable to get out. The Titans run a plethora of tests on Jericho/Match, and figure out a way to separate the two of them. Before they can complete the procedure, Jericho/Match breaks free and goes on a rampage in an attempt to escape. The whole time Jericho is still able to speak through Match, but seems unable to halt Match's actions. The Titan's all attack Match, who seems to have become much more powerful since their last run-in, now possessing Superman's strength, heat vision, and frost breath. The Titan's manage to subdue Match/Jericho long enough for Cyborg to rig up a machine which forcefully removes Jericho from Match, with the added bonus of knocking Match out. The Titans lock Match up in some heavy duty restraints, and problem solved right? Not quite.

Jericho shows the team some strange little device, which kills all the lights in the Titan's headquarters. The lights come back up and Raven tells the team that while they were battling Match/Jericho, it was Jericho in control the entire time! On top of that, Jericho is no where to be found, which means during the power outage he jumped into the body of one of the 8 Titans who were present. So, the question is, why is Jericho acting evil again, and whose body is he in possession of?

If I were Jericho, I would totally take possession of Nightwing. That guy has women throwing themselves at him like there is no tomorrow! Seriously though, I was enjoying this comic book immensely until the reveal that Jericho has apparently turned back to evil... Again. Now, I love Judd Winick's work. But during the past 2 storyarcs in this series, we've had Raven turning evil, before ultimately reforming, and now we have Jericho turning evil. What's next, Beast Boy turns on the team? After that, maybe Starfire can go bad.

I guess this turn of events annoys me because I've always liked Jericho. When he originally turned evil way back during the Titan's comic written by Marv Wolfman in the 1990's, I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I had ever read! Jericho had no motivation for becoming a bad guy, and Wolfman explained Jericho's actions in a horrible story involving the Wildebeest Society and Raven's homeworld. Trust me this story was so bad it actually pained me to read it. At least there was a reason for Jericho's actions though. He was possessed or something along those lines.

This time there seems to be no reason for his actions. Flash insinuated that Jericho was naturally untrustworthy due to the fact that he was Deathstroke's son. What kind of B.S. is that? Before his possession and subsequent death back in the 90's, Jericho was one of the most loyal and kind members of the Titan's team. Loyal and kind are two adjectives I would never use to describe Deathstroke, so the argument that Jericho is Deathstroke's son, and therefore inherently evil seems pretty far fetched to me. Instead of turning members of the Titan's family evil, why not either bring back former Titan's enemies, or just create some new ones?

With that little rant out of the way, I'll give this comic a score of 7 1/2 out of 10. If not for Jericho's needless evil turn, I would have probably scored this comic as high as a 9, it was really that good. That ending really left a bad taste in my mouth though... Come on Judd, you're one of the best comic book writers out there, you can do better then this!