Titans/Teen Titans Appreciation 2019

[byrd156]

Using the Judas Contract as a crutch has nothing to do with Terra being alive or not. Writers have rehashed it regardless of Terra's status. Franchise needs to move beyond telling the same old story with different characters.

How does it not? A traitor arc whether or not it has Terra in it or not will have her and the Judas Contract hanging over it. That's what happens when you create a character to tell a specific storyline and people get way too attached.

The traitor arc that Abnett did had a lot of people drawing comparisons to JC and then shift the conversation to talking about Terra. This keeps happening, then we got the Lazuraus Contract crossover with TT and Deathstroke. This is from the writers not the franchise.

Franchises don't tell stories, writers do. The franchise is just a collection of stories with certain branding or characters associated with them. This line of thinking that the franchise is somehow broken lacks any weight to it.

[Badou]

What are these awful decades? I'm not really a numbers guy but I know The Titans didn't do so hot in the 70s revival but then exploded into popularity in the 80s. The New Titans in the 90s was decent sales along with Jurgens and later Grayson's. I don't know the sales of the mid 2000s Titans run but Geoff Johns got praise for his TT.

Okay lets pretend that the Titans are the problem. What's the solution? Throw them on other teams, form new teams, what do is the solution here?

Well I wasn't using sales as a measure of quality. Abnett's Titans sold pretty well but I don't think most would consider it good. I personally don't think the adult Titans have worked since the 90s. I wasn't high on Grayson's run like I know you are, but I don't really count runs like Johns' Titans as "adult Titans". That run focused on what the Titans should be about, which is young heroes, and at that time Tim's generation was the youngest generation in the DCU. Now Damian's gen is the youngest and the Titans should focus on them. While I didn't like forcing adults like Starfire on the team or deaging Raven to work on Johns Titans team the series at least brought the focus back to what the franchise should be about. With every Titans revival it just feels like they rehash the same "we used to be a team of teens and are together again!" theme over and over without really any idea of what to do with them.

The solution is have the adult Titans move on. Create new teams and join established teams. This doesn't mean they can't interact or still be on teams together, but to be treated as adults they need to get out from under the Titans branding. Have some join the JL. Like if Cyborg ever got his Titans history back this would be perfect for him. He was on the Titans as a teen and then join the JL as an adult. Easy. Characters like Wally or Dick, or anyone else, should be able to join the JL too if they want or go solo. You have new teams like JL Dark where a Raven can join or a JL Odyssey where a Starfire can be on. You have teams like Outsiders and can do it properly this time instead of having them form the team out of tragedy. Characters like Dick or Roy can be on that or you have seen Roy work on the Outlaws with Jason. Gar can create a new Doom Patrol team or any number of adult Titans can join any other team. Just integrate them into the DCU.

One adult Titan, maybe 2 at most, can be part of the Titans still if you want to have them lead or act as a go-between with the adult heroes and the teen heroes, but while that messes with the formula it doesn't break it. As the focus is still on what it should be, the young heroes. The Young Justice show got this right in that the "team" is still comprised of young heroes while most of the adult members who were on the team have join the JL or moved on to other things.

[BohemiaDrinker]

Well I wasn't using sales as a measure of quality. Abnett's Titans sold pretty well but I don't think most would consider it good. I personally don't think the adult Titans have worked since the 90s. I wasn't high on Grayson's run like I know you are, but I don't really count runs like Johns' Titans as "adult Titans". That run focused on what the Titans should be about, which is young heroes, and at that time Tim's generation was the youngest generation in the DCU. Now Damian's gen is the youngest and the Titans should focus on them. While I didn't like forcing adults like Starfire on the team or deaging Raven to work on Johns Titans team the series at least brought the focus back to what the franchise should be about. With every Titans revival it just feels like they rehash the same "we used to be a team of teens and are together again!" theme over and over without really any idea of what to do with them.

The solution is have the adult Titans move on. Create new teams and join established teams. This doesn't mean they can't interact or still be on teams together, but to be treated as adults they need to get out from under the Titans branding. Have some join the JL. Like if Cyborg ever got his Titans history back this would be perfect for him. He was on the Titans as a teen and then join the JL as an adult. Easy. Characters like Wally or Dick, or anyone else, should be able to join the JL too if they want or go solo. You have new teams like JL Dark where a Raven can join or a JL Odyssey where a Starfire can be on. You have teams like Outsiders and can do it properly this time instead of having them form the team out of tragedy. Characters like Dick or Roy can be on that or you have seen Roy work on the Outlaws with Jason. Gar can create a new Doom Patrol team or any number of adult Titans can join any other team. Just integrate them into the DCU.

One adult Titan, maybe 2 at most, can be part of the Titans still if you want to have them lead or act as a go-between with the adult heroes and the teen heroes, but while that messes with the formula it doesn't break it. As the focus is still on what it should be, the young heroes. The Young Justice show got this right in that the "team" is still comprised of young heroes while most of the adult members who were on the team have join the JL or moved on to other things.

Before Infinite Crisis and OYL threw a wrench at it, I think Winnick's Outsiders did a great job doing exactly what you're describing.

[byrd156]

Well I wasn't using sales as a measure of quality. Abnett's Titans sold pretty well but I don't think most would consider it good. I personally don't think the adult Titans have worked since the 90s. I wasn't high on Grayson's run like I know you are, but I don't really count runs like Johns' Titans as "adult Titans". That run focused on what the Titans should be about, which is young heroes, and at that time Tim's generation was the youngest generation in the DCU. Now Damian's gen is the youngest and the Titans should focus on them. While I didn't like forcing adults like Starfire on the team or deaging Raven to work on Johns Titans team the series at least brought the focus back to what the franchise should be about. With every Titans revival it just feels like they rehash the same "we used to be a team of teens and are together again!" theme over and over without really any idea of what to do with them.

The solution is have the adult Titans move on. Create new teams and join established teams. This doesn't mean they can't interact or still be on teams together, but to be treated as adults they need to get out from under the Titans branding. Have some join the JL. Like if Cyborg ever got his Titans history back this would be perfect for him. He was on the Titans as a teen and then join the JL as an adult. Easy. Characters like Wally or Dick, or anyone else, should be able to join the JL too if they want or go solo. You have new teams like JL Dark where a Raven can join or a JL Odyssey where a Starfire can be on. You have teams like Outsiders and can do it properly this time instead of having them form the team out of tragedy. Characters like Dick or Roy can be on that or you have seen Roy work on the Outlaws with Jason. Gar can create a new Doom Patrol team or any number of adult Titans can join any other team. Just integrate them into the DCU.

One adult Titan, maybe 2 at most, can be part of the Titans still if you want to have them lead or act as a go-between with the adult heroes and the teen heroes, but while that messes with the formula it doesn't break it. As the focus is still on what it should be, the young heroes. The Young Justice show got this right in that the "team" is still comprised of young heroes while most of the adult members who were on the team have join the JL or moved on to other things.

While I love Young Justice more than anything "the team" works the way it does in that universe because the League is the pinnacle of heroism. The end all be all of superheroes. I love the League and I love looking at them like that but they can't be that in the comics universe. Other heroes have different ways of doing things, there are other teams out there.

I think your issue with the Titans would be fixed if Tim's gen stayed as Young Justice instead of becoming the next team of Titans. So then you would have the JSA for the older characters, JLA for the main adult heroes, Titans for the young adult heroes and then the next gen as Young Justice.

I have a problem with this outlook, heroes growing up shouldn't be viewed as a character "leveling up" to the next team. The characters need to go where it makes sense for them. It ties back into the powersets and outfits line of thinking I like to complain about. These characters need to be characters and just assigning them to teams like it's a pick-up game on the playground is wrong to me.

[byrd156]

Before Infinite Crisis and OYL threw a wrench at it, I think Winnick's Outsiders did a great job doing exactly what you're describing.

It took TJ/Titans Graduation to get there, a price that was way too high.

[Restingvoice]

Interrupt a bit from a casual point of view here, I don't mind the popular characters. In fact, they're the ones I'm interested. When Damian's current team was revealed and it has mostly new faces, I wasn't interested. The only ones I'm interested are the ones that carry big names with them, like Lobo's daughter.

As for Titans itself, it's not the fact that they have Starfire, Beast Boy, Raven, and Cyborg combo again, or Roy, Wally, and Donna combo again, because it will be like protesting that Justice League doesn't have Batman, Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Flash and Green Lantern.

The one that gets me uninterested is when they repeat plot that I know have been done before.
Trigon
Deathstroke
Terra is a traitor omg
Justice League vs Teen Titans. Especially the adult Titans because why the heck are you doing still fighting.
I don't know much about Brother Blood and HIVE and even they, by now, I already heard a lot.

The Fab Five and The NTT crew can stay, plus some new crew, but what I want is a story that doesn't rely on the past but also don't give new villains that look or feel like losers.

[byrd156]

Interrupt a bit from a casual point of view here, I don't mind the popular characters. In fact, they're the ones I'm interested. When Damian's current team was revealed and it has mostly new faces, I wasn't interested. The only ones I'm interested are the ones that carry big names with them, like Lobo's daughter.

As for Titans itself, it's not the fact that they have Starfire, Beast Boy, Raven, and Cyborg combo again, or Roy, Wally, and Donna combo again, because it will be like protesting that Justice League doesn't have Batman, Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Flash and Green Lantern.

The one that gets me uninterested is when they repeat plot that I know have been done before.
Trigon
Deathstroke
Terra is a traitor omg
Justice League vs Teen Titans. Especially the adult Titans because why the heck are you doing still fighting.
I don't know much about Brother Blood and HIVE and even they, by now, I already heard a lot.

The Fab Five and The NTT crew can stay, plus some new crew, but what I want is a story that doesn't rely on the past but also don't give new villains that look or feel like losers.

That's what I've been saying, stories are what's important. DC keeps assigning lackluster talent with no real plans and little to no marketing. Then they decide to kill off a bunch of Titans because it's not selling. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Badou]

While I love Young Justice more than anything "the team" works the way it does in that universe because the League is the pinnacle of heroism. The end all be all of superheroes. I love the League and I love looking at them like that but they can't be that in the comics universe. Other heroes have different ways of doing things, there are other teams out there.

I think your issue with the Titans would be fixed if Tim's gen stayed as Young Justice instead of becoming the next team of Titans. So then you would have the JSA for the older characters, JLA for the main adult heroes, Titans for the young adult heroes and then the next gen as Young Justice.

I have a problem with this outlook, heroes growing up shouldn't be viewed as a character "leveling up" to the next team. The characters need to go where it makes sense for them. It ties back into the powersets and outfits line of thinking I like to complain about. These characters need to be characters and just assigning them to teams like it's a pick-up game on the playground is wrong to me.

I wouldn't say that is my issue. Since that still firmly locks the Titans into being "young" and that doesn't really work if they are adults. Now if DC decided to say that the adult Titans can't be older than 18-20 and are stuck there and Tim's gen will be locked into 17 and younger then that is a different situation. Keeping them in the Titans franchise works better, but once they aged up into their 20s with some of them having children (with those children even becoming heroes for a bit in Wally's case) then it can't work. It is about having them be looked at and treated as adults the way a Rogue or a Kitty would be over at Marvel even though they were the same age or even younger than some of these Titans.

And I don't think of it as leveling up. It is more like growing up and becoming a professional. The Titans were a place for school aged heroes. Once you are out of school you have to do things differently. You have to leave school, become a professional, start families, and generally do more adult things but I feel those are the opposite of what the Titans as a franchise represents. So it doesn't mesh.

The Titans are more of a team playing clubhouse and the JL are a professional team, but that doesn't really work when the Titans are adults and still trying to play clubhouse. Abnett's Titans is an example of this problem. It can work for a short series based around nostalgia, but I don't think it can work for a long ongoing series as we have seen. A team of adults needs to be more professional and have some kind of mission statement or goal.

So in Abnett's next Titans team he tried to give them that and folded them into the JL to try and give the team some structure, but it also didn't work because it was all window dressing and the series is a mess with focus and outside influences changing the series constantly. Then he messed up majorly and had the Titans bend over for the JL again and had them work directly under the JL and be in the JL's own headquarters. Maybe if some of the Titans were proper JL members and they were operating the Titans team out of the JL in that way it can work better, but that wasn't going to happen.

[byrd156]

I wouldn't say that is my issue. Since that still firmly locks the Titans into being "young" and that doesn't really work if they are adults. Now if DC decided to say that the adult Titans can't be older than 18-20 and are stuck there and Tim's gen will be locked into 17 and younger then that is a different situation. Keeping them in the Titans franchise works better, but once they aged up into their 20s with some of them having children (with those children even becoming heroes for a bit in Wally's case) then it can't work. It is about having them be looked at and treated as adults the way a Rogue or a Kitty would be over at Marvel even though they were the same age or even younger than some of these Titans.

And I don't think of it as leveling up. It is more like growing up and becoming a professional. The Titans were a place for school aged heroes. Once you are out of school you have to do things differently. You have to leave school, become a professional, start families, and generally do more adult things but I feel those are the opposite of what the Titans as a franchise represents. So it doesn't mesh.

The Titans are more of a team playing clubhouse and the JL are a professional team, but that doesn't really work when the Titans are adults and still trying to play clubhouse. Abnett's Titans is an example of this problem. It can work for a short series based around nostalgia, but I don't think it can work for a long ongoing series as we have seen. A team of adults needs to be more professional and have some kind of mission statement or goal.

So in Abnett's next Titans team he tried to give them that and folded them into the JL to try and give the team some structure, but it also didn't work because it was all window dressing and the series is a mess with focus and outside influences changing the series constantly. Then he messed up majorly and had the Titans bend over for the JL again and had them work directly under the JL and be in the JL's own headquarters. Maybe if some of the Titans were proper JL members and they were operating the Titans team out of the JL in that way it can work better, but that wasn't going to happen.

These characters have grown more than any other superheroes. They have had families, children, been married and these are things that generally stuck because they weren't a Superman, Wonder Woman or Batman. That's more than any other generation of heroes. The Titans generation had the most room to grow but they have no run out of space because DC doesn't want their flagships to look "old". Dick and Donna were leading the JL before the reboot, there was a world of possibility for them that was closed off and it's hard to find it for them again.

To your point about leaving school and becoming more professional. I'm only 20 with a Bachelors in Film and I still have no idea how the hell life works. I moved from the midwest to the east coast for school made a bunch of friends then moved to the West coast with a few of those friends. I feel each year as I get older the less I care about "professionalism" or adult things, not to say I'm not a responsible adult (I like to think I am) but I care about more abstract things like relationships, people, etc. The people I have come to know I find to be more important to me than whatever crap I have to be dealing with in my own life. I feel the same way about my entertainment and comics. I like the Titans because of who they are and what they represent, not because they are the strongest or the #1 team in sales or in-universe. If the Titans had a book focusing on the Fab Five hanging out with Kole, Jericho, Gnarrk, Lilith and Duela at rock concert with no heroing to deal with I would read the hell out of it. If you had the same concept and had them fight a band that uses mind control to use their fans to take over the world and the team fighting with them I would read the hell out of it. I like the Titans because they can do the clubhouse angle, that's more important to me than anything else. I want these character's character to shine more than their "professionalism".

[Badou]

These characters have grown more than any other superheroes. They have had families, children, been married and these are things that generally stuck because they weren't a Superman, Wonder Woman or Batman. That's more than any other generation of heroes. The Titans generation had the most room to grow but they have no run out of space because DC doesn't want their flagships to look "old". Dick and Donna were leading the JL before the reboot, there was a world of possibility for them that was closed off and it's hard to find it for them again.

To your point about leaving school and becoming more professional. I'm only 20 with a Bachelors in Film and I still have no idea how the hell life works. I moved from the midwest to the east coast for school made a bunch of friends then moved to the West coast with a few of those friends. I feel each year as I get older the less I care about "professionalism" or adult things, not to say I'm not a responsible adult (I like to think I am) but I care about more abstract things like relationships, people, etc. The people I have come to know I find to be more important to me than whatever crap I have to be dealing with in my own life. I feel the same way about my entertainment and comics. I like the Titans because of who they are and what they represent, not because they are the strongest or the #1 team in sales or in-universe. If the Titans had a book focusing on the Fab Five hanging out with Kole, Jericho, Gnarrk, Lilith and Duela at rock concert with no heroing to deal with I would read the hell out of it. If you had the same concept and had them fight a band that uses mind control to use their fans to take over the world and the team fighting with them I would read the hell out of it. I like the Titans because they can do the clubhouse angle, that's more important to me than anything else. I want these character's character to shine more than their "professionalism".

And despite all that growth DC doesn't want to integrate the adult Titans into DCU to be looked at as other adult heroes. I think that is a massive issue and the core problem. DC uses the Titans branding to keep them in that "young hero" mold despite me believing they no longer fit there given their age and experience, and especially because you have multiple young generations behind them now. I believe if they left the Titans franchise to the actual young heroes it would force DC to have to integrate them with the other adults properly. It completes their growth. They can't use it as some obstacle holding them back. They become more equal in standing and if there is no place for them then they weren't strong enough characters to stand as adult heroes anyway.

Now if all the Titans were 20 we wouldn't have the problems we are. Them being treated like young heroes fits. It is the fact that they have aged past that point and I don't think the "clubhouse" theme works for adult heroes over a long period once these characters start getting into their 20s. We've seen that time and time again. The team struggles to find an identity and a purpose other than repeating things they did as teens. It feels regressive and forces these adult heroes from being unable to be seen as adults that command the respect that other adult heroes have. You have to have a reason and a mission statement for a team of adult heroes to work and operate together beyond them just doing it because that is what they did as teens. It is enough for young heroes who are learning and growing together but once you have grown up you need to have some other core reason to be on a team like that. You have added responsibility that comes with getting older.

[BohemiaDrinker]

It took TJ/Titans Graduation to get there, a price that was way too high.

Graduation Day was terrible, but also not needed (at all). Outsiders was still a great book. (And Johns Teen Titans was fair, even if it was nowhere as good as Young Justice).

[Harpsikord]

Throwing this out there - The Lazarus Contract had nothing to do with Terra, had TJC hanging all over it, and not because of her. The story didn't have anything to do with her and it didn't feel like it did. Also, just because a character was "meant" to be dead doesn't mean jack, especially when they were done as dirty as Terra was - Jean Grey was meant to be dead too but she was brought back to participate in and be at the center of a lot of iconic stories. The problem is that the writers need to move past TJC with Terra. It's also that they're afraid to do so.

Terra was considered a hero for more than twenty years by DC's editorial but they hardly did anything with her beyond Wolfman's Team Titans and New Titans. Ravagers ended with her in Deathstroke's hands and was summarily retconned, and now we have a Terra that was regressed so hard that she was playing lackey to Deathstroke again.

It's god damn shameful what writers have done with her.

[Raijin]

It's sad because Terra has so much potential to be more than what she's portrayed as. I would just like to see a writer really take us on a journey with her. Give her the Songbird treatment.

[Jackalope89]

What about something like what the animated series did? Not evil, but manipulated by Deathstroke through her insecurities to control her powers?

[byrd156]

It's sad because Terra has so much potential to be more than what she's portrayed as. I would just like to see a writer really take us on a journey with her. Give her the Songbird treatment.

She was portrayed as an evil Kitty Pryde and that's what she was. It's more of a testament to Wolfman and Perez that they played with so many people's emotions.

Everything after with her has been really bad. If you want Terra just bring back Atlee and let Tara Markov rest in peace where she was meant to stay.