So, Can the Titans Finally be Saved Now?

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

The League is comprised of characters who are stars of their own IPs and have plenty of iconic villains on their own before we gather them together as a team.

But how many of those iconic villains are known mostly as JLA villains? The Injustice League is made up of members known more for being villains of their individual heroes. Aren't we talking about the villains that the League itself has made as a group?

I wouldn't say some of their main villains are all that obscure due to other media (like Slade, Blackfire, Trigon, etc) but they don't have many beyond that. It's a solid foundation, but it's also all that they have so far for the most part. And we know how new villains and characters don't always thrive in today's market, so good luck expanding their rogues gallery.

I don't think they necessarily have to. They could always look at lesser-known Titans villains and expand their role and prominence. That seems to be a common occurrence nowadays, especially when DC villains are concerned. Look at what was accomplished with Black Adam and Sinestro. It wasn't that long ago that those guys were B-list villains at best and now they're considered some of the most complex and nuanced characters DC has to offer.

I'd say that Blackfire especially is rife with opportunity for more development. And then, of course, we have the likes of Cheshire, Psimon, Mammoth, and even Mad Mod, who could all be expanded upon and fleshed out. I mean, Cheshire is a bit of a fan favorite already and she really doesn't get thee exposure she deserves.

The Slade thing isn't the best example, since that is a much maligned piece of writing from a very maligned story. While he has been able to stand up to the Titans in the past, he needed Terra to do most of the work in taking them down and Starire was able to stand up to him completely on her own. The Titans themselves, with more experience, should logically be able to defeat him as a solo threat, let alone the League.

It still happened. Also, I've read those arcs. Slade didn't necessarily need Terra to make his move on the Titans, but it was a strategic and tactical choice to use Terra in that way. And it made for one of the most well-known and enduring arcs of the New Teen Titans run. See? That's an example of Slade's character and personality traits making for a compelling arc, instead of just his base power levels.

And the fact of Starfire being able to go toe to toe with a guy who later down the line took out a whole team of Leaguers is not an insult to either Slade or the League. People forget for some reason that Starfire is a super-strong alien princess with master combat training. She's essentially an alien version of Wonder Woman who can also shoot energy blasts out of her hands. Plus, her taking on Slade shows that, yes, the Titans take on "League-level" threats.

And the Slade thing is an example of popularity dictating in-story logic, he's the villainous equivalent of Bat-God. It's more believable for Superman to take out mooks like the Fearsome Five who are long established as being b-listers than it is for Slade to take out the JL when he used to not even want to face their kids in direct combat all at once. And some comments keep saying the Titans are an equal to the team and that the League's status as the best of the best shouldn't prevent the Titans from being seen the same way in and out of universe. But when we go back to pretty much the only iconic run the Titans have, the stories don't back that up too much. Maybe when the Titans of Myth are around (but even then they have the entire Amazon nation and the Olympian gods backing them up) but that's about it.

Slade has even beaten Batman in hand-to-hand combat pretty easily in some of his earliest appearances. He's not a threat to be taken lightly. Plus, I'm gonna refer you to my above argument about Starfire. And furthermore, one could argue that Starfire isn't even the most powerful of the Titans when you have the likes of Raven running around, who can absorb and manipulate emotions, project shields and beams of mystical energy, and who possesses a soul-self that is able to:

- trap foes in a pocket dimension
- fly 36 times the speed of sound, and
- can withstand 14,700 psi of pressure with no problem

And that's just scratching the surface of Raven's abilities. This video does a good job of breaking down her powers.

So, when you have a team that has Starfire and Raven, whose abilities I've explained above, plus:

- Nightwing: master hand-to-hand combatant and strategist
- Wally West: stated even in current continuity as being faster than Barry Allen and the fastest Flash of all of them
- Beast Boy: able to shapeshift into any animal
- Donna Troy: Amazon warrior
- Cyborg: has cybernetic enhancements that give him superhuman strength, speed, and stamina and a white sound cannon

...then I don't think that's a team that anyone should underestimate. So this idea that the Titans should be considered "below" the League in terms of power and independence is misinformed to say the least, especially when I can think of at least a few Leaguers who would be absolutely manhandled by members of the Titans. And that includes members I didn't even list above.

I said Trigon was their major League-level threat, not that he was the most popular. And the first Trigon story was the most effective and conveying that the Titans could be equal to the League in that they defeated him themselves, but they didn't have a prayer against him in the second one and were pretty much guests in their own story.

I mean, I read both of Trigon's arcs and I don't recall them being "guests in their own story." What I do remember is that Trigon essentially turned the world the stone until Raven was able to defeat him, which again, just goes to show how powerful Raven is.

The problem with Slade's popularity is that he's no longer just associated with the Titans. He's probably more popular as a solo character than most of the Titans are by themselves, and just as likely to be pitted against Batman or the JL than them. He's outgrown the franchise. He's their most popular villain, but not considered a Titans exclusive anymore. He should be, but he isn't.

But again, that's a symptom of mismanagement and backward attitudes of certain people in DC's editorial, not the weakness of the IP itself. Deathstroke, when he first gained popularity in the 80s, was firmly established as a Titans villain and remained that way for a good chunk of time. It has been maybe in the past 10-15 years that there's been a concerted effort to get him away from the Titans because some parts of DC's editorial (who share the same initials as Matt Murdock) had this attitude that the Titans generation shouldn't be a franchise because they make the League "look old."

[DrNewGod]

...DC never learned what made them popular in the first place, and continue to repeat the same mistakes thinking that somehow, the same formula that's failed over the last twenty years will somehow, magically, start working.

There are two handicaps on the Titans ever reclaiming their glory days, the first has been mentioned here several times. As long as DC's biggest brands sell more t-shirts and media movie tickets/video downloads, the next gen won't be permitted to eclipse them.

Second goes to Ascended's point: it's not just that Wolfman and Perez hit on some great ideas and told them well, they were almost the only ones at DC putting out stories in synch with their times. Almost every title or franchise at DC at the dawn of the 1980s was still mired in the way DC comics had been done since 1956. Remember, Watchmen and Miller's DKR didn't touch the shelves until 1986. In 1980, DC had not yet learned what Marvel had nearly 15 years before, the median comicbook reader age was going up, and those readers wanted their comics to take on an edgier feel.

W&P were permitted such a radical departure because they were working with a twice-failed property. Nobody cared if they depicted sexuality, or wrangled with coming of age, or examined child-runaway exploitation, or featured four-eyed demons, or built a whole extended arc around a pedophile-anti-Captain America. Wolfman even claimed to have been dismissive of the group himself in the beginning, referring to them as The Justice Little League.

However, W&P - like Wein and Giffen on LoSH - told stories stood in dramatic contrast to every single other thing that DC was doing. Once DC started letting creators apply that kind of right-for-the-times story-telling to a wider range of their characters, like Wonder Woman and The Flash, the Titans' days on the top were numbered. I wouldn't look for the Titans to again become the kind of property they once were unless somebody else manages to do what W&P did: depict them in a way that doesn't lose sight of their sidekick roots, but doesn't make a centerpiece of it whilst telling stories that find that thing today's audience wants, and that everybody else seems to be missing.

[Aahz]

That's part of the problem though. It wasn't as much of an issue back then, but since then the JL have been more consistently tackling threats like Maggedon and Asmodel and invasions from the 5th dimension. People want the Titans to be written as their equals right now, but there is too much of a time gap between their heyday and now (comics wise) where there was no build up in threats and the nostalgia reunions like to use the same old shit that shouldn't believably challenge the Titans themselves anymore (including Slade) let alone the League.

I wouldn't really want the Titans to have these long convoluted cosmic stories, where I loose at some point completely the track of what is going on like the Justice League.

I would actually prefer if the Titans would operate on the level that the JL had, before it became that crazy.

[Dataweaver]

Let's say that DC decided to go with something like 5G, where the Justice Leaguers retire and their proteges (e.g., e Titans generation) don't step up and take over. If that's what we end up with, this is how I'd like to set it up:

In creating the new timeline, Cosmic Wally undoes a number of needless Titans-related deaths that have occurred over the last 25 years. Most notably:

1. Garth and Dolphin of Atlantis.

2. Roy and Lian Harper.

3. Terry and Robert Long.

4. Revert Ric Grayson to Dick Grayson.

5. Have Wally sacrifice his Dr. Manhattan powers to do it, and get him out of the Mobius Chair and back on his own two feet.

In this scenario, the Titans aren't taken off the table by tragedy; they're taken out of action by their families: Dick and Barbara (or Dick and Starfire?) get married; in the former case, they go into espionage by creating a blend of Birds of Prey and Spyral, with Barbara in charge; in the latter case, Dick and Kory settle down to raise their daughter Mar'i. Roy is back to being a single father to Lian. Garth and Dolphin settle down to raise little Tula. Donna gets a chance to reconcile with Terry, to return to her professional photographer career, and to raise Robert. And Wally gets reunited with Linda and the kids.

Any of them can occasionally come out of retirement (or, in the case of Dick and Barbara, out of the shadows) for a mission or two as needed; but for the most part, they're in Happily Ever After territory. Something very few superheroes ever achieve.

[Digifiend]

Uh, Tempest isn't dead?

And Terry and Donna were divorced when Terry was killed.

[Dataweaver]

Sorry; I had heard a rumour that they had killed off Tempest yet again. Given the treatment the Titans received under Didio's watch, I found it totally believable. So just skip that one: if he isn't dead, he doesn't need to be brought back to life.

As for Terry: yeah, I know they were divorced. That's why I mentioned Donna reconciling with him. If I recall correctly, the main issue behind the divorce was that Terry worried that Donna's superheroing was making her an unfit mother for Robert. That wouldn't be an issue in this scenario.

[agentofthebat]

Off topic - Where is the Titans TV show thread

[9th.]

I know they probably don't care or even use her enough to fix it but something has to be done about Donna's origin. It make's no logical sense for a characters backstory to be that complicated. Give her a mini or one of those ZOOM/Ink graphic novels and be done with it.

[Dred]

I'm not sure why anything would change about the Titans with Lee still in charge. Heck he was just as much about the New 52 status quo as Dan.

[Godlike13]

Off topic - Where is the Titans TV show thread

Tv/film has one i think.

[Dataweaver]

I'm not sure why anything would change about the Titans with Lee still in charge. Heck he was just as much about the New 52 status quo as Dan.

There's an online comic (xc-something or other) about standards: you start with 15 standards, and decides to unify them. The result is 16 standards. I think the same principle applies to Donna's origin.

[Digifiend]

They just need to go back to her original one. Rescued from fire by Wonder Woman, who takes her home to her mother, who adopts and empowers her.

[Lee Stone]

They just need to go back to her original one. Rescued from fire by Wonder Woman, who takes her home to her mother, who adopts and empowers her.

So simple, and easy for non-readers to understand.

[Ascended]

That's what I'm saying; these characters have to be worked on individually before any real thought should be given to them as a group.

Fix Donna. Figure out what Wally's role and life is now. Figure out how to make Nightwing stand outside Batman's shadow. What does Vic's New Gods upgrades really mean for him? Most of the Titans are what, dead, abused, ignored, or in limbo right? Get these guys on some solid footing as characters. The team stuff can come later.

[Godlike13]

That's what I'm saying; these characters have to be worked on individually before any real thought should be given to them as a group.

Fix Donna. Figure out what Wally's role and life is now. Figure out how to make Nightwing stand outside Batman's shadow. What does Vic's New Gods upgrades really mean for him? Most of the Titans are what, dead, abused, ignored, or in limbo right? Get these guys on some solid footing as characters. The team stuff can come later.

See I don’t know, I actually think it should be the other way around. This is a trap they keep falling into with the Titans. It gets caught up in trying to fix characters, or give a stage to its character that don’t have one, that the team stuff and world building goes undeveloped. Which in turn then the Titans as a team just becomes a halfway home for struggling characters. They aren’t going to fix anything when the stage itself is in shambles. Sort out the team stuff first, get the team itself on solid footing, and then get to the individual characters.

In the shape most of the characters are it would takes years before they ever actually get to building an actual team if they go character first. Just look at the last series.