Teen Titans: Raven by Kami Garcia & Gabriel Picolo
Publisher:  DC Ink
ISBN: 1401286232
Pages: 192
Publication Date: July 2nd, 2019
Personal Rating: 3/5

When a tragic accident takes the life of 17-year-old Raven Roth’s foster mom–and Raven’s memory–she moves to New Orleans to recover and finish her senior year of high school.

Starting over isn’t easy. Raven remembers everyday stuff like how to solve math equations and make pasta, but she can’t remember her favorite song or who she was before the accident. And when impossible things start happening, Raven begins to think it might even be better not to know who she was before.

But as she grows closer to her new friends, her foster sister, Max, and Tommy Torres, a guy who accepts her for who she is now, Raven has to decide if she’s ready to face what’s buried in the past…and the darkness building inside her.

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Thank you to DC Ink for giving me an e-galley of this comic via net galley for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Teen Titans: Raven is Raven’s origin story before she joined the famous Teen Titans ( I loved this show). Raven also happens to be one of my favorite titans so I was really excited to read this. However, even though the illustrations and the coloring throughout the graphic novel was beautifully breathtaking the plot itself was empty.

The illustrations by Gabriel Picolo are the true star of this novel. His coloring reminded me of Ethan M. Aldrige’s watercolor techniques and every character was distinct and didn’t suffer from same face syndrome. The best part was that the coloring was used sparely, not everything was in color nor vivid, majority of the time the only one in full color was Raven. When other characters were in full color it was to create emphasis in the panel and it gave the scene an extra unf of emotion. The art was just perfect and diverse with the inclusion of Latinix, African American women and members of the LBGTQA+.

While the novel itself was an enjoyable read it wasn’t very special. The plot was lacking and felt very underwhelming. I understand that this was a story of Raven finding out what her powers are and overall origin story but this Raven did not feel like the Raven from the Teen Titans series. She felt like a completely new person…and not Teen Titans Raven. She had no real character development and when things happened it was all kinda like a big shrug.

Essentially the novel was like hey look its Raven and some amazing art. The only reason I am not rating it any lower is that Picolo’s art shouldn’t suffer due to the poor plot, dialogue, and characters.