LoSH and NTT: Creatures Of Their Time?

[Tzigone]

I mean, some people in this forum though he was 40s, while Donna is 20s.

I don't think he looks that old, and I do think that people thinking that (and thinking he dated Donna while she was his student) indicates they don't know the character/material very much, and so their opinions on him aren't worth as much to me if they don't even get correct the most basic information about him. I mean, whey they say they dislike him for dating someone 20 years younger, dating his student, or hitting on other women in front of Donna, and I know all three of those to be false...

There are reasons to dislike the character, I just don't like people saying he did things he didn't when explaining their dislike.

[Harpsikord]

I'm not targeting anyone specifically with my comments. I just saw a post about Terry, and added my two cents to that.

I do think that he became a total bastard in later publications. But at first, he was as good for Donna as Lois Lane is for Superman.

[TheCape]

The weirdest thing about Terry was that apparently he was Marv Wolfman self insert, at least that is what Perez said. Outside of that, he was normal, really there is nothing that bad about him, he is not particulary interesting, but nothing really bad either.

Also, about the teacher thing (wich people keep missremembering) one of his students actually hit on him once, i remember him being really uncomfortable about it.

[king81992]

Looking back on things, I think Wolfman's self insert was Slade, he bent over backwards to justify all of the terrible things Slade did.

[Godlike13]

The weirdest thing about Terry is im pretty sure ive seen him in old European porno.

[DrNewGod]

Titans suffers because it’s not really a great concept beyond “lets get all the young heroes together”. Perez and Wolfman actually gave it focus and redesigned the team so they could tell stories of growth and progression of Robin, Cyborg, Raven, Beast Boy, and Starfire striking out on their own and trying to reconcile with an upbringing that they didn’t want to define them to forge their own path. It worked for that group specifically and was lightening in bottle. And if you think about the main villains of that run we’re the exact issues the Titans had. Deathstroke and Trigon, two fathers who’s lifestyle and culture ended up imposing doom on their children (Grant dies replicating his father, Raven is doomed for being Trigon’s daughter, Brother Blood was a cultist who seduced impressionable minds to follow him, Terra was a girl who couldn’t overcome her own nature).

It all thematically worked.

But after that it was like “well we gotta have a Robin and a Wonder Girl, oh let’s add the new Superboy, etc”. It just shuffling young characters there as a right of passage

The thing about Coming Of Age concepts is, that if the characters never actually come of age, the power in the story disappates. Now, if the audience buys into the idea that the characters are timeliness, you can get around that. But NTT and 1980s LoSH were totally about growing beyond the boundaries of childhood, rupturing the notion of timelessness. In being so innovative, Wein/Giffin and Wolfman/Perez were inadvertently sewing the unsustainability of their creations.

He was not involved with his student. This is a falsehood that gets said about Terry a lot. Donna never attended college. Terry didn't even know her age when he first met her (though she was an adult then, just want to be clear). Terry was never involved with any student in the 1980s NTT. He did nothing wrong in that regard.

And I don't have a problem with a "mundane" involved with a hero. It doesn't happen much anymore (can't recall last time a new hero had a civilian love interest - the ones that exist are mostly inherited). I frankly miss civilian love interests and civilian supporting casts, in general. And dislike the double-standard of it being so much more accepted for male heroes than female. But like I said, it's not been the norm for a while.

Well said. Terry wasn't a perfect creation, but he gets a lot of hate he doesn't deserve. In some ways, Terry seems to me to have been the precursor of characters like Norman McCay from Kingdom Come or Phil Sheldon from Marvels; a decent, brave person, but within the limits of a normal human.

[SiegePerilous02]

The weirdest thing about Terry was that apparently he was Marv Wolfman self insert, at least that is what Perez said. Outside of that, he was normal, really there is nothing that bad about him, he is not particulary interesting, but nothing really bad either.

Also, about the teacher thing (wich people keep missremembering) one of his students actually hit on him once, i remember him being really uncomfortable about it.

I don't think Terry's as bad as people label him. He certainly does have some pretty weird moments though, and the self insert thing makes it all the weirder. Like him flirting with Kory and commenting on her hotness openly while Donna is right there when she introduces Kory to him. And saying Donna looks hot in a toga on their wedding night and immediately following it up by saying she reminds him of her mother by wearing it.

But those moments aren't as frequent as I think people make them. He's weird and a little dull, but sadly Donna was more interesting with him and other extended family in her life than the hollow shell she is now.

[Konja7]

The thing about Coming Of Age concepts is, that if the characters never actually come of age, the power in the story disappates. Now, if the audience buys into the idea that the characters are timeliness, you can get around that. But NTT and 1980s LoSH were totally about growing beyond the boundaries of childhood, rupturing the notion of timelessness. In being so innovative, Wein/Giffin and Wolfman/Perez were inadvertently sewing the unsustainability of their creations.

I agree.

The Coming of Age concept can't last forever, while comics don't have ending. So, the only option left for them is to become a regular group of adult heroes, but then the group loses one of the main attractives.

The problem isn't related with the existence of another heroes like Justice League, but what other concepts has NTT group apart from being young heroes?

The X-Men concept has the discrimination against the mutant race that is permanent goncept.


PS: Teen Titans works in other media like series or cartoons because they could always use the "comic of age" concept from the beginning.

[kcekada]

I and, most likely, many other fans who didn't like Terry, probably felt he wasn't worthy of Donna -- whom despite the addition of Starfire, was always the hottie of the group. I think she became a little too settled down in Wolfman's run -- which made her kinda boring. I'm getting off topic, but Donna was never depicted as being the powerhouse she was. I think Wolfman tended to treat Cyborg as the heavy hitter -- when he was nowhere Donna's class.

Yeah, Wolfman admitted Terry was loosely based on himself -- which probably added to my dislike of the character.

[Lee Stone]

A good point. What do you think made the difference?

I think the X-Men fandom was nurtured by Marvel a lot more.
And during the late 80s/early 90s comic shop boom, those fans of X-Men became retailers and would spread their enthusiasm to new readers as Marvel kept giving something to get excited about.

About this time, DC had started getting a foot into the direct market with NTT, LoSH, Outsiders and Infinity Inc, but in the late ‘80s DC dropped all of them to focus on Batman.

[Lee Stone]

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.

Something else they did was captured an ‘80s equivalence of the CW young adult soap.
Something Marvel had already been doing with X-Men.
Fighting bad guys was just as exciting or dynamic as a JLA or Avengers story, but the books were also filled with relationship problems, high-school/college angst and most of all - relatable characters.

The only other DC title at the time that fit that mold was Firestorm.

[Lee Stone]

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.

I could see the Legion working.
Despite our advanced tech today, we still have sci-fi tv and movies, Star Trek and Star Wars are still popular, Cyberpunk 2077 is set to be a pretty big release...

What I would like to see is another 5YL approach, but with the team coming back together slow enough to introduce new readers.
But I think it would only work if they tied it to the original continuity.

[Lee Stone]

I don't think it helps that after Byrne left, Claremont still created or brought in characters like Rogue, Rachel, Psylocke, Gambit, Jubilee and the New Mutants.
In comparison, post-Perez Wolfman gave us...Danny Chase, Azrael, Kole (to be killed off), Pantha and Wildebeest and the Team Titans. They don't compare favorably to the chemistry of the Fab Five + NTT crew or what the X-Men were introducing.

Granted Psylocke didn’t catch on until she was Electra-fied.
And I would guess that Jim Lee has a hand in her reimagining as well as Gambit and Jubilee.

Wolfman’s main problem was that he treated them more or less like an extended Fantastic Four. New members came but they were basically temporary.
Terra was a plot device, Kole was cannon fodder, Azrael was a plot device.
Jericho likely only stayed because Wally was moving on to being Flash.

Danny Chase was a terrible mis-step. It didn’t help that he looked similar to Cousin Oliver, either.

[Zero Hunter]

People always want to bring up the tech of the 31st century, but in most reboot futures the Earth was decimated at some point between the present and the Legions time. So there has not really been 1000 years of constant growth. Since we have seen the future is fine in Boosters era that means at most the Earth has really only been back on its feet and advancing for a few hundred years at best so the tech would not be as super advanced as it would be. I know the Great Disaster was part of both the original Reboot and the current Bendisboot, but I'm not sure about the Waidboot.

[Digifiend]

He was not involved with his student. This is a falsehood that gets said about Terry a lot. Donna never attended college. Terry didn't even know her age when he first met her (though she was an adult then, just want to be clear). Terry was never involved with any student in the 1980s NTT. He did nothing wrong in that regard.

Yeah, Donna was a professional photographer, not a student. Didn't Terry first meet her when she was taking photos of Starfire, who was working as a model? He saw two young ladies, didn't know that they were only in their late teens at first. Donna was only ever seen at the college when visiting him.