Tiny Titans 31

This is rather charming: a comic featuring the Teen Titans and other superheroes as primary school characters, drawn in a style that you traditionally associate with (US) childrens comics. How is this supposed to fit in with existing DC continuity? Well, Tiny Titans is a TV show that the “real-life” Titans watch. How very metatextual.

This issue focuses on the Shazam family, so we get appearances from Captain Marvel, his sidekicks, and an appearance from Mr Tawney, who appears as a new primary school teacher.

This is and isn’t for kids. Most of the jokes here involve repetition, in one form or another, and children love repetition. It isn’t laugh-out-loud amusing, but it does consistently bring a smile. Most of the jokes revolve around a single theme, which is repeated, with variations, throughout the strip. There are brief interludes featuring the superpets, and gradually a rhythm is built up which leads to a cumulative final joke. This is the sort of technique that, were it to appear in a more avant garde graphic novel, would be praised for its daring and inventiveness.

Baltazar’s art is very reminiscent of a number of other artists. There’s nothing entirely original on display here, but at the same time I can’t whittle it down to a single distinctive influence. Schultz certainly, but that’s a given for any comic focusing on children. I see quite a lot of Bill Watterson in there too. He has the pleasing but unfortunately rare ability to communicate a great deal though a few brief lines.

My one major reservation is that DC have deemed it necessary to market a comic aimed at children as a tie-in with superhero comics, as though that’s the only way to tempt them into comics these days. And who knows? Maybe they’re right. That’s by-the-by. This was a light, enjoyable comic, one which can be read with pleasure by all ages, and I wish there was more like it out there.