Is there really a difference between Titans and JL?

[Restingvoice]

Titans Academy's problem is that the new characters aren't interesting and the book exists to shill Red X instead of focusing on the Titans.

Maybe but you don't know which one will interest people until they read it. The one that they know for sure is gonna attract attention is Red X so that's their focus

Like I didn't expect Crush to be popular enough to co-star.

[king81992]

Maybe but you don't know which one will interest people until they read it. The one that they know for sure is gonna attract attention is Red X so that's their focus

Like I didn't expect Crush to be popular enough to co-star.

I still don't understand Crush's popularity. Or Lobo's for that matter.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

That's because the X-Men, Avengers, and FF didn't grow out of one another. Nor do the Doom Patrol have any such connections to the JL. The Titans do have such a connection to the JL, just as Infinity Inc is a JSA outgrowth.

Not really. Just because it had five of the sidekicks doesn't mean that the Titans grew out of the League. The Titans formed as their own team, completely independent of the JLA, without the supervision or permission of their mentors. And now that they're adults, their former mentors really have no place at all telling them what to do.

That's sort of like saying that you'd have the right to tell your fully adult child how late they're allowed to stay out...when they don't live with you.

They'd have even less business telling Starfire, Cyborg, or Raven what to do.

That's the difference between Titans and Young Justice.

[Digifiend]

YJ started off independently as well, actually. Their mentors (Bruce, Clark, Diana and Wally) tried to put a stop to it, but ended up leaving Red Tornado to supervise them.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

YJ started off independently as well, actually. Their mentors (Bruce, Clark, Diana and Wally) tried to put a stop to it, but ended up leaving Red Tornado to supervise them.

Well, there ya go...

[HunterX]

I hate that the Titans are just seen as the Jr. Justice League.

thats what they are lol, JL is the premiere superhero team, Titans will never hold a candle to that.

That's why it was so hard to "sell" Cyborg as a founding member of the JLA during the New 52. How do you sell him as being a necessary part of a team literally built on the idea of disparate characters with their own unique histories and adventures coming together when his entire history of adventures is tied up with another team that has been erased from canon?

Thats what you are reducing cyborg too, Cyborg can very well stand on his own with his own world, if DC cared to try. Which they dont.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

thats what they are lol, JL is the premiere superhero team, Titans will never hold a candle to that.

You do know that the Titans were actually at one point DC's most popular team and that they regularly outsold the Justice League, right? So, it's weird to say that the Titans "will never hold a candle" to the JLA when they already at one point were more popular than the JLA and still have a devoted fanbase.

Thats what you are reducing cyborg too, Cyborg can very well stand on his own with his own world, if DC cared to try. Which they dont.

It's not "reducing" Cyborg to say that his history and backstory are tied up with the Titans. That's the team he came up with. That's just the fact of it. What you're proposing would be like if Marvel decided that they wanted to launch Storm as a solo hero, with no ties whatsoever to the X-Men, and then proceeded to scrub all mention of that team from her backstory.

Of course, that would not go over well with fans. Storm is an X-Man, in the same way that Cyborg is a Titan.

[Kaijudo]

I definitely think there's a difference. I view the League as a group of individuals from different backgrounds who come together to get things done. The Titans, on the other hand, are united by a similar condition (at least at the team's inception): they're the sidekicks/partners/second-tiers of bigger named heroes. They have that commonality to bond over and that strengthens the personal connections between them more than being a member of the League might.

You can have friendships develop within the League, like Hal and Barry, but those will always be based on work...I suspect a real-world conversation between those two would be some small talk like "How's Iris? How's Carol?" before just talking about League cases or other members of the team, the thing that initially brought them together. But the Titans has always served as a kind of clubhouse (or as writing grew more sophisticated, group therapy session) where REAL things were shared between the kids. That really does make their relationships with each other stronger than those among the Leaguers and that's what makes the difference between the two groups.

[Zero Hunter]

thats what they are lol, JL is the premiere superhero team, Titans will never hold a candle to that.
.

Not really though. With the good Titans series they spend as much time on the characters as they do the plot. You get to see them just going about their off days and hanging out. The JL is all business all the time. You don't get any character development in the JL because since it started being mostly big 7 focused because almost all the characters have their own books, and that is where the development goes on. The Titans can tell smaller more personal stories while the JL is stuck in the "big stupid summer blockbuster" mode.

That is why I hate the big 7 model Justice League. It just got boring. Big threat rinse and repeat. The League needs a good mix of B and C listers on the team along with a few A listers to really let writers writer and not just churn out the same old same old month after month.

[MajorHoy]

. . . On a side note would it really be that bad if Nightwing or the other originally Titans move to JL and drop their Titan status?

I take it you weren't reading Justice League of America about a year or so before Flashpoint?



You had:

* Cyborg
* Donna Troy (originally Wonder Girl)
* Starfire
* Batman (Dick Grayson, not Bruce)

And Mon-El was originally with the Legion of Super-Heroes.

[John Venus]

I definitely think there's a difference. I view the League as a group of individuals from different backgrounds who come together to get things done. The Titans, on the other hand, are united by a similar condition (at least at the team's inception): they're the sidekicks/partners/second-tiers of bigger named heroes. They have that commonality to bond over and that strengthens the personal connections between them more than being a member of the League might.

You can have friendships develop within the League, like Hal and Barry, but those will always be based on work...I suspect a real-world conversation between those two would be some small talk like "How's Iris? How's Carol?" before just talking about League cases or other members of the team, the thing that initially brought them together. But the Titans has always served as a kind of clubhouse (or as writing grew more sophisticated, group therapy session) where REAL things were shared between the kids. That really does make their relationships with each other stronger than those among the Leaguers and that's what makes the difference between the two groups.

Yeah, being a Leaguer is like having a job. Being a Titan is more like being part of a ...... ::looks both ways:: a family (::insert Vin Diesel 'Fast & the Furious' meme here:.

I maintain that putting Cyborg on the League without exploring this difference was a huge missed opportunity.

I also don't believe the Titans are meant to 'graduate' into the League. If the Titans replace the JL at some point, they'll just call themselves the Titans. For that matter, I don't think Dick Grayson is meant to graduate to Batman either.

[DrNewGod]

Yeah, being a Leaguer is like having a job. Being a Titan is more like being part of a ...... ::looks both ways:: a family (::insert Vin Diesel 'Fast & the Furious' meme here:.

I maintain that putting Cyborg on the League without exploring this difference was a huge missed opportunity.

I also don't believe the Titans are meant to 'graduate' into the League. If the Titans replace the JL at some point, they'll just call themselves the Titans. For that matter, I don't think Dick Grayson is meant to graduate to Batman either.

This is what concepts like the Silver-Bronze Age E2 were meant to accomplish. Let's be real, The Big Brand Heroes aren't getting killed or retired, so succession stories aren't gonna stick. The multiverse showed us how it might turn out.

[John Venus]

Yep. That's the sad part. Look at Marvel, they already had a successful teen Spider-Man book with Ultimate Spider-Man and MC2 showed an older Peter Parker with grey streaks. Yet, they still felt the need to publish OMD to keep the 'main' Peter Parker young.