YMMV / Titans (2010)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The circumstances behind why Tattooed Man ended up joining Deathstroke seem a bit too suspicious, when taking into consideration that Mark's son died after he first turned down Slade's invitation to join. Then sometime between the ending of Final Crisis Aftermath: Ink and Titans: Villains for Hire, Mark's son is killed by Slipknot and Slade invites him to join the team again. Given this is Deathstroke we're talking about, was the killing of Mark's son an unhappy coincidence that pushed him to join, or did Slade make it happen behind the scenes to get Mark to join him.
• Audience-Alienating Era: Many readers felt that shifting the focus from the actual Titans to a group of unscrupulous mercenaries led by Deathstroke was a huge mistake, with distaste towards this development resulting in the series' cancellation. In addition, due to centering the story on Deathstroke's team of mercenaries and having excessive levels of Wangst and Gorn compared to any of the previous books, the run has been reviled. One of the biggest points of criticism was Cinder's handling as a sexual abuse survivor, due to how Eric Wallace tried to rely on that to make her sympathetic despite that she does nothing to earn any sympathy from readers thanks to her unnecessarily extreme methods and miserable, self-absorbed personality.
• Bile Fascination: Eric Wallace's run has been regarded as the absolute lowest a Titans-related series could sink in terms of quality, with the only reason anyone ever bothers to talk about it is in regards to comparing it to other critically lambasted storylines. So far, no work before Wallace's run and no work after it has ever reached the same abysmal reception no matter how bad they were received by fans.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The entire team crossed it in their first appearance (sans Arsenal, who didn't join until several issues afterwards) when they brutally slaughtered Ryan Choi and delivered his body in a matchbox to Ryan's archenemy Dwarfstar. As such, Eric Wallace's attempts to portray the Titans as a Tragic Villain team is sorely undermined when all of them mercilessly killed an innocent man for the sake of achieving their poorly thought-out goals.
  • Deathstroke crosses it yet again when he gleefully reveals he'd been spiking Arsenal's heroin with Bliss to worsen his addiction and keep him under his control.
• Narm: Practically the entire comic could qualify as it, due to how Eric Wallace tries way too hard to make the characters sound like total badasses in situations which are either ridiculous or horrible coupled with Fabrizio Fiorentino's exaggerated facial expressions.
  • Cinder's Establishing Character Moment is her getting in bed with a man who's revealed to be a child rapist, shown from his point of view as she burns off his penis with her vagina. It especially doesn't help that's implied it's just her vagina that's on fire, along with the face she makes as if she's taking a crap.
  • Cheshire, normally somewhat eloquent and smooth, cursing in practically every panel. Issue #26 even has her charging at Slade exclaiming "IT ENDS NOW" with Slade bantering "It's just beginning."
  • Nursery Cryme. The name alone is cringe, but the extra "Y" in "Cryme" sends it over the top. When Cinder tries to kill him, he somehow manages to grab her and press her lips against his power-blocking muzzle. This is able to melt off the muzzle, but the man himself doesn't have any burns despite that he grabbed Cinder with his bare hands while she was on fire.
  • Allegra Garcia is written as if Eric Wallace is trying to make her the new Terra, a sadistic, overpowered brat with a meanstreak, but without the sexual assault overtones. Half of her dialog is her sounding way too full of herself as "a badass" and how she's going to make Slade accept her on the team.
• Never Live It Down: While there are many reasons to snark about how bad Eric Wallace's run was, absolutely no one is ever going to forget how Cinder burned off a man's dick with her vagina. It also doesn't help that this is probably the only interesting thing about Cinder.
• Replacement Scrappy: Deathstroke's team, when Titans was remade into a series about Slade's mercenary team stealing the Titans name after the actual, adult Titans had disbanded following Justice League: Cry for Justice and Blackest Night. The run immediately got off to a bad start by killing off Ryan Choi in an extremely graphic and dragged out manner just to show how "dangerous" this new team was, which landed DC a number of accusations about inter-company racism; Ryan's creator Gail Simone actually broke her legendary politeness to say how much she hated how he died. A few years later, DC released Convergence with two miniseries, Convergence: The Atom and Convergence: Titans meant to specifically address and undo the damage this run on the book did. Added to the accusations about Ryan's death were:
  • The over saturation of blood and gore.
  • Arsenal joining the team right off the heels of the much loathed Rise of Arsenal miniseries. Cheshire emotionally blackmails him into joining by holding Lian's death against him, and he conspires with her to kill Slade when they get the chance. Roy started appearing more and more psychotic as his drug addiction worsened, and then readers felt especially angry when he willingly accepted a vial of Bliss from Slade, with Bliss being a drug that is literally made from children. Author Fabian Nicieza had to specifically state that the Roy seen in Convergence was pulled before he fell as further down as he did in the sewer of Deathstroke's team.
  • Osiris gradually going from being the Token Good Teammate to a Spoiled Brat psychopath who got so bad even his own sister was repulsed by his actions. His inclusion in the title was the only reason the book was connected to Brightest Day (in that Osiris had to restore Black Adam and Isis after they were Taken for Granite), but said connection pretty much amounted to nothing in the series itself and the main Brightest Day book.
  • Everything about Cinder's character. A suicidal rape victim whose debut included her murdering a man by burning off his penis and setting him on fire using her vagina. We're being serious here.◊ That's not even getting into how poorly Eric Wallace portrayed Cinder's sexual abuse and his inability to actually make her sympathetic, forcing the readers to view her as tragic when she does absolutely nothing but wallow in self pity when she's not killing people.
• The Scrappy: Deathstroke's Titans team are even more so ignored than Fringe and Minion, who are at least mentioned in nostalgic regard when discussing the past Titans team, whereas Slade's team of mercenaries is completely ignored save for when someone is mentioning a member that was already a Titan (Roy, Osiris) or associated with the group (Cheshire, Deathstroke).
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Titans becoming a villain-driven book about a team of mercenaries led by Deathstroke. The reviews for the series before the change had already been poor, but after Eric Wallace and Fabrizio Fiorentino took over, the book found its way on many "Worst Comics of 2010" lists. One common complaint was the death of Ryan Choi.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Cheshire is clearly shown mourning Lian, but she makes absolutely no mention anywhere of the death of her other child, Thomas Blake Jr. in Secret Six. Granted, Tommy's death was faked by his father Catman to Give Him a Normal Life, but Cheshire didn't know this. This admittedly makes Cheshire look worse to readers who know about Tommy and the fact he was conceived as a Replacement Goldfish to Lian, as if she really only viewed him as Lian's backup. It also makes her exploitation of Arsenal's breakdown even worse, due to her proclaiming it's his fault Lian died.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: This run received nothing but loathing from fans and critics alike due to the mercilessly bleak atmosphere and unsympathetic cast doing awful things with no real reward or punishment for their actions. Out of all the characters to receive a marginally happy ending, there's Arsenal and Jericho deciding to restart the Titans right after Deathstroke tainted the name, and then Cinder whose happiness comes from the fact she finally commits suicide like she's longed for while ultimately escaping punishment for killing Ryan Choi and setting Nursery Cryme loose on the world. Even the moments that tried to be uplifting like Tattooed Man and Cinder's "friendship" and Dick Grayson trying to tell Arsenal he can still be a hero came across as meaningless due to how forced and shallow they were.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Deathstroke's mercenary team of Titans were described by writer Eric Wallace as being bad people, but it's clear that the majority of the team was supposed to be seen as tragic and sympathetic due to their horrible backstories and the recent series of traumas that pushed them into the team. This included Cheshire and Tattooed Man losing their respective child, Osiris being haunted by the man he accidentally killed to protect his sister, and the years of sexual abuse and Survivor's Guilt Cinder suffered from. However, any sympathy these characters might have gained was instantly crushed by the team's first actual appearance when they brutally slaughtered Ryan Choi, a beloved Ensemble Dark Horse and one of the few Asian heroes DC had, followed by Osiris's gradual transformation into a self-centered brat and Cinder stupidly letting a serial child rapist free because she rushed her attempt to murder him. The only member of the team who managed to retain any sense of sympathy from fans was Roy Harper, who was not a part of Ryan's death and had the distinction of being manipulated by both Deathstroke and Cheshire. It helps that readers were still majorly pissed off at how poorly Roy was being handled after Justice League: Cry for Justice and Rise of Arsenal.
  • Cheshire especially is hit harder with this due to the fact she lost two children (or at least believed she lost both), but at no point ever shows that she's mourning Lian and Lian's baby brother Tommy. With the knowledge Tommy was only ever born so Cheshire would have a back-up child in case anything happened to Lian, Cheshire's lack of acknowledgment towards his supposed death while openly mourning Lian makes her look like even more of a neglectful mother.
• What Could Have Been: Eric Wallace had several storylines cut as a result of Titans being rushed due to Flashpoint. He intended to follow up on Cinder finding child molester Nursery Cryme after she'd accidentally set him free, and there were obvious implications that metahuman Allegra Garcia was going to join the team or at least meet Deathstroke's team again.