Polite Dissent

News has spread around the ‘net that Rob Liefeld is going to be penciling some upcoming issues of the Teen Titans. Reaction, to say the least, has not been particularly positive.

When I first heard the news, I thought that it made perfect sense, particularly if he was going to be drawing Hawk and Dove¹. The brief story on Newsarama shows that my suspicion was correct: Hawk and Dove are involved.

Speaking as one of the bigger Hawk and Dove fans on the internet, I for one am looking forward to these Teen Titans issues.

Liefeld’s work on the Kesel and Kesel Hawk and Dove series² was actually pretty good. While there were certainly some of his usual artistic eccentricities — strangely angled smiles and Art Adams-wannabe poses — there was none of the grotesque anatomy³ that would come to characterize his later work. I’ll admit that his recent work (pretty much everything from X-Force on) has left me cold, but his earlier work⁴ showed imagination, enthusiasm and promise. If he can recapture this original spirit at all, there’s hope.

Let’s also remember that comics are collaborative works. At least as important as the artist is the writer, which in the case in Gail Simone. Gail has shown that she’s very adept at capturing group dynamics (Birds of Prey), and not shabby at all when it comes to teens and young adults (Killer Princesses). Merge the two, and you have Teen Titans. All in all, I see some definite potential.

¹His first published work was the 1988 Hawk and Dove mini-series (written by Karl and Barbara Kesel) that re-introduced Hawk and Dove as a team to the DC uinverse.
²Which I’ll get around to covering real soon, promise!
³Sorry, John.
⁴Yes, even his early issues on the New Mutants.