Making friends is hard enough, now Raven has to protect them from unknown evils.
“White Carnival” part two, The Fear Within has our half-demonic teenager working hard to fit in with her new group of friends. The unfamiliar social situation has her on edge and her dreams aren’t helping out either so when people start being affected by an unnatural presence Raven doesn’t have the strength to fight back. Can she figure out what’s happening to her new town and save her friends before it’s too late?
Raven #2 (DC Comics)
First off, the sarcasm and snarky attitude is on point. I find myself reading it in the Teen Titans Raven voice — I have two kids, it’s allowed — and writer Marv Wolfman is doing a great job bringing her personality off the page. Also bonus points for the Gremlins reference. Take care to learn the “Raven Factoids”-they’re great and one of the more adolescent personality traits that come out in the issue.
There’s quite a bit of introduction for Raven’s friends; you get to meet a few more people she’s starting associating with around school. Antt is one of the more pronounced and she’s really likeable which makes the rest of the story pretty emotional. The “possessed” girl who was tracking Raven in the last issue has disappeared from her last location. This leads us up to the new evil entity making itself known in town. Raven is splitting her soul to check up on situations, and it’s causing her a lot of weakness. I like the images of her “soul-self”; the imagery is great thanks to artist Alison Borges and the costume she’s using is fantastic as well. It’s pushing more towards a bird-like form. The loss of strength and confusion she’s facing at the last few pages of actions is very descriptive and entertaining. It gets to a point where it’s painful to watch her fight.
There’s no doubt that Raven is, well, weird compared to her new friend. I know she used her empathy to have them like her but I would have really liked to read more about how that happened. There’s really no big explanation even in part one it was all very short. A nitpick with the art: there’s a point where I noticed that Raven’s right eye was more prominent, it’s not a big deal but the fact that I noticed made me a little picky about it. I started to see it wasn’t just her face either, seems to be a dominant side view. The last 8 or 9 pages are blue-like just blue. It has something to do with the entity she’s dealing with but it’s all blue.
Overall, not at all a bad story line, I’m liking the start of this but I’m hopeful there will be a little more information added as the series continues.
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