How do you see the Titans?

[Badou]

Actually they weren't the first team to define in the DCU, though. That would be the Justice Society. The League stole their schtick.

No, the JLA are currently defining the DCU. They have been doing that since Crisis. You keep bringing up these teams and arguments that are decades old and don't fit in with what DC is doing now and has been doing for decades. It makes no sense.

This pretty much proves my point, though. The team didn't maintain the "mission statement" that made them unique to other teams in the Marvel Universe.

No, it had a mission statement then the book ended. It was a low tier book so expecting it to stick around wasn't going to happen. Then Marvel will use the team name and form a new team with a new mission statement. This is basic stuff.

You are basically proving my argument as to why the Titans are a failure as a team after becoming adults. Their mission statement has ended, such as being young heroes learning together, but DC keeps them around because they can sell a mid tier book and because DC has nowhere else to put these aging Titans. They are characters with nowhere to go because they will never become full League members with Bruce's generation there, but are too old to be Teen Titans anymore. So they are stuck in this limbo of being adults but still doing the same things they were as teens. It doesn't work.

Well, actually, how do you know that? Strange and Namor are still classic and popular Marvel characters.

Because in the 70s Hulk was selling hundreds of thousands comics and was maybe behind only Spider-man as far as Marvel solo heroes I think.

Firstly, my "no" was to the idea that the Titans are spin off team. Secondly, nothing in the solicit or the announcement suggests that the new team of Titans are going to be a "JL farm team."

Guess you haven't read any of the interviews Snyder did. "Also operating out of the Hall of Justice will be a new incarnation of Titans, written by Dan Abnett. Described by Snyder as "the Justice League's AAA farm team," the team is led by Nightwing and Raven and includes Beast Boy, Steel, and Ms. Martian."

https://www.newsarama.com/39196-dc-l...ce-banner.html

Them being DC"s first team literally means nothing, firstly. They were still being published before the New 52 because there were unique stories to tell with them because they are unique characters. The end.

And if your argument is "the JSA are only around because they were around for a long time", well then I hate to break it to you, but the Titans have been around since the 1960s. They aren't going anywhere. The Titans are always going to be around up until DC goes out of business.

No, it was a reason for why they are different from the Titans and JL. The JSA still are what they originally were even as its heroes age and grow old and new and younger heroes come in. They are all still the JSA. That doesn't change. The Titans are not like that. It is very segmented from generation to generation from Dick's to Tim's with Bruce's Justice League lording over them constantly. It's all very divided. As Teen Titans they were a team of young heroes that came together to learn how to be heroes and work together. This was their mission statement and it works perfectly for young heroes. They did this for decades and reached their peak in the NTT era where they were DC's top team. Creating all sort of new and interesting heroes and villains, but this era ended. They eventually stopped being called "teens" and were looked at as adults. Going by just Titans now, but since making this transition they have failed as a team and a concept.

So much so that in the New 52 DC tried to erase them from continuity because they did not know how to fit these older Titans characters in with a younger JL team and Tim's generation already filling the young hero niche. That right there proves my entire point at how DC views these characters. Because DC viewed them as being completely redundant with a younger League operating and had no place for them. They were brought back now with Rebirth but 2 years in and DC has already scraped the original adult Titans team because it had no direction or purpose. So they are folding this new team in with the JL because they don't know what else to do with them.

Okay, firstly, the Titans being young adults does not mean that they are below the League. Hell, most of the Titans members can't be said to be kids anymore, since at least a few of them have had children of their own. Also, a majority of them aren't even former sidekicks, but original characters.

You are missing my point again. DC still treats them like they are below the league and that will never change with how DC has positioned the Titans and the League.

Your missing the whole point of this conversation. Everything you just mentioned is what DC has done that has angered the fanbase and why the fans WANT DC to revert the Titans back to their former glory. The fans WANT the NTT era back in continuity, especially since Cyborg being on the League hasn't done him any favors. However, you don't revert a team back to its former glory by disbanding the team and cancelling the title.

And honestly, I don't know why wouldn't want to bolster the Titans since that failed movie might have just done severe and irreparable damage to the Justice League brand (yet notice how nobody is calling for the League to disband).

The whole point of the conversation that I started was "Do the Titans still work as adults?" and I said I don't think they do and "teams need a mission statement to function" which the adult Titans has struggled with for a long time. The Titans former glory is never coming back unless DC does another reboot and reboots to when Dick was a teen again to build it from the ground up. You can say that Cyborg in the league hasn't done him any favors, but every Cyborg fan would rather he stay in the League than be pushed back down to the Titans because they view it as a demotion.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

No, the JLA are currently defining the DCU. They have been doing that since Crisis. You keep bringing up these teams and arguments that are decades old and don't fit in with what DC is doing now and has been doing for decades. It makes no sense.

Again, no they haven't. There have been many times when the JLA wasn't even the most popular team in the DCU. The DCU is a hell of a lot bigger than the Justice League. And thank god for that, because otherwise it'd be incredibly boring.

No, it had a mission statement then the book ended. It was a low tier book so expecting it to stick around wasn't going to happen. Then Marvel will use the team name and form a new team with a new mission statement. This is basic stuff.

Alpha Flight is still around. It evolved past its original "mission statement" and is being led by Carol Danvers. Teams don't only serve a specific function and then disappear. The Birds of Prey was originally just Barbara Gordon and Black Canary and their whole schtick was being an all-female team, with Barbara being the master strategist and "woman in the chair." However, that didn't last and circumstances changed. Does that mean that the team went away? No.

You are basically proving my argument as to why the Titans are a failure as a team after becoming adults. Their mission statement has ended, such as being young heroes learning together...So they are stuck in this limbo of being adults but still doing the same things they were as teens. It doesn't work.

Well, for one, they dropped the "Teen" back in the 80s. Secondly, they worked for many, many years as Titans well after aging up into their own heroes all throughout the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. Its only since around 2008/2009 that DC editorial experienced this shift in attitude and started treating the Titans as if they should be a junior Justice League with nothing more to offer. That is the attitude that actually did damage to the Titans brand, not the very fact of them being Titans. Again, the Titans worked for decades as their own team, with their own original members and own original threats that operated independent of the JLA. That is what DC needs to return to if the Titans are to work as a franchise.

Because in the 70s Hulk was selling hundreds of thousands comics and was maybe behind only Spider-man as far as Marvel solo heroes I think.

Again, doesn't really prove that fans weren't there to see Namor and Strange and Silver Surfer. And furthermore, that doesn't make the book an "Avengers spin off." As someone else pointed out on here, the Defenders were meant to be seen as the anti-Avengers, just operating on their own terms. Well, the Titans long operated on their own terms and did just fine.

Guess you haven't read any of the interviews Snyder did. "Also operating out of the Hall of Justice will be a new incarnation of Titans, written by Dan Abnett. Described by Snyder as "the Justice League's AAA farm team," the team is led by Nightwing and Raven and includes Beast Boy, Steel, and Ms. Martian."

Well, then that's just further evidence that DC is mismanaging the team by making them subsidiary to the League, when historically they were not, and in fact were more successful when they were independent of the League.

No, it was a reason for why they are different from the Titans and JL. The JSA still are what they originally were even as its heroes age and grow old and new and younger heroes come in. They are all still the JSA. That doesn't change. The Titans are not like that. It is very segmented from generation to generation from Dick's to Tim's with Bruce's Justice League lording over them constantly. It's all very divided. As Teen Titans they were a team of young heroes that came together to learn how to be heroes and work together...They eventually stopped being called "teens" and were looked at as adults. Going by just Titans now, but since making this transition they have failed as a team and a concept.

The concept is not what has failed. Its not them growing up that led to their failure. Its how that team has been managed by DC for the past decade that has led to the "failure" (although, they actually still sell decently, which should tell you that, yes, there is an audience for the Titans). The JSA don't work because they span multiple generations. They just work because they have their own unique characters and villains and stories....just like any other team in the history of comic books.

Also, if anything, people would probably tell you that the Titans SHOULD be kept separate from subsequent generations of legacy characters. A lot of fans actually say that melding the Titans with the YJ crowd was a bad move. So, the idea of a team "spanning legacies" being the thing that saves it is not a universal opinion.

However, if the thing that has doomed the Titans is their subsequent legacies not being on the team with them, then by your logic, no actually, the JSA isn't its own thing either. If having your legacies follow in your footsteps as members of the JSA is the thing that makes the JSA work, then there are two glaring exceptions to that rule in the form of the Flash and Green Lantern legacies. Jay Garrick and Alan Scott are key members of the JSA, yet their legacies, Barry Allen and Hal Jordan, have never really been JSAers. Ergo, their legacies are similarly divided just like there is a generational gap between the Titans and subsequent generations of teams.

So, if having your progeny join your team after you is the key to success, then why are there multiple exceptions to that rule? And don't say its because Barry and Hal were never sidekicks because Barry was actually directly inspired by Jay in becoming the Flash. Furthermore, why is it not a problem that the android Red Tornado was on the League, while Cyclone was on the JSA? Why was it not an issue that Al Pratt was on the JSA while Ray Palmer was a Leaguer?

The only thing that made the JSA work was that DC treated them as their own team, occupying their own space in the DC pantheon of teams, tackling their own unique threats. Although, notice how there's no JSA around right now, which is a point I'll get to in a minute...

So much so that in the New 52 DC tried to erase them from continuity because they did not know how to fit these older Titans characters in with a younger JL team and Tim's generation already filling the young hero niche. That right there proves my entire point at how DC views these characters. Because DC viewed them as being completely redundant with a younger League operating and had no place for them...DC has already scraped the original adult Titans team because it had no direction or purpose. So they are folding this new team in with the JL because they don't know what else to do with them.

But do you not get that that is the WRONG direction for the Titans franchise and that DC should be treating them as an independent team wholly separate from the League.

In fact, its this attitude on DC's part that is the reason we don't have the JSA around NOW. DC, at a certain point, decided that every team that wasn't the JLA was redundant, especially the ones that had legacy characters. So, when the New 52 came about, they thought "who needs all these extra Flashes and these extra Wonder Girls and these extra Green Lanterns running around? They're not the main ones so who cares if they exist?" However, we saw how that went over with the fans. People are still clamoring to get the JSA back...just like they're clamoring for DC to give us back a Titans team that's actually independent enough to tell the JLA to pound dirt.

You are missing my point again. DC still treats them like they are below the league and that will never change with how DC has positioned the Titans and the League.

Its true of how DC has positioned the JLA and Titans in the past 10 years or so. Its not true of how the teams were historically portrayed.

The whole point of the conversation that I started was "Do the Titans still work as adults?" and I said I don't think they do and "teams need a mission statement to function" which the adult Titans has struggled with for a long time. The Titans former glory is never coming back unless DC does another reboot and reboots to when Dick was a teen again to build it from the ground up. You can say that Cyborg in the league hasn't done him any favors, but every Cyborg fan would rather he stay in the League than be pushed back down to the Titans because they view it as a demotion.

Well, as to your first statement, that's just plain wrong. We saw what happens when DC decides to reboot everything to the beginning. They tried it with Titans franchise during the New 52 by making Tim's Titans the "first and only" Teen Titans in that continuity, and look how that turned out. They even tried to completely reboot Wally West, reverting him to the status of teenager, and that's how we got NuWally. Both moves failed hard.

As to your second statement, uh, which Cyborg fans have you been talking to? Because pretty much all of the Cyborg fans I've seen would rather he go back to actually mattering on the Titans than remain on a team where he was basically a piece of furniture for several years. The Priest run was the first time in almost 10 years of being on the League that we actually saw Victor be more on that team and, still, his role throughout it was to blunder in his leadership. So, no, people who are actually fans of Cyborg wouldn't view his Titans status being returned to continuity as a demotion. They'd view it as a saving grace because, again, a character who actually matters on one team is better than a character who doesn't on another.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

In short, what made the JSA work was that they had multiple unique characters and villains. Well, that's what made the Titans work, until DC decided that they should just be a junior JL and started aping their core members and villains for the JL

[Raijin]

No, the JLA are currently defining the DCU. They have been doing that since Crisis. You keep bringing up these teams and arguments that are decades old and don't fit in with what DC is doing now and has been doing for decades. It makes no sense.



No, it had a mission statement then the book ended. It was a low tier book so expecting it to stick around wasn't going to happen. Then Marvel will use the team name and form a new team with a new mission statement. This is basic stuff.

You are basically proving my argument as to why the Titans are a failure as a team after becoming adults. Their mission statement has ended, such as being young heroes learning together, but DC keeps them around because they can sell a mid tier book and because DC has nowhere else to put these aging Titans. They are characters with nowhere to go because they will never become full League members with Bruce's generation there, but are too old to be Teen Titans anymore. So they are stuck in this limbo of being adults but still doing the same things they were as teens. It doesn't work.



Because in the 70s Hulk was selling hundreds of thousands comics and was maybe behind only Spider-man as far as Marvel solo heroes I think.



Guess you haven't read any of the interviews Snyder did. "Also operating out of the Hall of Justice will be a new incarnation of Titans, written by Dan Abnett. Described by Snyder as "the Justice League's AAA farm team," the team is led by Nightwing and Raven and includes Beast Boy, Steel, and Ms. Martian."

https://www.newsarama.com/39196-dc-l...ce-banner.html



No, it was a reason for why they are different from the Titans and JL. The JSA still are what they originally were even as its heroes age and grow old and new and younger heroes come in. They are all still the JSA. That doesn't change. The Titans are not like that. It is very segmented from generation to generation from Dick's to Tim's with Bruce's Justice League lording over them constantly. It's all very divided. As Teen Titans they were a team of young heroes that came together to learn how to be heroes and work together. This was their mission statement and it works perfectly for young heroes. They did this for decades and reached their peak in the NTT era where they were DC's top team. Creating all sort of new and interesting heroes and villains, but this era ended. They eventually stopped being called "teens" and were looked at as adults. Going by just Titans now, but since making this transition they have failed as a team and a concept.

So much so that in the New 52 DC tried to erase them from continuity because they did not know how to fit these older Titans characters in with a younger JL team and Tim's generation already filling the young hero niche. That right there proves my entire point at how DC views these characters. Because DC viewed them as being completely redundant with a younger League operating and had no place for them. They were brought back now with Rebirth but 2 years in and DC has already scraped the original adult Titans team because it had no direction or purpose. So they are folding this new team in with the JL because they don't know what else to do with them.



You are missing my point again. DC still treats them like they are below the league and that will never change with how DC has positioned the Titans and the League.



The whole point of the conversation that I started was "Do the Titans still work as adults?" and I said I don't think they do and "teams need a mission statement to function" which the adult Titans has struggled with for a long time. The Titans former glory is never coming back unless DC does another reboot and reboots to when Dick was a teen again to build it from the ground up. You can say that Cyborg in the league hasn't done him any favors, but every Cyborg fan would rather he stay in the League than be pushed back down to the Titans because they view it as a demotion.

It seems like you're the only one being objective about this. Every other post I've seen on here seems to be in the "What was" category. People are letting their love for something blind them. Cyborg going back to the Titans would be such a waste. But from what i gather most people don't like him anyway. So they'll be fine with that. Glad he's leading Justice League Odyssey and not some generic Titans group that everyone wants.

[skyvolt2000]

It seems like you're the only one being objective about this. Every other post I've seen on here seems to be in the "What was" category. People are letting their love for something blind them. Cyborg going back to the Titans would be such a waste. But from what i gather most people don't like him anyway. So they'll be fine with that. Glad he's leading Justice League Odyssey and not some generic Titans group that everyone wants.

People want to like him but are fed up with Man versus machine stories.

Folks want him with the Titian because you have over 30+ years of books and shows showing an interesting or half way (depending on who you are) as human being that is part machine.

Yet when you look at his solo & JL run-he's Batman's internet, JL bus, always getting hacked in to, woe is me my daddy hates me, lets find another machine to fight with and treated worst than Storm in X-Men.

So until SOMEONE does something with him in JL-folks pine for Titans where they KNOW he has better shot at usage beyond what he is now.

No one is letting their love blind them. They see a guy being forever WASTED and folks are fed up with it.

What good is being on that team with nothing to show for it. 2 low selling books, toys on peg holders collecting dust, RARELY seen in Justice League stuff (Outside of the film stuff) and trolled by Red Lion. Yet they look over at Marvel and see Miles Morales accomplish more in the same amount of time as Cyborg's league term. They see Luke Cage do more. They saw Falcon do more. DO I EVEN need to say anything about Black Panther? Moon Girl? Riri Williams? Shadow Man? Midnight Angels? New Patriot? Duke?

How do all these beat Cyborg? Be it floppies sales, trade sales, toy sales and even movies.

Folks are tired. Folks are tired that the buck keeps getting passed with Cyborg. If tossing him with Titans FORCES improvement-so be it.

[Raijin]

People want to like him but are fed up with Man versus machine stories.

Folks want him with the Titian because you have over 30+ years of books and shows showing an interesting or half way (depending on who you are) as human being that is part machine.

Yet when you look at his solo & JL run-he's Batman's internet, JL bus, always getting hacked in to, woe is me my daddy hates me, lets find another machine to fight with and treated worst than Storm in X-Men.

So until SOMEONE does something with him in JL-folks pine for Titans where they KNOW he has better shot at usage beyond what he is now.

No one is letting their love blind them. They see a guy being forever WASTED and folks are fed up with it.

What good is being on that team with nothing to show for it. 2 low selling books, toys on peg holders collecting dust, RARELY seen in Justice League stuff (Outside of the film stuff) and trolled by Red Lion. Yet they look over at Marvel and see Miles Morales accomplish more in the same amount of time as Cyborg's league term. They see Luke Cage do more. They saw Falcon do more. DO I EVEN need to say anything about Black Panther? Moon Girl? Riri Williams? Shadow Man? Midnight Angels? New Patriot? Duke?

How do all these beat Cyborg? Be it floppies sales, trade sales, toy sales and even movies.

Folks are tired. Folks are tired that the buck keeps getting passed with Cyborg. If tossing him with Titans FORCES improvement-so be it.

What has he done with the Titans?

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

What has he done with the Titans?

Led the team; was at the center of the Technis Imperative; fought super villains that were actually interesting instead of the dozens of lackluster tech-based baddies he's had in his solo comic; formed long-lasting bonds with his teammates that made them feel like friends and not just co-workers; and generally just mattered more to that team than he does to the League...

[Trey Strain]

Well, then that's just further evidence that DC is mismanaging the team by making them subsidiary to the League, when historically they were not, and in fact were more successful when they were independent of the League.

The concept is not what has failed. Its not them growing up that led to their failure. Its how that team has been managed by DC for the past decade that has led to the "failure" (although, they actually still sell decently, which should tell you that, yes, there is an audience for the Titans). The JSA don't work because they span multiple generations. They just work because they have their own unique characters and villains and stories....just like any other team in the history of comic books.

Also, if anything, people would probably tell you that the Titans SHOULD be kept separate from subsequent generations of legacy characters. A lot of fans actually say that melding the Titans with the YJ crowd was a bad move. So, the idea of a team "spanning legacies" being the thing that saves it is not a universal opinion.

The only thing that made the JSA work was that DC treated them as their own team, occupying their own space in the DC pantheon of teams, tackling their own unique threats. Although, notice how there's no JSA around right now, which is a point I'll get to in a minute...

But do you not get that that is the WRONG direction for the Titans franchise and that DC should be treating them as an independent team wholly separate from the League.

Good points there.

In essence, Titans should nor be a Justice League B title, because...

...B titles always fail.

And the Justice Society doesn't need to be "a mix of old and new" between the original JSA and modern characters who can't sell a comic because...

...when Geoff Johns did it 20 years ago, the JSA members were geriatric and needed help getting to their walkers.

[Armor of God]

JL Junior.