The Culling, Part 1: Teen Titans Annual #1 - Atop the Fourth Wall

Welcome to Atop the Fourth Wall, where bad comics burn. In this episode, Linkara does his first New52 review, a crossover between Teen Titans and Legion Lost!

http://atopthefourthwall.com

Originally uploaded August 12th, 2013.

ORIGINAL INFO: Not many stories manage to fail so spectacularly in every department, but behold one of the finest examples of doing so.

RUMINATIONS: If the audio sounds weird to you, it’s because this was the first time I recorded an episode with the RODE mic I’ve been using for two years now! It’s a better quality mic and does much better sound, but in this case I hadn’t gotten the settings quite worked out yet.

And thus my first review of the New 52! …two years after it debuted. Yeah, what can I say? I like my cut-off date of one year after release. And when it comes to the Culling, it was probably better to wait. Much like Countdown, I bought this crap as it was going down and I still regret paying actual money for it. I don’t usually do four-parters like this because talking about the same subject for even three weeks can get a little dull after a while, but somehow each episode gave me new stuff to talk about, especially when it came to the marketing and whatnot. I should note that the ending quote actually was taken out of context when it was reported, in particular that it APPARENTLY pre-dated the New 52… but it’s still worth noting that it was very easy to believe its accuracy in regards to the modern market.

The goal of Jaeris was always to have him become a recurring friend and ally to Linkara and we start on that path here. While it may feel like it moves a bit quickly, bear in mind that most episodes DO move in real time so it’s only over the course of a few months that the two become more friendly with each other, and even then at the end of this storyline he still hurls a few insults Linkara’s way. In terms of the overall arc, as I’ve said before this arc really didn’t have a lot of meat to it to make it last too long, so I figured doing some character stuff to complement the main story helped. Pollo pointing out the hypocrisy of evildoers who try to justify their behavior is a favorite of mine… and the banter between Pollo and Sierra was a favorite of the fans, hence its return.