depreydeprey's review against another edition
4.0
This is a reprinting of a mid 80s series that has some of the racial and gender issues you might associate with comics that are more than 35 years old and Batman is at times deeply inconsistent from his portrayal in other titles and eras. That said, Jim Aparo's artwork and layouts are stunning and you really feel his absence in the one issue he didn't do the art for and while I'm sure the easiest comparison for this series is to the New Teen Titans, and the two series even cross over at the midpoint of this collection, there is something new happening here. There is a natural diversity to this team, with two female members, Halo and Katana, and two members of color, Black Lightning and Katana who is, as far as I know, the first Asian female super hero in American comics. There is also a street level element to this series and an interesting working class feel to many of these characters. Black Lightning is a teacher at the same inner city Gotham school that Halo attends and Katana manages a bookstore that focuses on Japanese culture. It feels refreshing to have secret identities this well developed and it helped me care about the characters more. The bad guys are also consistently interesting and I don't know if the Masters of Disaster ever apear in another series but they were perfect, especially their post punk leader, New Wave.
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