I love the depth that McKeever gives Rose in this issue. The new Titans (Ravager, Kid Devil, Miss Martian) have been given short shrift since the One Year Later jump and it’s nice to start to get a handle on exactly who these kids are. His grasp of Rose’s character is impressive. He paints her as unstable, violent, and rebellious but loyal. She might not be able to tell (or even hint to) her fellow Titans how important they are to her but she is willing to kill to keep them safe. We can all see the misunderstanding between her and Robin/Wonder Girl coming a mile off. Ravager crossed a line with the viciousness of her attack and with her reckless destruction of the tower. I have no doubt her good intentions won’t soothe Cassie’s misgivings about Rose. That’s what makes this such interesting drama.

I’ve become a fan of Eddy Barrows’ art. He draws dynamic action sequences and chooses interesting panel and page compositions. The uneven inking this issue makes a few pages stick out, and not in a good way. In particular, the first page’s lines are too heavy and sloppy while most of the Cassie and Tim pages have the opposite problem, feeling a little too sparse. The main chunk of the battle, however, looks just fine, especially the last panel of page 12 (Rose lighting up her new toys) and the first panel of 16 (Rose’s sneer). The coloring is also spotty this issue but it may actually be the inking that make it seem that way.

Teen Titans is slowly but surely clawing its way back up to the top of my reading list and that’s a good thing. This book has the potential to achieve a kind of Buffy/Veronica Mars super-teens tone by amping up the characterization and it looks like Sean McKeever may be going that route.