Not too impressed. ( )

So many characters...but they do a good job of giving us varying view points, without so many view points that you can't follow the story. The name of the game is teamwork and cooperation. None of the heroes are powerful enough to do it all, or even a major of it, on their own. They coordinate and learn to work together, slowly building trust as allies. Not a bad story. ( )

After reading the second volume of the new 52 Teen Titans, I decided I needed to read this special collection to actually understand the Culling. The Culling is a crossover story told in the pages of Teen Titans, Superboy, Legion Lost, and the Teen Titans annual. In the second volume of Teen Titans, they included the Teen Titan issues of this story, but instead of bringing in the other titles (including the Teen Titans annual!), editors just gave the reader a written synopsis. The result was the story lost a lot steam and most of its impact, and after such an interesting building up of tension in the first volume, the second volume felt anticlimactic. For Teen Titan readers who want to fully experience the Culling story line, and don't read the other series involved, this special edition is a necessity. It gathers together all the related issues from the three series, brings in the Teen Titans annual, and places them in the correct chronological order.

The volume begins when N.O.W.H.E.R.E. moves from being an ominous threat behind the scenes to coming out into the open and trying to crush the Titans and Legion Lost. The Titans are already at N.O.W.H.E.R.E.'s complex after a failed attempt to rescue Superboy. Team members of Legion Lost, on the other hand, are abducted by Ravagers and brought to the Arctic complex early in the volume. The Titans undergo torture and time in the colony to "prepare" them for the Culling, while Legion Lost is dumped in the Culling area as soon as they are captured.

What is the Culling? The Culling is Harvest's strategy to gather the strongest young metahumans and humans to help him in a mysterious upcoming battle. He places all contestants in the arena and directs them to fight each other to the death; those that survive will become his new Ravagers. The weak are culled. He hopes the Titans and the Legion members will trim away the excess by fighting each other. Instead, they quickly realize they have a mutual enemy, and team up to keep the other kids in the Culling from killing them or each other. Harvest is not pleased with this turn of events, and sends in his Ravagers to take out both teams, but they are ultimately not a match for the young superheroes. Finally, Harvest himself makes an appearance, and the final showdown begins.

This compilation was a much more satisfying conclusion to the story than what I received in the Teen Titans volume. It resolves the rising tension with much action. Don't expect a wealth of character development here; while there are a few nice scenes between characters, this collection focuses on the power play between good and evil, which is typical of a big crossover showdown. And it's fun. The character interactions will come after, as the Titans recuperate from their ordeal and try to move forward. While one fight is over, the mystery is far from solved, and I expect to see more of Harvest and his strange ambitions in the future. This volume sets up a big villain for the Titans, and while it closes with a victory of sorts, the reader knows the battle is far from over. It is always good for a superhero team to have a mastermind bad guy as a foil. I wish I had read this crossover collection before I read the second volume of Teen Titans, but it did fill in the gaps nicely. ( )