Marv Wolfman's Teen Titans reputation (as compared to Claremont's X-Men)

[Crazy Diamond]

Two Speedsters are better than one .

It also probably helped that Flash's villains were starting to organize themselves, so Barry could use the help. Plus there's the relationship with Wally and how that builds into his relationship with Wally.

I mean they could've had the relationship with Wally without having him be a sidekick. It just felt like a gimmick to me. I know that without his time as Kid Flash the buildup to him becoming the Flash wouldn't work nearly as well but going from reading him as the Flash already to seeing him as a sidekick was a let down tbh.

Even with Barry's villains, most of them could've been done in were it not for wanting the comic to last more than five pages. It's like giving a sidekick to Superman.

[lgcruz]

SiegePerilous, I agree completely with what you said. Shades of Grey was a great story with an absolute cop out of an ending (on par with dark phoenix if shooter hadn´t insisted that jean grey had to die to pay for her crimes). I wouldn´t mind if slade and gar´s diner conversation had taken place years later, after the former had done a lot off good to offset the bad, but the idea that the later would refuse to attack unarmed slade after going after him while imprisoned is ridiculous, and they were due for a brutal fight.


As for changeling being a main character, consider that the story starts with grant´s death in front of gar´s house. Slade is unwilling to admit he failed his son, and would rather blame the titans and hive instead. To redeem his son´s memory (in his mind) he decides to successfully complete his son´s contract, and he starts by gathering information on the ntt by starting with the one member without a secret identity, which is gar. After some fighting, he engineers a trap for both the hive and the titans based on general zahl´s successful strategy to eliminate the doom patrol which almost works if not for dick coordinating his teammates to draw away the explosion.

Gar realizes what Slade did and goes to confront him personally, and for that he gets a hole in his chest that would have killed him if not for raven and the amazon´s purple beam. Slade reviews what happened and decides that the reason the titans survived was because he was missing a vital element, which was a double agent like madam rouge that would be willing to kill her former team. Thus he looks for Tara, who manages to be admitted into the the team thanks to gar.

Now the key thing is that Gar is suspicious of tera from the very start, and actually knows that tera is working for someone else the whole time. He keeps pointing out the blatant holes in her backstory, tries to get her to open up and even puts pressure on her so she will lose her composure and reveal the truth, which almost gets him killed in a sparring session. He doesn´t say anything to the rest of the team on one hand because he has no evidence, and on the other because he fell in love with her for various reasons. So when he and tera kiss, it´s not just that he thinks his love is being corresponded, he also thinks tera has definitely switched sides to the titans.

On tera´s side it´s hard to tell her thought process, but the fact is that all she had to do to complete her mission was gather info on the titans, she didn´t need to get that close with gar at all to complete it, so there was some level of interest on her part. Considering she especially reviled the titans overly moral standards, maybe she liked that gar was more selfish than righteous.

So when the team gets captured (deathstroke takes on dick personally because he foiled his first attempt, and because he would be much harder to trick) and breaks out thanks to jericho, gar is the one appealing to tera still hoping that she was deceiving deathstroke for the titans´s/his benefit, but unlike the time when dick overcame brother blood´s brainwashing from starfire´s desperately calling out to him, tera does not correspond his feelings and keeps fighting to her death.

After nearly losing his other son and getting arrested, slade decides he is 100% done with this whole affair and simply tries to get away. Gar isn´t willing to let him and does go into his darker sides of his personality when he sabotages slade´s trial to be able to kill him personally, still convinced that Tera was brainwashed and died after being unable to break the conditioning. Without getting into spoilers, gar is forced to recognize that tara hated the titans out of her own will, and slade decides to try and become a better person than he is now.

Personally I would have preferred for the ending to be a fight to the death, with gar winning and acknowledging that tara acted out of her own will, yet deciding to deliver the final blow for his own satisfaction. This would be stopped by mento, who understood the danger his son was in and overcome his fear of losing himself to the helmet for his sake, and slade would be dragged away by wintergreen who likewise would appeal to his better side and start slade on his path to redemption. Alas, we got the diner scene.

[king81992]

The problem is that those broad aspects of Gar's history and character can work just fine and making him a horny sexual harasser is unnecessary. The cartoon adapted him as the baby of the group who used jokes to cover up his pain, but without stuff like telling Starfire to take her top off every other episode, and he worked just as well if not better.

The shades of gray in the follow up issues were mostly about absolving Slade and heaping all of the blame on Terra, and they do not hold up well at all. Even if Terra was legit evil, Gar should not peacefully resolve anything with Slade. Slade even says in those issues his attacking the Titans was not personal, which contradicts the attitude he had TJC where it comes off as very personal and sadistic. Again, the cartoon probably executed its storyline better overall; Slade's a bastard that doesn't deserve any sympathy for trying to kill some teens while grooming and manipulating another one to help him do it.

Wolfman's attempts to absolve Slade were pathetic and the start of the series decline. It doesn't help that later writers continued the trend and tried to pretend he did nothing wrong. Johns(for all the damage he did to the YJ cast) and Priest had the right idea about Slade, the man is not noble or misunderstood, he's a scumbag.

[Hcmarvel]

I want to thank y'all for all the insights into this run. I'm sorry if I am coming down a bit harsh on it, but I was really excited to read it chronologically and with a modern perspective on it, and it just did not live up to my expectations (compare this to the Levitz/Giffen LOSH which I am also reading for the first time and while I don't love it either, there are parts of those LOSH runs that are far more compelling than a lot of what Wolfman pulled off).

I want to focus in on The Judas Contract because it's universally accepted as the highlight of the run (along with Who is Donna Troy and some of the Trigon stuff I guess?)

So first of all I was surprised by how short it is. It's only four issues! On the other hand, the Terra plotline had been brewing for over a year I guess and I know the trades tend to include 39-41 as well, but the story itself is only 4 issues. One of those issues is just a long origin story for Deathstroke which while a perfectly fine origin tale, really did not need to take up a whole issue and doesn't really fit into the themes of the story in anyway.

It's such an interesting choice to ultimately reveal so little about Terra. And while I know Wolfman always intended her to just be evil, no ifs ands or buts, I'm not sure the character totally adds up. Why, if she's so evil, does she still not want to hurt Geoforce? What exactly is her background? Why is she so hatful of the Titans? Yet why does she occasionally seem sympathetic to them? Why does she kiss Garfield at all if she hates him so much? It's certainly a unique choice to not really answer any of those things, but I'm not sure it totally worked for me.

I still can't believe the choice to debut Dick's new Nightwing costume on the SAME PAGE as goofy ass Jericho getting half the page to debut his "look" as well. If anything deserved a full page spread on it's own its Disco Nightwing coming down the steps.

I know I still need to read the arcs after this that deal with Slade and Garfield hashing it out some but other than the obviously bold choice to make Terra an unredeemed villain to the end, I'm not sure I get what the big deal is about Judas Contract.

(Compare it to the other big DC epic of that era - The Great Darkness Saga - and Judas Contract doesn't hold up at all. Great Darkness Saga is messy, and by nature of the size of the cast a bit all over the place - but man does that story line have great set-up/payoff/ramifications. All I can say about Judas Contract is it has great set-up. Honestly the page revealing that Terra is a double agent is far more impactful than the entirety of The Judas Contract).

[Lee Stone]

In addition to all the things said so far, one of the biggest things that hurt the Titans was how DC gets 'tunnel vision' and can't seem to focus on more than one franchise at a time.
After the '89 Batman movie came out, they no longer cared for the Titans.

As for reputation, DC has spent at least the last two decades trying to shuffle them under the rug, thanks to Didio's dislike for the characters.

Meanwhile, at Marvel they continued to cultivate the X-Men. Comic shops were formed in the 80s and '90s by fans of Marvel and X-Men and those shop owners would promote the X-Men and Wolverine at every chance they had. And Marvel was very obliging, with posters and new titles or events coming out regularly enough to keep interest up.

DC just stopped caring.

Fun fact: There was almost a New Teen Titans cartoon in the '80s which would've only made the team more popular.
But it was nixed in favor of more cartoons like the Smurfs due to pressure from parent groups about cartoon violence.

[Korath]

I think people don't recognize how strong of a concept Titans Academy is. It turns the Titans into an institution designed to guide and support younger heroes, and it could also be expanded to the a general team that "protects heroes from themselves and from others". They could travel anywhere and help the type of heroes who have fallen on hard times and don't know how to get out. themselves

After all, for a very long time the Titans have been all about personal drama running amok and hurting others. The characters kind of got closer than most Justice League line ups because they had to deal with each others baggage. That's what the focus should be. Kinda like the original concept for Sanctuary.

It can be both a support group, a school, a vigilance of other heroes both to protect them from others and to protect others from themselves.

That's actually something very interesting, and hopefully someone at DC will have also realized it.

The Titans have the advantage of brand recognition outside of the comics crowd so it could help them in the future. Also, they could be used to expand the world of DC. The Global Guardians probably can't sustain a book for themselves, but having the Titans and the Guardians working together outside of the US could be great, I think.

[Agent Z]

I don't think Wolfman hates Kid Flash - I'm saying he made me hate Kid Flash. Maybe it's bad timing as I'm reading this concurrent to a bunch of traitorous Republicans storming the Capitol building but now I have to think about Kid Flash as a future Trump supporter? He's a 1980s Republican...does that mean he thinks AIDS is not a big deal because it's killing gay people? Does he not believe in a woman's right to choose? How am I supposed to believe he became friends with Pied Piper just a few years later? It throws his entire character into the toilet for me.

There are Republicans who were speaking out against Trump during his 2015 campaign run and many who had condemned the Capitol Building. Wally being a Republican doesn't mean he has to be the most reprehensible of human beings and he wasn't that horrible in NTT in the first place. Waid's writing may not have made him sympathetic but it isn't the be all, end all of Wally.

[Aahz]

Wally being a Republican doesn't mean he has to be the most reprehensible of human beings and he wasn't that horrible in NTT in the first place.

He was iirc worse in Justice League Europe (or was is one of the other JLI era books ...).

[John Venus]

Regarding some of the dated elements in these comics. We are going to find more and more of those as time goes on. Go further back in time and you are going to find comics where Batman, Spectre and Hawkman are hurling racial slurs and even WW had racist stereotypes in her comics. That stuff gets written out/updated/retconed as time goes on. The same is happening to the 80's stuff which had stuff that wouldn't hold up to scrutiny today. The 2003 TT show shows that you can update these characters and leave the problematic stuff behind. Beast Boy is funny and charming and not a serial harasser. Cyborg isn't defined by his anger and self loathing. One of my favorite DC characters is Wally West but he was a huge jerk in those early issues of Flash Vol 2 under Mike Baron. He becomes better under William Messner Loebs and he really took off under the writing of Mark Waid. In JLU and TT they still kept him as jerk with a heart of gold and a flirt but he was more charming and they dialed down and outright removed some of his unsavory tendencies from the earlier stories.

I feel like the cartoon version dumbed down her character immensely and ruined future impressions/portrayals of Kory.

The fan response was positive though with viewers pointing out that she was feminine but powerful and cares for her friends. She was still naive, open with her emotions, unfamiliar with earth life style, she wasn't dumb so much as she just wasn't used to earth and we got the flipside of that when the Titans went to Tamaran. Her clothes were still revealing and she had her innocence but it wasn't depicted in this sexualized way where she was stripping in a park while a random passerby looks on or tantalizing Dick with the possibility of threesomes.

[Tzigone]

I don't think Wolfman hates Kid Flash - I'm saying he made me hate Kid Flash. Maybe it's bad timing as I'm reading this concurrent to a bunch of traitorous Republicans storming the Capitol building but now I have to think about Kid Flash as a future Trump supporter? He's a 1980s Republican...does that mean he thinks AIDS is not a big deal because it's killing gay people? Does he not believe in a woman's right to choose? How am I supposed to believe he became friends with Pied Piper just a few years later? It throws his entire character into the toilet for me.

Times and parties change. Most democrats weren't exactly up in arms about fighting AIDS in the early 1980s, either. And Trump-like characters mostly weren't on the radar (have been discussing this recently on the history of the party and when it changed and Limbaugh in late 1980s or even more New Gingrich during Clinton's term for when politicians started getting on board with "other side are evil" and are often cited as dates, though of course the Southern Strategy and Reagan's welfare queens and coalition with the religious predate them). In the 1980s, young people were more likely to be Republican than Democrat (think Family Ties) than they are today. There was still a section of the party with an intellectual bent. Regan was very popular, nation-wide. That's just the reality of the time.

It's always an issue when looking at characters in a prior time - and 1980 is 40 years ago now. Norms have changed, and characters often present norms of previous eras, even if less overtly or avoiding addressing contentious issues in the 1950s-1970ish time frame.

It's something I've been thinking of a bit lately since I've been reading the 1980s Hawk and Dove. Hank would undoubtedly be republican/conservative (and young Hank would probably like the authoritarian strongman), but what about his college pal Donna? Which characters from prior eras (that have been abandoned and not updated since, particularly, so it's not an issue with Wally to me), would change as the norms of the world change, and which character points are essential and don't change? Green Arrow has to stay liberal to me, because it was a big part of his character, but I do wonder about the exact points of contention with him as American liberal ideology changes (particularly in regards to drugs). Wally, on the other hand, I never thought of as particularly political, since that issue was a one-off. And he's from a smaller town and smaller town people are statistically more likely to be conservative. And he's in college at the time, anyway, and of an age when opinions are more likely to shift anyway. Statistics aren't destiny, of course, but there was also nothing in his prior history at the time to say he wouldn't be a Republican or anti-USSR that I can think of, but I admittedly was not a huge fan of the 1970s Teen Titans and don't remember a lot of it (and have read few of the Iris-is-dead-era pre-COIE Flash comics he might have appeared in).

Actually, acceptance of homosexuals is and gay rights, interestingly, one of the places where's it's not just attrition changing opinion (the old dying off). Took a long time building, of course, but then national opinion in the US changed pretty swiftly with individual people changes their stance to supports of same-sex marriage, etc. in a relatively short timespan (though much later than the comic book events). Via some polls it was 57% oppose, 35% approve in 2002. By 2011, the number on each side was essentially tied. Obviously, that's just one aspect and not approving same sax marriage isn't the same as being okay if AIDS kills gay people. But when you compare it to approval of interracial marriage, it moved fast.

Why did the Flash even need a sidekick? You have super speed and can vibrate through walls but you still need help? COME ON.

Doesn't really have anything to do with Wolfman Perez, since Wally is a much older character, but Wally wasn't a sidekick. This is important to me and it seems to have been annoyingly retconned later. Kid Flash was a spin-off character that mostly has his own stories and only occasionally worked with Barry. Don't get me started on what they did to his parents to facilitate a more parental view of Barry and Iris as somewhat parental figures (and, of course, add angst). I hate the ruining of happy families to add angst because no one be happy in comics. And old-school Wally not being a sidekick, but instead an independent hero, made him different from Garth, Dick, and Roy who were all sidekicks and working with father-figures. I feel similarly about the distinctiveness of Tim not being Bruce's child and still being his sidekick being lost when Jack got killed.

[king81992]

I want to thank y'all for all the insights into this run. I'm sorry if I am coming down a bit harsh on it, but I was really excited to read it chronologically and with a modern perspective on it, and it just did not live up to my expectations (compare this to the Levitz/Giffen LOSH which I am also reading for the first time and while I don't love it either, there are parts of those LOSH runs that are far more compelling than a lot of what Wolfman pulled off).

I want to focus in on The Judas Contract because it's universally accepted as the highlight of the run (along with Who is Donna Troy and some of the Trigon stuff I guess?)

So first of all I was surprised by how short it is. It's only four issues! On the other hand, the Terra plotline had been brewing for over a year I guess and I know the trades tend to include 39-41 as well, but the story itself is only 4 issues. One of those issues is just a long origin story for Deathstroke which while a perfectly fine origin tale, really did not need to take up a whole issue and doesn't really fit into the themes of the story in anyway.

It's such an interesting choice to ultimately reveal so little about Terra. And while I know Wolfman always intended her to just be evil, no ifs ands or buts, I'm not sure the character totally adds up. Why, if she's so evil, does she still not want to hurt Geoforce? What exactly is her background? Why is she so hatful of the Titans? Yet why does she occasionally seem sympathetic to them? Why does she kiss Garfield at all if she hates him so much? It's certainly a unique choice to not really answer any of those things, but I'm not sure it totally worked for me.

I still can't believe the choice to debut Dick's new Nightwing costume on the SAME PAGE as goofy ass Jericho getting half the page to debut his "look" as well. If anything deserved a full page spread on it's own its Disco Nightwing coming down the steps.

I know I still need to read the arcs after this that deal with Slade and Garfield hashing it out some but other than the obviously bold choice to make Terra an unredeemed villain to the end, I'm not sure I get what the big deal is about Judas Contract.

(Compare it to the other big DC epic of that era - The Great Darkness Saga - and Judas Contract doesn't hold up at all. Great Darkness Saga is messy, and by nature of the size of the cast a bit all over the place - but man does that story line have great set-up/payoff/ramifications. All I can say about Judas Contract is it has great set-up. Honestly the page revealing that Terra is a double agent is far more impactful than the entirety of The Judas Contract).

At some point, Wolfman decided to pretend Slade was justified and did nothing wrong, so he ignored all of the stuff he had previously written. Terra's character only adds up if you agree with Wolfman's intentions to make her pure evil and discount the stuff you mentioned.

[Hcmarvel]

Thanks for the thoughtful post Tzigone -

I'm always of the opinion that unless it gets specifically retconned, everything that gets printed should be considered canon. Wolfman decided that Wally was a Republican? Well, that's what he is until someone points out a story where he isn't. I don't think you get to just say "well that was one bad issue" and ignore it. It got published, as part of one of the seminal runs in DC Comics history, and is part of the character's history. I guess you could argue the Crisis wiped it out but I don't think the Crisis would affect political leanings from a character. Wolverine met Leprechauns that were the first to reveal his name was Logan. Magneto was turned into a baby. Roy Harper beat a bunch of thugs with a dead cat. Norman Osborn had sex with Gwen Stacy. They're canon until they're specifically made otherwise in my opinion. I guess it's kind of the Grant Morrison on Batman rule - It all happened unless we are told why it didn't happen. Heck, especially with the new status quo of DC, where the characters remember everything from all their continuities, this is even more true.

So for me, Wally will always be a republican now. Oh well. He really was a favorite of mine and now I don't think he will ever be again.

[EmeraldGladiator]

Not debating what is better or what is worse, but the reason for me that the Claremont's X-Men fare better as time goes on is because it is still the foundation of one of the main pillars of Marvel comics and it is constantly referred back to. NTT because of various silly editorial mandates cannot be referred back to because it isn't cannon. Vic wasn't a Titan means all those great stories never happened at least to a majority of readers that were born a generation after I was DESPITE the Teen Titans Go popularity. One would think that everyone knowing the booyah would force DC to rethink this since the cartoon is ever green and the movie/and the comic book that inspired it (Cyborg founding father of JLA) are soon to be rebooted. Maybe they can say that Cyborg was always Martian Manhunter in disguise and Vic's dad was inspired by the Martian Manhunters original alias (so much so he named his son after his alter ego) when designing the look for his injured son, lol. But short answer one gets reverential treatment and referred to, the other is retconned and tried to be ignored.

[Rend20]

Wolfman decided that Wally was a Republican? Well, that's what he is until someone points out a story where he isn't.

During the Presidential Race arc under Waid, Wally was established as being apolitical and cringed at the thought of a 'disturbingly conservative' candidate being the probable president. And even before then, Wally was never really written like Wolfman's version when he was The Flash.

[Will Evans]

X-Men got newer characters that became fan favorites like Gambit, Psylocke, Rogue, etc.

Titans got people like Danny Chase, Azrael, Pantha, etc. No offense to fans of those characters but compared to Cyborg, Raven and Starfire, they weren’t fresh or exciting new members.