Will there ever be a time when the Titans are the premier DC team?

[Aahz]

One possible scenario that could trigger the Titans replacing the Justice League in terms of status could lie on the silver screen. If there are a slew of DCEU movies (particularly starring characters from the Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman mythos) that fail not only critically (as has been the case for most of the DC extended universe) but financially as well, Warner Brothers could see this as the primary DC characters as no longer resonating with audiences. Because of this Warner Brothers will look for more B-list characters to take the spotlight. I think that these exact B-list characters would be the Titans*.

Don't know, I mean it depends a little who you mean by Titans (they had quite a lot members over the years) but I don't think that they are different enough to work in the scenario.

If they really had problems to get people interested in the classic characters, it would probably better to go with some more obscure characters (like Marvel did Guardians of the Galaxy) than to use the Side Kicks of these failed characters.

[Restingvoice]

No, because DC themselves don't want them. They made it clear that there's a hierarchy of priority. The adult team is Justice League, the villain's team is Suicide Squad, the young team is Teen Titans/Young Justice, the difference only on the title. Titans, being another adult team, is not a priority, though they don't suffer as bad as Secret Six, the other villains team.

[numberthirty]

They were the premiere team in the 80s

Yep.

There will be. While 1980 might be just a little too early, any year from those first few years after that will be exactly what was asked for.

[Tec15]

You have misconstrued my prediction. I don't think that Superman will be deemed "second tier" by the public just yet. It's a long process. However there definitely a lot of problems facing Superman as a character you have to admit. He clearly has seen better days.

Superman used to be DC's top selling character. Now a days, his sales are typically middling** Sure, now that Bendis is on the early issues of his run Superman selling around 70k***, but this almost definitely won't last, as that data I checked was from August, which Superman was on issue two, and after issue three to six, the sales of a title vastly decrease.



* Silver Age Supermanhttp://www.comichron.com/yearlycomic...data/1960.html

** Tomasihttp://www.comichron.com/monthlycomi...7/2017-01.html

*** Bendishttp://www.comichron.com/monthlycomi...8/2018-08.html

I thought you were talking about movies? Now you want to switch to talk about monthly floppy sales? You might want to check the regular (Non-relaunch) sales of Marvel movie superstars like Iron Man and Captain America, chief. Not to mention the precipitous decline of the X-men from what they once were. By your logic btw, all Marvel characters other than Spider-man are "second tier".

[Tec15]

You have misconstrued my prediction. I don't think that Superman will be deemed "second tier" by the public just yet. It's a long process. However there definitely a lot of problems facing Superman as a character you have to admit. He clearly has seen better days.

Superman used to be DC's top selling character. Now a days, his sales are typically middling** Sure, now that Bendis is on the early issues of his run Superman selling around 70k***, but this almost definitely won't last, as that data I checked was from August, which Superman was on issue two, and after issue three to six, the sales of a title vastly decrease.



* Silver Age Supermanhttp://www.comichron.com/yearlycomic...data/1960.html

** Tomasihttp://www.comichron.com/monthlycomi...7/2017-01.html

*** Bendishttp://www.comichron.com/monthlycomi...8/2018-08.html

And I misconstrued nothing. What about Batman btw? Not only did you say that Superman was "stale" and "On the edge of irrelevancy" (Nothing about it being a "long process" for him to be deemed "second tier". That's just you covering your ass now), you claimed that Batman too was on the verge of joining him on the scrapheap. So, tell me, which Marvel Superstar character's sales should the declining Batman look to emulate: Ant-Man? Black Panther? Or Carol Danvers? Surely such characters, should be doing boffo sales, so much better than Batman due to all successful movies right?

[DrNewGod]

No, for several reasons.

Being The Big Dogs is not the niche in the DCU that The Titans were created to occupy, and like most comic concepts, they'll periodically circle back to their roots as the side-kick-and-friends team. When you get away from that, what you've got is either a team without a theme, or a team that's Titans in-name-only. You can still write good stories from that, but it doesn't really give a creative team solid footing to work from.

In terms of In Universe logic, the only way to make The Titans the number one team while preserving something of their brand is to either nerf their seniors, or to age their seniors out of the picture. As long as the Big Trinity retain their value as IP (and particularly, as long as Batman retains his brand's value), neither of those things is going to happen.

There's something that gets forgotten about The Titans' heyday. They were one of the only DC comics to recognize and address the fact that the comicbook audience had moved from being children towards late adolescents and young adults. Batman and Swamp Thing had gotten there first, but the rest were really mired in the old kids' entertainment mentality. Once DC committed to bringing the new sensibility to all of their titles, The Titans' days at the top of the heap were numbered.

[Restingvoice]

My apologies. I was wrong. DC don't consider Titans as an adult team. They consider them part of the young team under Teen Titans. According to DC Essential Graphic Novels 2018

[SiegePerilous02]

If there was ever a period where Donna was more popular than Wonder Woman, it was during the NTT days, when she was part of an extremely popular group and not an individual. That time has passed, and she will never get there again due to DC ruining the character with several reboots and Wonder Woman resurgence in popularity due to the movie. The reason the first generation of Titans, at least the ones who are former sidekicks, will never be as popular as the big name characters is that they are dependent on them within-and-out of universe for existing and can never cut ties with them completely, or else they wouldn't be the same characters. Dick is the closest to being as popular as the big name characters and is the one with the most potential, but he's also tied to the extremely popular Batman franchise. Wally got lucky and actually replaced his mentor, but we see the double edged sword of that situation with Barry's resurrection.

These are not issues that the majority of Marvel's characters that they've pushed in the movies have suffered from. Nor do Cyborg, Starfire, Raven, Gar, Terra or others of the first Titans generation, which is why all of them are more marketable and popular than the main five Titans save Dick (and maybe Wally).

The Titans' peak was kind of an anomaly, 30 years ago. Wolfman and Perez were writing 1980s stories when most of DC was still writing Silver Age stories.

The Titans' were (out of universe) a huge thing for exactly as long as it took for the rest of DC to catch up. Which wasn't long.

Harsh, but not wrong. It's pretty telling that the Titans popularity started to dwindle as soon as Perez left as co-creator, and then the rest of the DCU got a creative overhaul in writing. And then new generations of sidekicks emerged, so they were trapped in the middle, unable to move forward because DC has no reason to retire their bigger characters, and can't go backward because that niche is filled by not one, but two new generations. They're kind of screwed no matter what.

It's pretty telling that the best thing to come out of the Titans franchise since the Wolfman/Perez heyday is the cartoon, and that made them teens and the only generation of young heroes again, which is not something the comics easily could (or should) do.

[daBronzeBomma]

If the question was "could" there ever be a time, then the answer has to be yes, because anything could happen in the future, no matter how remote they seem now.

But the question was "will" they, and that answer is a hard no. The Trinity and Aquaman are not and never will be successful legacy characters and will never be replaced. Their fans outnumber their derivatives' fans by a whole lot, and they're the ones who get shot after shot after shot at new projects.

Dick's fame will always be primarily due to his recognition as Robin, not Nightwing or DickBats or secret agent man.

Dick will always belong to Bruce and never escape his shadow.

[Digifiend]

Flash is a wild card.)

Flash isn't that much of a wildcard - people should know him from TV now.

[HaveAtThee]

In general I think that if current established superstar characters were allowed to age and evolve, and eventually retire/die/stay dead then the younger crop could totally replace them with a full throttle effort by the Big Two.

[Badou]

No. DC has positioned themselves for decades now where the JL is the top team in the DCU. It is the book they put their top creators on and spin their big evens out of. They have shown no signs of changing this. They will even remove characters from the Titans and put them in the JL (Cyborg) in order to help the JL at the expense of the Titans franchise. So in order for the Titans to be the "premiere" team they will have to take over the JL, but that would mean moving Bruce's generation out and that will never happen. Temporary it will and for some story arcs, but even in stories where Dick or someone from the younger generations takeover DC always makes it a point to remove Bruce and others from the team in order to keep the two separate, or they will take Dick off the team when Bruce returns.

They will never have Dick join the JL while Bruce is on the JL despite Dick getting older and older. This will always create a gap in the two generations where they can't merge together and create a situation where the younger generation gets older and organically starts taking over. It is why Dick and others are adults stuck in this Titans team that gets treated like an afterthought in the DCU because DC doesn't know what to do with these adult Titans characters who can't join the JL but are too old to be called teens. They look at them as being redundant and expendable.

Back when the Titans were DC's top team in the 80s they were also the only younger generation around. They didn't have any competition in DC. Now there are multiple younger generations that all beat up on each other as each try and gain focus and relevance. The New 52 screwed over Dick's generation in order to prop up Tim's generation, but then at the start of Rebirth Tim's generation got sidelined while Dick's gen was coming back, but just a few years later that is going to change again. All while the JL has remained completely separate from this. This prevents any of these younger generations from gaining any footing.

[Konja7]

It's extremly unlikely that Teen Titans characters can replace the Justice League in popilarity.

Most of them have established their popularity and position (especially Batman), then that's practically impossible a replacement.

Outside of TV, Wonder Woman's really the only big hit in this superhero movie age and I've heard from sources that DC isn't 100% on Wonder Woman. I don't know if they think it was a fluke or something else. I trust the source so this is kind of mind boggling to me, but I believe it before the film hit theaters. They didn't market the movie in a big way before it released than once all the positive feedback came out they pushed it harder on the back end, going for Oscar noms etc. Still if anyone at WB has doubts about Wonder Woman now I'd genuinely lose faith in current management across the board.

If this is right, it would be surprising, but it could be some reasons:

- A good part of the audience for Wonder Woman is people who don't normally see superhero films, they won't likely go to see other superhero films. In other words, the success of Wonder Woman doesn't help a lot to DCEU in general.

- The success of the film probably doesn't help so much in the sale of comics. In general, the fans of a movie don't necessarily can enter on comics.

- How much saw the merchandise based on Wonder Woman movie?

[DrNewGod]

If there was ever a period where Donna was more popular than Wonder Woman, it was during the NTT days, when she was part of an extremely popular group and not an individual. That time has passed, and she will never get there again due to DC ruining the character with several reboots and Wonder Woman resurgence in popularity due to the movie. ...

IMO, that was always on borrowed time. Wonder Woman is an international feminist icon. Donna didn't have that going for her, and over the long haul, Diana was going to overtake her again. It just took a competent writer.

Harsh, but not wrong. It's pretty telling that the Titans popularity started to dwindle as soon as Perez left as co-creator, and then the rest of the DCU got a creative overhaul in writing. And then new generations of sidekicks emerged, so they were trapped in the middle, unable to move forward because DC has no reason to retire their bigger characters, and can't go backward because that niche is filled by not one, but two new generations. They're kind of screwed no matter what.

Another obstacle the TT face is that they're a coming of age story that can never get resolved. One of the things that wowed people in 1980 was that the sidekicks and their new friends were moving forward. Eventually, since nobody was retiring WW or Batman, that had to stop.

[El_Gato]

That's never going to happen. Especially not with the characters you've mentioned. Most people see the Fab 5 as younger copy and paste versions of older, more popular characters. They were created as sidekicks (lesser than the main hero) and that's how they'll remain. One could make an argument for Dick, but he's more of the exception than the rule.