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  1. #1
    Boisterously Confused
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    Default LoSH and NTT: Creatures Of Their Time?

    Seems like The Legion and The Titans enjoyed their greatest success in the 1980s. It's been a rollercoaster for both of them ever since.

    Is that a factor of the Silver Age kids audience coming of age with them? If not, what?

  2. #2
    DC Enthusiast Tony's Avatar
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    That may be part of it. They both had 1 amazing creator as well though. Keith Giffen was and is an amazing writer of everything but dialog apparently, and George Perez is on a lot of peoples top 10 artist lists.

    Another factor was Legion of Superheroes and New Teen Titans were both B List books that could get away with stories that Superman Batman and Wonder Woman could not. Marv Wolfman upped the sex quite a bit in those books just as Chris Clairmont did in X-Men. That was a big factor in the success as well.

  3. #3
    Ultimate Member Riv86672's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tony View Post
    That may be part of it. They both had 1 amazing creator as well though. Keith Giffen was and is an amazing writer of everything but dialog apparently, and George Perez is on a lot of peoples top 10 artist lists.

    Another factor was Legion of Superheroes and New Teen Titans were both B List books that could get away with stories that Superman Batman and Wonder Woman could not. Marv Wolfman upped the sex quite a bit in those books just as Chris Clairmont did in X-Men. That was a big factor in the success as well.
    Really good points; I agree.

    Something that I think applies towards your B list book observation is, as a wrestling fan, there are those who are most exciting when they’re -chasing- a world championship, but once they get to the top spot, they aren’t nearly as compelling.
    For NTT especially, I remember they kind of leveled off w. the debut of Tales of The New Teen Titans and became less and less a must read for me and other fans I knew back then.
    There was nothing inherently -wrong- w. the book, it just didn’t have the...oomph? of the earlier stuff.

  4. #4
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    I don't think that we can just say that they were creatures of their time and that that's why they're not popular anymore. If that were true, the X-Men would have probably gone the same way. However, they haven't.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Green Goblin of Sector 2814 View Post
    I don't think that we can just say that they were creatures of their time and that that's why they're not popular anymore. If that were true, the X-Men would have probably gone the same way. However, they haven't.
    A good point. What do you think made the difference?

  6. #6
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    I think it's worth mentioning that the Legion also enjoyed success two decades earlier in the 1960s. Comichron's site has some paid circulation figures for most years in that decade and DC's highest ranking team title from 1965 though 1969 was Adventure Comics featuring Superboy & the Legion. All of the Super-family titles performed very well back then. Even with that level of success the Legion was relegated to back-up status in Action and then to limbo for a few years in the early 70s.

  7. #7
    Ultimate Member SiegePerilous02's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DrNewGod View Post
    A good point. What do you think made the difference?
    The X-Men had longer stretches of quality. Claremont had plenty of ups and downs after Cockrum and Byrne left, but he still did some of his best stuff without them and he stayed on for a total of 17 years. Whereas NTT lost steam as soon as Perez left as co-creator. There is also the fact that the X-Men have had many "seismic shifts": NTT #1 is basically the equivalent of Giant Size X-Men #1, but it doesn't have any equivalents to Jim Lee's overhaul, New X-Men or the current HoX/PoX. And it desperately needs stuff like that, as even the X-Men have fallen into ruts in between those shifts.

    It may be easier for the X-Men because they are inherently a little more independent than the Titans, a franchise in which the five main leads are spin offs of bigger name characters and will never completely stand on their own despite at times being great characters. That's why I think it's always important, beyond those five, to have the Titans be wholly original characters without ties to other corners. Stuff like the cartoon and the live action show prove that there is an audience for them, but those also rehash the stories from the comics to present them to a new audience. The comics haven't been able to tell new stuff with them in a while

  8. #8
    DC Enthusiast Tony's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DrNewGod View Post
    A good point. What do you think made the difference?
    I think Chris is a better writer than Marv

    The X-Men had the persecution allegory that the NTT didn't

    Being Sidekicks in a universe where the real heroes don't age out and retire puts a glass ceiling on them, on top of which other writers want to make their pet sidekicks up and be the focus. It's why we have 5 Robins, several Wondergirls, and Superboys, and Bruce Clark and Diana still fill the pages of Superman Batman and Wonder Woman. It's a problem unique to DC and pretty out of hand at this point.

    You tell all these stories showing growth, never get to be the top dog, no longer the new kid, and one after another of replacements for you get the focus for the young guns. Unable to go up to the top they just sort of got pushed aside into limbo. It's why DC was so foolish to allow writers to make so many knockoffs that just split the fan base. When DC does a reboot they take the gutless way out and try to say all this cool stuff happened even though it's all brand new.

  9. #9
    DC Enthusiast Tony's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jamgut View Post
    I think it's worth mentioning that the Legion also enjoyed success two decades earlier in the 1960s. Comichron's site has some paid circulation figures for most years in that decade and DC's highest ranking team title from 1965 though 1969 was Adventure Comics featuring Superboy & the Legion. All of the Super-family titles performed very well back then. Even with that level of success the Legion was relegated to back-up status in Action and then to limbo for a few years in the early 70s.
    This is true, I think they stayed big much longer, but when they finally fell they never recovered. Somewhere in the middle of the Baxter series they took a nosedive in sales.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tony View Post
    I think Chris is a better writer than Marv

    The X-Men had the persecution allegory that the NTT didn't

    Being Sidekicks in a universe where the real heroes don't age out and retire puts a glass ceiling on them, on top of which other writers want to make their pet sidekicks up and be the focus. It's why we have 5 Robins, several Wondergirls, and Superboys, and Bruce Clark and Diana still fill the pages of Superman Batman and Wonder Woman. It's a problem unique to DC and pretty out of hand at this point.

    You tell all these stories showing growth, never get to be the top dog, no longer the new kid, and one after another of replacements for you get the focus for the young guns. Unable to go up to the top they just sort of got pushed aside into limbo. It's why DC was so foolish to allow writers to make so many knockoffs that just split the fan base. When DC does a reboot they take the gutless way out and try to say all this cool stuff happened even though it's all brand new.
    Honestly, I don't think the sideckick thing affected NTT so much. NTT falls in popularity happened before the multiple generation of sidekicks aspect was a thing.

    Not even the "real heroes don't grow, so sidekicks can't either" should be a problem. Wally left the team (and become Flash), while Donna lost any connection to Wonder Woman. So, the only regular ex sidekick in the group was Dick and DC can always reduce the difference of age with Batman (they already do that).

    NTT members were 20s when the comic started, I think the could become an independent adult group and even a top dog if the popularity was mantained (although the Teen part would likely dissapear).
    Last edited by Konja7; 08-04-2020 at 08:04 AM.

  11. #11
    Extraordinary Member superduperman's Avatar
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    As someone who is going back and collecting the pre-Crisis Titans run, I can tell you it hasn't aged well. There are all kinds of dated references that stand out today. Wolfman was not the writer then that he is today. Could they update them for today and make it work? Sure. Have they? Not really. I don't see the NTT lineup catching on today like it did then. And you have characters like Conner and Tim that people would wonder why they aren't on the team. Dick and Donna are of a specific generation that were considered the first sidekicks. We've had at least two since then. They can't really be the Teen Titans anymore unless you are starting from scratch.

    As for the Legion, IDK how you could make that work. Technology insures that the "future" of a thousand years from now is always changing. I'm kind of of the opinion it might be time to drop them. Go back and look at the Legion from the 1960s and the Legion of today and tell me that things haven't changed.
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  12. #12
    DC Enthusiast Tony's Avatar
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    @Konja7

    Their are a lot of factors mentioned but I think the biggest was the creative talent on the book. Perez was the main driving force and Wolfman wasn't good enough on his own that's true. I still think a coming of age story where you never fully realize your potential is a problem the NTT will always face. When Dick became Batman it was wonderful but could never last.

    If you ask random people who is Robin most will say Dick Grayson, a handful will say another name or a bunch of names but only a small minority who actually read comics, almost no one will know the other characters real names even with the cartoon that really only reached 1 generation. It's a branding thing to my mind. I think the Nightwing thing was supposed to be temporary and wiped out in Crisis. With all the reboots we have had you could have reset the ages of the sidekicks a dozen times and stayed on brand, changing Dick and Donna with the times any way you wanted. You could argue the big 4 (Superman Batman Wonder Woman and Robin) have to stay the same but speedy could be a woman and Wondergirl could be black no one would even notice other than a handful of comic readers. They just refuse to walk away from all the other characters like Tim and the other half dozen Robins. I do think it's a part of the problem, to never really grow up but no longer be the fresh new thing.

  13. #13
    DC Enthusiast Tony's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by superduperman View Post
    As for the Legion, IDK how you could make that work. Technology insures that the "future" of a thousand years from now is always changing. I'm kind of of the opinion it might be time to drop them. Go back and look at the Legion from the 1960s and the Legion of today and tell me that things haven't changed.
    I'm in the middle of the first Omnibus (just got the third and rereading it all) they are fun stories once you get past the first archives worth that were really just Superman Superboy and Supergirl stories. The real problem is the technology will never change enough or correctly. I'd rather enjoy it for what it was through the 5YL run as it's own thing. For me the Legion ends with Giffen. I'd be thrilled if he came back with the same level of technology though. We are probably gonna be living Cyberpunk in the next hundred years provided we survive the cancer that is social media. I don't mind the technology being less than accurate for a thousand years in the future.

    I think it was actually explained well with the war destroying so much, not just history records but technology and science so while advanced just not that advanced. People are already experimenting on humans with integrated technology. I'll never join that bunch so Legion being dumbed down is fine for me. I just object to the creative team choices.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by superduperman View Post
    As someone who is going back and collecting the pre-Crisis Titans run, I can tell you it hasn't aged well. There are all kinds of dated references that stand out today. Wolfman was not the writer then that he is today. Could they update them for today and make it work? Sure. Have they? Not really. I don't see the NTT lineup catching on today like it did then. And you have characters like Conner and Tim that people would wonder why they aren't on the team. Dick and Donna are of a specific generation that were considered the first sidekicks. We've had at least two since then. They can't really be the Teen Titans anymore unless you are starting from scratch.

    As for the Legion, IDK how you could make that work. Technology insures that the "future" of a thousand years from now is always changing. I'm kind of of the opinion it might be time to drop them. Go back and look at the Legion from the 1960s and the Legion of today and tell me that things haven't changed.
    The NTT lineup have found success in other media. Their lack of success in recent comics is down to execution not the characters themselves.

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    Quote Originally Posted by DrNewGod View Post
    A good point. What do you think made the difference?
    Wolfman's weird obsession with trying to justify Deathstroke turned off a lot of people. It also didn't help that the quality of stories declined after Perez left.

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