When I first heard about one of the female Teen Titans, Raven, receiving her own solo comic book series, I thought it could be fun at least, reminiscent of Starfire's solo run by Amanda Conner, only instead of a beach, it is set in a high school. The antics and day-to-day troubles of that cliched scenario, mixed in with superheroics, is an extremely common but popular concept with hundreds of tones and directions to take it. You can tell any story in a school - a gateway into adulthood - as it fits into the theme of coming-of-age adolescence.
What I did not expect was 'Raven' to be one of the darkest, most intense comics I've ever read, that fully embraces its supernatural elements. High school barely factors into it.
Raven is a half-demon, gothic empath and telepath. She's the daughter of one of DC's versions of the Devil, Trigon, and of a human mother, Arella (or Angela). This dark horse outcast, who is somehow still a young teenager after years of superhero adventures, departs from the Teen Titans in the wake of a tragedy. For a go at being normal - and, presumably, to be kept sane and not tempted to be evil again - she arrives in San Francisco and stays with her mother's sister's family, who are Christian; going against her own origin and upbringing in the world of Azara, worshiping a god called Azar.
Raven, now going by the ordinary human civilian identity, Rachel Roth, tries to integrate into her new, mundane environment by not standing out and drawing attention to herself, in order to keep Trigon and her demonic brothers off track - they wish to force her towards a path and birthright to becoming a world destroyer. With her über goth girl look and shy, creepy demeanour, you'd think Raven attempting to be "normal" wouldn't go well, much less help her be invisible. But surprisingly, people like her fine, and she appears to make friends easily in high school.
But the blurb lies. School is not what this comic is about. It is about Raven spending the whole volume working out how to save San Francisco from an alien light "thing" that absorbs young people into its hell, for their complex and unstable emotions. She is an empath who has been trained all her life to control her own emotions, or else her father will take her over and bring darkness and destruction to the universe. Her foe in her solo comic isn't Trigon, as it turns out, but a celestial extraterrestrial that grows bigger and stronger through emotions, mainly fear. Raven's ability to take away people's pain while repressing her own is put to the test. If she fails, she could be absorbed into the light of unending suffering along with the other teenagers, but to win might mean having to give in to her dark side, that is strong enough to defeat the madness.
The story is a disturbing metaphor for depression and how it can control people. It can make life a continuous hell, and make everything seem like the end of the world.
In 'Raven', written by someone who created her, wrote her for the longest time, and who knows her best, Marv Wolfman, Raven battles against other people's depression and family distress as well as her own. Badly. She tries to help others deal with emotional turmoil and grief, for this not-so-mysterious demon child is still an empath, and a good person. A teleporting magician possessing a "soul-self", she is like a teenage girl version of Marvel's Doctor Strange. Her goth outcast character, taken to supernatural extremes, remains her greatest appeal to fans, even to this day when the word "emo" is a dead and dated term. She is still awesome.
The only real problem with the comic is Raven's relationships with everyone in her new life. With the exception of her aunt Alice, all her interactions with other characters are too short, arbitrary, and they contain no depth. She once mentions in narration that she had used her empathic powers to make her fellow school students like her quickly, which explains the shallowness of that development. Raven has no real connection to these one-note plot devices, and yet she apparently harbours such a strong bond with them that she thinks she must protect them once the threat of the "thing" is apparent. They are her friends, her anchor, her human half, because...the plot says so. We don't even see her in school much, in comparison to her external and internal battles with the "thing"; which for a superhero story is fine, but for something that is supposed to show how human she can be, it is a lot of telling instead of showing. There is hardly a mention of her time with the Teen Titans - the Beast Boy cameo at the end notwithstanding - which is a good thing for Raven's individual run. If she had compared the school pals she never properly interacts with to the Titans, it would have been the ultimate insult.
At least her aunt is well-developed and has more than one scene with Raven, leading to a great climax that reflects both of their faiths. Love and family come together to stop a deep depression.
'Raven' is a horror story, a brilliant exploding one. The standard art for current DC superhero comics manages to fit with the twisted, macabre tone. We learn more about Raven and the nature of her powers, and we see her as a superhero, a witch, a teen girl with domestic problems, and a demon. She fights and struggles with who she is, and who she wants to be. She is a dark and cool anti-heroine, more sensitive than she lets on.
Really, this is the perfect story for a character like Raven, just like how Starfire's light-hearted, sunny solo comic is perfect for her. Any Raven fan should check 'Raven' out.
Final Score: 3.5/5
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