What Could/Should The OG New Teen Titans Be Doing Now?

[Ascended]

It's not that he's like Batman. It's that he has the mantle. He's still Dick Grayson but with the mantle of the Batman. It's key for him and his growth as a character.

I can see Tim becoming the next Bat. Or Damian. Dick? Not at all. He'll carry the mantle for a minute when he has to, but he's his own man. That's been a huge part of his character for a long time. I'd see him permanently taking on the Bat cowl as a downgrade. Sure, Batman is a bigger name and always will be, but Nightwing belongs to Dick. He doesn't need Bruce's hand-me-downs. He just needs DC to let him be as awesome as he actually is, and stop knee-capping him.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I think the Titans have a lot of potential, but I think carving them up into Titans and Teen Titans is a mistake. I think a Teen Titans book focused on Nightwing, Wally, Donna, Roy, Cyborg, Raven, Beast Boy and a rotating cast of various Titans, new and old, makes the most sense. Their job would be similar to the Post-Infinite Crisis JSA in that they would travel around the DCU searching out young metahumans and helping them deal with their new powers. Some could become new teen superheroes, others could become threats to themselves and others, some may just want to find a way to become normal again. Lots of potential for new stories and characters that can take place across not only America, but around the world. I'd love to see new international metahumans introduced.

I don't see any reason why Cyborg can't remain part of the League while still helping out the Titans. If Batman can appear in a dozen books a month, I don't see any reason why a character that literally doesn't need to sleep and can probably make multiple drone copies of himself can't be in two teams at once.

I also think a companion Young Justice book should be ongoing focused on the third-generation teen heroes of Tim, Cassie, Conner, Bart, and various young heroes like Miss Martian, Kaladur/Aqualad, Artemis/Arrowette, Blue Beetle and more. They can serve a similar function to their cartoon counterparts, as the Justice League's special ops team, under the supervision of Red Tornado, Black Canary, Martian Manhunter and other veterans.

[Doctor Bifrost]

Well, the Titans didn't start out as friends.

To me they did. The O5 Teen Titans were all sidekicks of, and in most cases being raised by, members of the JLA. (Well, give or take Wonder Girl, whose relationship to Wonder Woman was retconned in and never fleshed out with actual "sidekick" adventures, living with Diana - or anybody! - etc.) So when I read their first issues, it just seemed to me that they were a group of friends - kids who knew each other, and were possibly thrown together from time to time, because of the adults in their lives. And also because of the commonality of their life experiences. I think the comic leveraged that concept, although I may have also been projecting my own imagination onto it.

[Badou]

What people seem to not get about the Titans is they are a team because they are friends. It is not about working their way into the Justice League or training the younger kids it is about friends working together. That is the central core of what the Titans are. This is a book that needs to play up the soap opera elements of them being young adults and friends. Less big fights and more smaller stories and character building is what the Titans need. That and Starfire should be in the Titans.

I just don't see why everyone thinks every heroes goal is to be in the Justice League. Why would they even want to be in the League when all they would always be in the shadows of their mentors.

I still feel like the friendship thing works when they are the younger generation, but they aren't that anymore. I don't think it alone can support an entire team like this. It is time they moved on to something more professional. They can't be stuck playing clubhouse forever. There have been JL teams, JSA teams, JLI teams and ect that have had friendship as a core component to their runs, but they still operated as a professional hero team with clear goals. I mean Bruce and Clark are great friends but they work on the JL together and treat the JL as a professional team. You have Tim and Damian's generation to get back into the teenage melodrama stuff if they want, but I think Dick's generation should move on to something else. You can have some melodrama and soap opera elements too but I think they need something more.

[Pohzee]

Both the "Fab Five" and the "New Teen Titans" don't need to do anything together. The group dynamic is stale and stagnant. We need a new "New Teen Titans" that learns the right lessons from Wolfman and Perez's run. It wasn't the characters Beast Boy, Raven, Starfire, and Cyborg; it was fresh ideas, stories, and characters.

We need a complete shakeup. Following the NTT, I'd say to preserve 3 iconic Titans characters and then add 4 or more new characters to the roster. And, most importantly, give them a reason to exist. There was an in-story purpose for the formation of the NTT. Raven brought them together for a specific goal. Whatever relaunch of the Titans may be, they absolutely need a direct goal for the purpose of their formation.

Edit: Just realized that this wasn't the point of the thread, so a few more on-topic things.

-Starfire: Not babysitting Damian and Beast Boy. I actually like the idea of her on the League more than Cyborg. Her powerset is more visually interesting and it helps the gender balance.
-Beast Boy: Having grown up and not needed to be babysit. Also take him off of any Titans team. He needs a break. Give him to Gerald Way for Doom Patrol. I don't care.
-Raven: Also sick of her on the Titans. She has that Wolfman mini so that is good enough. But she should also be older.

[Rac7d*]

Both the "Fab Five" and the "New Teen Titans" don't need to do anything together. The group dynamic is stale and stagnant. We need a new "New Teen Titans" that learns the right lessons from Wolfman and Perez's run. It wasn't the characters Beast Boy, Raven, Starfire, and Cyborg; it was fresh ideas, stories, and characters.

We need a complete shakeup. Following the NTT, I'd say to preserve 3 iconic Titans characters and then add 4 or more new characters to the roster. And, most importantly, give them a reason to exist. There was an in-story purpose for the formation of the NTT. Raven brought them together for a specific goal. Whatever relaunch of the Titans may be, they absolutely need a direct goal for the purpose of their formation.

Edit: Just realized that this wasn't the point of the thread, so a few more on-topic things.

-Starfire: Not babysitting Damian and Beast Boy. I actually like the idea of her on the League more than Cyborg. Her powerset is more visually interesting and it helps the gender balance.
-Beast Boy: Having grown up and not needed to be babysit. Also take him off of any Titans team. He needs a break. Give him to Gerald Way for Doom Patrol. I don't care.
-Raven: Also sick of her on the Titans. She has that Wolfman mini so that is good enough. But she should also be older.

I dont mind any of that

Keep damian kaldur, KF add Maya/Nobody Suren can fill Raven place let superboy join early
I would like another girl but for now that would be a pretty cool team

[Agent Z]

I still feel like the friendship thing works when they are the younger generation, but they aren't that anymore. I don't think it alone can support an entire team like this. It is time they moved on to something more professional. They can't be stuck playing clubhouse forever. There have been JL teams, JSA teams, JLI teams and ect that have had friendship as a core component to their runs, but they still operated as a professional hero team with clear goals. I mean Bruce and Clark are great friends but they work on the JL together and treat the JL as a professional team. You have Tim and Damian's generation to get back into the teenage melodrama stuff if they want, but I think Dick's generation should move on to something else. You can have some melodrama and soap opera elements too but I think they need something more.

Young Justice and Teen Titans animated showed the teams acting as professionals and friends. The two aren't mutually exclusive, it's just the issue with the writing.

[Elmo]

I can see Tim becoming the next Bat. Or Damian. Dick? Not at all. He'll carry the mantle for a minute when he has to, but he's his own man. That's been a huge part of his character for a long time. I'd see him permanently taking on the Bat cowl as a downgrade. Sure, Batman is a bigger name and always will be, but Nightwing belongs to Dick. He doesn't need Bruce's hand-me-downs. He just needs DC to let him be as awesome as he actually is, and stop knee-capping him.

Tim should not be Batman because the biggest part of his character ever since the beginning was that he doesn't want to be a superhero, he just has to, and at the end it was always to help Bruce out. Any possible future for Tim that doesn't involve him retiring just bums me out honestly.

Damian as Batman is fun to read but doesn't click with me emotionally. Dick should be Batman because Batman should be a lighter character, and Bruce Wayne as a whole is always seen as a melancholic depressive character with no way of ever escaping that. I see Dick's growth not about him finding his own name and becoming his own hero, but simply not living in anyone's shadow and being able to make his own decisions.

Bruce Wayne should be completely 86'd from the DC Universe. Dick Grayson should be Batman and lead the Bat family with a complete overhaul of all of those characters. New setting, new world, no more of the same old tired tropes that come with Bruce.

[Korath]

I dont mind any of that

Keep damian kaldur, KF add Maya/Nobody Suren can fill Raven place let superboy join early
I would like another girl but for now that would be a pretty cool team

Amen to that. I really like those characters, one or two more created to join it (possibly a girl or two to had a little bit more of gender balance) and it would be perfect.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

They tried that as the NTT characters got older but were still doing the same things and it didn't work. It stagnated and eventually fell apart. The concept works best when it is the actual younger generation of characters learning to be heroes and working together. It isn't about being sidekicks but about the younger generation. Once they become adults they don't really have any direction or mission statement which is the core problem. They are adults doing the same thing they did as teens.

They were still young during the NTT days, and it is also important to remember that back then they didn't have these other generations of heroes behind them. So even if they were older teens or college age at that time they were still the youngest heroes, but that isn't the case anymore. It hasn't been the case for a long time. They are adults and there are 2 younger generations of heroes behind them now. You have Tim's generation and Damian's generation and that is who the franchise should focus on while Dick's generation should move on already. I mean it is pathetic that you have characters like Raven, Starfire and Beast Boy that have been stuck on the same Titans team through 3 generations of characters.

It stagnated, but not because of the reason you think it did. Zero Hunter really said it best: these characters weren't really a team because they were "learning" how to be heroes. They were on the same team because they were best friends, and practically each others' family. After all, the things they were doing on the Titans were pretty much the same types of things that the League handled: shadowy criminal enterprises; deadly mercenaries/assassins; uber-powerful mystic/demonic threats; superpowered thugs; etc. In fact, the threat that Raven assembled the NTT to fight was a threat that she had brought to the League first. They just didn't believe her. Plus, of course, the Titans did plenty of "adult" things during the NTT run. Dick and Kory were engaged to be married and had a very adult relationship. Again, Donna got married and had a child. Roy Harper had a kid. They all led pretty adult lives.

The point I'm trying to make here is this: If the Titans had pretty much always tackled the same type of threats that the "adults" on the League did and conducted relationships that were pretty adult, then it doesn't make sense to say that them staying Titans held them back from "growing up." In fact, them being on the Titans, away from the shadows of their mentors, is what allowed those characters to grow up.

No, instead, what actually stagnated the franchise was DC's inability to build upon the foundation that Wolfman and Perez left with new ideas, characters, and concepts. Let's look at the X-Men franchise for a comparison. Now, like the Titans with the NTT, the X-Men had a solid foundation provided by the Claremont/Byrne run. However, unlike the Titans, after the Claremont/Byrne era of the late 70s to mid 80s came to an end, other writers came on and kept injecting new ideas and new concepts into the X-Men books and kept building off of the foundation provided by Claremont and Byrne. As a result, we got an X-Men franchise that was filled with memorable concepts, that had multiple generations of heroes, and had an extensive list of villains. The only truly standout time of the Titans' history is the Wolfman/Perez run. DC didn't really invest in the franchise past that, and writers pretty much just kept recycling old ideas. I mean, can you name one truly memorable Titans villain that was introduced post-Wolfman/Perez?

Now, things I think only became more muddled in the 2000s when they merged the YJ crew with the Titans, and while Johns's run was a good read, it did sort of create this impression of the Titans being a "team for sidekicks" when it hadn't been that for a long time.

Now, these are issues to be addressed, but the response shouldn't be to torch the NTT era and trash all of those characters and concepts and move them somewhere else. No. Instead, the response should be to keep the NTT concepts/characters as a strong core of the Titans franchise, but also build off those concepts and characters and introduce new concepts and characters the same way that the X-Men did. That's how you keep a franchise alive.

Like I said before, DC needs to create more new original characters for the Titans. Not "baby" versions of adult heroes in the DCU. The NTT era worked because Starfire, Cyborg, and Raven were their own characters, with their own identities. Wolfman created more original characters for the Titans like Pantha, Phantasm, Red Star, and Jericho, but other than what Wolfman contributed, no other creator really made a lasting impression. I guess Jurgens brought something to the table, but nothing really stuck.

[Ascended]

To me they did. The O5 Teen Titans were all sidekicks of, and in most cases being raised by, members of the JLA. (Well, give or take Wonder Girl, whose relationship to Wonder Woman was retconned in and never fleshed out with actual "sidekick" adventures, living with Diana - or anybody! - etc.) So when I read their first issues, it just seemed to me that they were a group of friends - kids who knew each other, and were possibly thrown together from time to time, because of the adults in their lives. And also because of the commonality of their life experiences. I think the comic leveraged that concept, although I may have also been projecting my own imagination onto it.

I think they were friends as kids (the original version) but there's friendship and then there's the level of friendship that persists through into adulthood and defines people for their entire lives. The Titans way, way back in the day? They were friends, but probably not the kind who would have remained close if left to their own devices. In the first issue Wolfman does, as Raven pulls them in, you see that they've already started to lose touch with each other. If was the NTT era that really cemented this facet of their group dynamic, and that exists only because Raven had some really damn big daddy issues.

Bruce Wayne should be completely 86'd from the DC Universe.

Yeah, that's never gonna happen.

Anyway, we're getting off track here guys. I was hoping other Titans than Nightwing would get some love, and see some ideas for the characters, not just another debate about whether they should still be a team calling themselves the Titans or not.

[CRaymond]

Anyway, we're getting off track here guys. I was hoping other Titans than Nightwing would get some love, and see some ideas for the characters, not just another debate about whether they should still be a team calling themselves the Titans or not.

I'm still cooking. Right now, I'm between the ideas that High School friends drift apart, and the very X-Men idea of classic lineups create classic chemistries.

[Ascended]

I'm still cooking. Right now, I'm between the ideas that High School friends drift apart, and the very X-Men idea of classic lineups create classic chemistries.

Perhaps you split the difference, and only have some drift away?

Personally, Im really hoping that someone here drops a badass "Raven goes evil forever" idea. Its not that I want to see her gone, or that I especially want her to be a villain, I just think she'd make for a great bad guy if DC ever took her in that direction for real, and not just for a brief period of time.

[9th.]

Maybe travel the world helping kids/teens control their powers and find their path in life.

[Godlike13]

Anyway, we're getting off track here guys. I was hoping other Titans than Nightwing would get some love, and see some ideas for the characters, not just another debate about whether they should still be a team calling themselves the Titans or not.

Nightwing needs love too. That mentality is why Titans has become rather toxic for arguably its most popular character. Its not ok to do nothing with Nightwing, or push him into the background, just because the others are worse off. What Titans is doing with him is frigging criminal. They shouldn't squander the successes they do have.