LoSH and NTT: Creatures Of Their Time?

[SiegePerilous02]

LOL, no. DC Started forgiving Slade for what he did instantly - which was also part of Wolfman's original plan since he was the one that actually started writing it. The Judas Contract ended with Slade and Garfield sitting down in a diner and Wolfman had Slade explain to Gar - to the audience - that Terra had always been bad and there was nothing redeeming about her and that she would've done bad **** even without him and that because of that, when all things were said and done, he was not to be at fault for anything that happened with Terra. That's what Wolfman wanted us to believe. It wasn't correct.

And the fact of the matter is that Terra should be a sympathetic character when looked at through a critical lens as both a fan and as another creator. The sociopathic angle wasn't and still isn't interesting.

That actually didn't happen in the Judas Contract itself. it was a few arcs later, after Perez left to do COIE. Within the Judas Contract itself, both are treated as villains and Slade is arrested.

I agree that Wolfman's attempting to write Slade as sympathetic and putting all the blame on Terra to the point that the Titans forgive him is batshit and poor writing, and precisely where the character went wrong. But I don't think Terra needing to be sympathetic is a "fact" at all, even if I prefer versions like the cartoon. They just shouldn't have overdone it in the aftermath by absolving Slade, they should have just left them both as bad people.

[Harpsikord]

That actually didn't happen in the Judas Contract itself. it was a few arcs later, after Perez left to do COIE. Within the Judas Contract itself, both are treated as villains and Slade is arrested.

Ah! It's been quite a while since I read TJC, or NTT after it. Apologies. Still, it tells you where Wolfman was sitting on the issue.

[Lee Stone]

There is no scenario where a teenage girl is "using" an old man for sex.

I didn't say she was using him for sex.

She was using him to do what she wanted. Sex wasn't (entirely) what she wanted.
If they were having sex, it's what she was giving to get her way.

She was very much like Lucy on Dallas, which was airing roughly at the same time, and Terra's personality might've even been inspired by her.
Lucy was having sex with an older man that worked on the ranch (later revealed to be her uncle) because she was enjoying a 'bad girl' status.
She would later also frame a teacher for sexual assault.

The Billy Idol video 'Cradle of Love' also gives a good example of the Over-Sexed and Troubled Teen Vixen Bad Girl trope. I'm sure there's a real name for the trope.

[SiegePerilous02]

Ah! It's been quite a while since I read TJC, or NTT after it. Apologies. Still, it tells you where Wolfman was sitting on the issue.

No worries. I think it does show where his head was at. Not sure if it even came up while writing TJC one way or another, maybe Perez vetoed it?

There is a reason TJC is a classic, but that follow up issues with Gar and Slade is not lol.

[Lee Stone]

It’s simpler than that. Deathstroke was always going to be easier moving forward than Terra. Slade was a cold assassin who did have sympathetic motive that his son died fighting the Titans.

Terra was designed to betray the Titans because she was a sociopath wanted to kill people and advance her interests. To Slade it was work. To her it was fun. She also had no reason to want the Titans dead besides that she just didn’t care.

She was designed to be a messed up sociopath who was more destructive and unstable and dangerous than Deathstroke.

It doesn’t make sense blaming Wolfman for that. The character was designed specifically for that purpose. She was a villain. I think he knows he played it close to the line with a sexual relationship, but it was meant to make it completely certain to readers that she wasn’t a good guy and not to think about redeeming her because Gar had a crush on her, because the whole time she was shacking up with the old man assassin to get her kicks. She was very much designed to be unsympathetic and a hopeless case by the end

I agree.
This is exactly how I understood it, too.

[TheCape]

No worries. I think it does show where his head was at. Not sure if it even came up while writing TJC one way or another, maybe Perez vetoed it?

There is a reason TJC is a classic, but that follow up issues with Gar and Slade is not lol.

As i said, it seems that both Perez and Wolfman has conflicting vision of who Deathstroke is supposed, so is not surprised that Wolfman absolved him in that issue.

[Lee Stone]

It's obvious that was the writer's goal. I think many fans have problems with a character being handle in that way.

I remember that I read that story, because I had heard good reviews (especially about Dick becoming Nightwing). However, I did not understand why the story seemed so desperate to convince me of the Terra's evil.

I think that he built up the facade so well, that even the readers fell for it.
There's still people clamoring that she was innocent and just mis-understood and that Wolfman ruined her.

[Harpsikord]

No worries. I think it does show where his head was at. Not sure if it even came up while writing TJC one way or another, maybe Perez vetoed it?

There is a reason TJC is a classic, but that follow up issues with Gar and Slade is not lol.

Given how quickly NTT went downhill once Perez was done with it, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Wolfman seemed to actively destroy concepts that Perez was fond of and even integral for when Perez was moved over to Wonder Woman following the Crisis. Look at everything that happened with Jericho as well. Honestly, I just don't think that Wolfman was a very strong writer outside of Perez.

Editorial did have him bring a version of Terra back to Team Titans and then later into his New Titans run, which showed that she genuinely did have spunky, good anti-heroic energy.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

The trade copy of Judas that I own has Wolfman talk about the Terra thing. I haven't read it in a while but if I recall correctly.....at the time, it was NTT and X-Men ruling the charts and both books were doing similar things, largely through happenstance. And over at Marvel, along came Kitty Pride who, I guess, built a strong fanbase quickly. So Wolfman decided to take a similar archetype and upend expectations by making the character into a undercover villain.

Wolfman didn't want to do Terra's betrayal and have fans feel like it was coming out of nowhere or was out of character, but readers seemed to be ignoring the signs he sprinkled in, so as the issues rolled along Wolfman had to be more and more blatant about it, until we ended up with Terra and Slade very clearly sleeping together....and even then a lot of fans refused to believe that this was just her, that she wasn't being mind controlled or manipulated.

But Terra remained popular anyway, despite Wolfman's efforts to the contrary, and DC kept trying to find ways to use her and bring her back.....none of which worked of course, because what made Terra so memorable was the fact that she was such a sick and twisted creature in the first place. Had it not been for her betrayal, she'd be no more remembered than Kole or Danny Chase, but the betrayal that made her stick in the mind also made it difficult to capitalize on her afterwards.

The crap with DC justifying Slade's actions came later; comics were getting into the grimdark anti-hero trend of the 90's and Slade was a great character to capitalize on that, but the history with Terra made Slade *too* evil and unsympathetic, so DC decided to clean him up a bit, at the expense of a character who was dead in the first place.

That’s exactly what it was. She was a villain and fans liked her and Wolfman needed to keep drilling it in their head that she was a villain.

And like you said, since Terra was basically unusable after, it was easy to just sacrifice her even more to boost Deathstroke

[Badou]

Wolfman was probably right in the end given how Deathstroke was one of the few characters of the NTT era to rise above the Titans franchise to stand on their own. So him trying to justify what Deathstroke did to protect the IP, even if it was done poorly, was from a business sense the right move given how the characters changed into the later decades. Only really him and Nightwing were able to last beyond the Titans franchise and become their own thing.

[Agent Z]

I didn't say she was using him for sex.

She was using him to do what she wanted. Sex wasn't (entirely) what she wanted.
If they were having sex, it's what she was giving to get her way.

She was very much like Lucy on Dallas, which was airing roughly at the same time, and Terra's personality might've even been inspired by her.
Lucy was having sex with an older man that worked on the ranch (later revealed to be her uncle) because she was enjoying a 'bad girl' status.
She would later also frame a teacher for sexual assault.

The Billy Idol video 'Cradle of Love' also gives a good example of the Over-Sexed and Troubled Teen Vixen Bad Girl trope. I'm sure there's a real name for the trope.

It's a trope based on victim blaming and misunderstanding of how power dynamics between kids and adults work.

Pointing out what may or may not have been the inspiration for Terra doesn't change what was bad writing.

[skyvolt2000]

Wolfman was probably right in the end given how Deathstroke was one of the few characters of the NTT era to rise above the Titans franchise to stand on their own. So him trying to justify what Deathstroke did to protect the IP, even if it was done poorly, was from a business sense the right move given how the characters changed into the later decades. Only really him and Nightwing were able to last beyond the Titans franchise and become their own thing.

Well for the most part they were the only ones who got shots.

Funny it took OGNs to prove Raven and eventually Beast Boy can sell.

[SiegePerilous02]

Well for the most part they were the only ones who got shots.

Funny it took OGNs to prove Raven and eventually Beast Boy can sell.

The OGNs and other media that Raven and Beast Boy find success in are able to sidestep the main issue the comics versions have: no new ideas and rehashing the same storylines for the same audience, while other media gets to at least re-imagine the classic stories for people who most likely haven't seen the originals.

[king81992]

Well for the most part they were the only ones who got shots.

Funny it took OGNs to prove Raven and eventually Beast Boy can sell.

All of the NTT cast: Donna, Starfire, Terra and Cyborg could sell, but DC isn't interested in doing anything with them right now.

[Badou]

Well for the most part they were the only ones who got shots.

Funny it took OGNs to prove Raven and eventually Beast Boy can sell.

Lets wait and see on the Beast Boy numbers before we compare it to Raven's success. I don't know if one OGN suddenly means a character can be a consistent seller like a Deathstroke or Nightwing.

Edit: Also the author and artist for the Raven series helped play a role in the book's success too I think. The author was a pretty accomplished novel writer I believe. So she had a built in audience. Raven also had that recent Wolfman series Raven: Daughter of Darkness before the OGN and it wasn't lighting up the sales charts I think.