Teen Titans and Titans Hunt

[Factor]

I don't know how DC could fix the Titans. Hunt could have generated some new interest in the franchise but judging by sales it isn't working.
At this point I think they should just replace TT with a new Young Justice (that brand isn't as damaged as Titans) and see how it does.
If there's enough interest, launch a New Titans book featuring mostly non-legacy heroes like Beast Boy, Raven, Mal Duncan, Bunker and Power Girl.
All this would only work under new editors, though. The current ones have shown time and time again they have no idea where to take the characters.

[Outside_85]

1)I don't know how DC could fix the Titans. Hunt could have generated some new interest in the franchise but judging by sales it isn't working.
2) At this point I think they should just replace TT with a new Young Justice (that brand isn't as damaged as Titans) and see how it does.
3) If there's enough interest, launch a New Titans book featuring mostly non-legacy heroes like Beast Boy, Raven, Mal Duncan, Bunker and Power Girl.
4) All this would only work under new editors, though. The current ones have shown time and time again they have no idea where to take the characters.

1) It's something thats pretty easy to answer, but apparently immensely difficult to pull off; Consistently write good enough that the majority of fans can get behind it.

2) There is nothing really that says a Young Justice book would do any better, especially not as it will feature many of the same characters that are already in TT and will likely end up under the same editors.

3) Or just wait until someone shows up with a really good idea instead of making titles dependent on each others performance.

4) Depending on how much influence the editors actually inject into the book.

[Lee Stone]

The rebranding as Young Justice would be good... if... it was under a different editor, by a fan-favorite writer or creative team and featured enough new characters to look "different" from Teen Titans...

So basically, I would propose:

Young Justice with Mark Doyle as editor. Written by Brenden Fletcher.
With Static, Blue Beetle, Miss Martian, Power Girl, Red Robin and Gypsy (as more of a Madame Xanadu type youth).

And to boost publicity, get Rick Riordan to sign his name on a mini-series that launches the title.

[Bruce Wayne]

4) Depending on how much influence the editors actually inject into the book.

Supposedly they are basically doing backseat plotting on the book so Pak on the book would just be musical chairs. Unless the writer is Snyder or Johns they aren't going to escape from being a mouthpiece of editorial. I think the entire reason Pfeifer got back to comics was because he was willing to follow orders from editorial without question. Same deal with Lobdell, I think that was his reputation at Marvel supposedly. And if you look at the editorial credits for TT the editors on that book are Wizard groupies and frankly I have heard nothing, but bad things about them.

[skyvolt2000]

DK3 shows how to push a book to #1...
That could always work.

How many variant covers and interviews did that book have? With the way they did DC didn't release any other book. Then look at who's involved. That book was going to sell no matter what.


Teen Titans is a mess. I just read issue 15-Greg Pak can't do any worst.

3 stories in one book-one (Robin War) could have been told ELSEWHERE. That should have been some more development piece for Wonder Girl (so she can explain her breast reduction) and her little boyfriend Doom-who some how went changed from a dark skinned white guy (or Latino or Muslim-hard to tell with these colorist) to a black guy who looks like the love child Mr. Spock & Uhura had.

Professor Pyg? Did we not learn Batman T-Z list villains and teens don't mix from Static? Brother Blood? That was the best he could get?

Ok I can understand those opinions but I just wish it was able to build up those two books to really energize the Titans brand.

You know they can't do that. Building these guys up would mean saying Batman and friends are over 40 instead 35.99999999999999999999999999999 years old.

[skyvolt2000]

I think that was his reputation at Marvel supposedly. And if you look at the editorial credits for TT the editors on that book are Wizard groupies and frankly I have heard nothing, but bad things about them.

Lets just say that group is linked to a lot of books having issues that go all the way back to the 90s. They knew who to mess with and who not to touch.

I think Lobdell had more freedom at Marvel.
His runs
Generation X #1-28
Uncanny X-Men #286-350
X-Factor #90-95,
X-Men (vol. 2) #6-11, #46-69, #110-113

For the most part he had control of the franchise including the MAIN book Uncanny X-Men. When you have the head you can do what you want to a point.

Look at Generation X-the MAJOR difference between it and Teen Titans is ROSTER.

How many other teens were around beside Jubliee? With the former New Mutants busy as X-Force? He had a clean slate to play with.

Teen Titans-LEGACY. Writing aside-no one will care about this book until you get a roster that interests people.

Excluding Tim, Conner, Cassie & Bart-we can all name Teens that we would want to see before Doomsday Jr, Power Girl 2 & Bunker get mentioned. No one cares about those 3-they want to know where is Jaime Reyes, Ms Martian, Static, the 1996 Teen Titans, Gen 13, Artemis, Aqualad, Bombshell, Aquagirl and the rest.

That's not an insult to those 3 but this book should not be used to finish storyline that should have been dealt with in the books two of them came from.

[Nipower888]

Lets just say that group is linked to a lot of books having issues that go all the way back to the 90s. They knew who to mess with and who not to touch.

I think Lobdell had more freedom at Marvel.
His runs
Generation X #1-28
Uncanny X-Men #286-350
X-Factor #90-95,
X-Men (vol. 2) #6-11, #46-69, #110-113

For the most part he had control of the franchise including the MAIN book Uncanny X-Men. When you have the head you can do what you want to a point.

Look at Generation X-the MAJOR difference between it and Teen Titans is ROSTER.

How many other teens were around beside Jubliee? With the former New Mutants busy as X-Force? He had a clean slate to play with.

Teen Titans-LEGACY. Writing aside-no one will care about this book until you get a roster that interests people.

Excluding Tim, Conner, Cassie & Bart-we can all name Teens that we would want to see before Doomsday Jr, Power Girl 2 & Bunker get mentioned. No one cares about those 3-they want to know where is Jaime Reyes, Ms Martian, Static, the 1996 Teen Titans, Gen 13, Artemis, Aqualad, Bombshell, Aquagirl and the rest.

That's not an insult to those 3 but this book should not be used to finish storyline that should have been dealt with in the books two of them came from.

Considering that the two characters that you think people don't wanna see have been around for less than a year you can't say no one wants to see them. I rather see them because I want to see new faces built up and give time to shine. I pretty sure if the writing was good people would care. Nostalgia is terrible. The past is the past. Let it go and allow new characters to exist

[Bruce Wayne]

Lets just say that group is linked to a lot of books having issues that go all the way back to the 90s. They knew who to mess with and who not to touch.

Oh man I know. Look at their editor credits on comicvine and you just see one trainwreck after another.

[Outside_85]

Supposedly they are basically doing backseat plotting on the book so Pak on the book would just be musical chairs. Unless the writer is Snyder or Johns they aren't going to escape from being a mouthpiece of editorial. I think the entire reason Pfeifer got back to comics was because he was willing to follow orders from editorial without question. Same deal with Lobdell, I think that was his reputation at Marvel supposedly. And if you look at the editorial credits for TT the editors on that book are Wizard groupies and frankly I have heard nothing, but bad things about them.

But all of that is just speculation on our part, we know nothing about how often they wanted Scott or Will to change things. And we dont know because neither of the two have come out and railed against them.

Plus you have to consider the stories that were put out; Scott wrote a story (the Culling) that he might as well have written 20 years ago, then found out TT readers weren't responding well to X-Men stories. So he tried a Titan classic (Trigon), which he failed at. So he went back and tried some common ground between what he knew and what TT readers liked: Time travel... at the end of which I think he just realized he wasn't going to find the sweetspot between what readers liked and what he liked. I can't say where or how much of all of this was actually due to his editors, and it just gets weirders when Will takes over.

Because Will starts out with a story playing around with the modern topic of social media, rather than clinging to stuff from the past like Scott did. It was a slow grind, granted, but I think there was a different pay-off at the end of it... which we wont see now, because I am fairly certain editors were the reason why we had the sudden shift from social media theme to 'lets sort out Superboy'.

My point is that at some point we also have to admit that editors aren't to blame for everything bad in comics... sometimes it's just because the writer is terrible.
And to this I ask; Is Greg Pak a terrible writer way past his prime? Truth would make you say yes, but Totally Awesome Douche Hulk would prove you wrong.

[joybeans]

But all of that is just speculation on our part, we know nothing about how often they wanted Scott or Will to change things. And we dont know because neither of the two have come out and railed against them.

Plus you have to consider the stories that were put out; Scott wrote a story (the Culling) that he might as well have written 20 years ago, then found out TT readers weren't responding well to X-Men stories. So he tried a Titan classic (Trigon), which he failed at. So he went back and tried some common ground between what he knew and what TT readers liked: Time travel... at the end of which I think he just realized he wasn't going to find the sweetspot between what readers liked and what he liked. I can't say where or how much of all of this was actually due to his editors, and it just gets weirders when Will takes over.

Because Will starts out with a story playing around with the modern topic of social media, rather than clinging to stuff from the past like Scott did. It was a slow grind, granted, but I think there was a different pay-off at the end of it... which we wont see now, because I am fairly certain editors were the reason why we had the sudden shift from social media theme to 'lets sort out Superboy'.

My point is that at some point we also have to admit that editors aren't to blame for everything bad in comics... sometimes it's just because the writer is terrible.
And to this I ask; Is Greg Pak a terrible writer way past his prime? Truth would make you say yes, but Totally Awesome Douche Hulk would prove you wrong.

Whoa there, Amadeus isn't that douchey. Maybe a bit insufferable.

[Bruce Wayne]

But all of that is just speculation on our part, we know nothing about how often they wanted Scott or Will to change things. And we dont know because neither of the two have come out and railed against them.

I don't think knowing the exact mechanics is necessary. The people involved with Titans were involved editorially with E2/WE and RH&O/Lobo. I don't think it takes much to see there were behind the things shenanigans where editorial tried did stuff the writers were probably not comfortable. Whatever it was, we have generally seen time after time that these editorial shenanigans lowers the final quality of a book.

My point is that at some point we also have to admit that editors aren't to blame for everything bad in comics... sometimes it's just because the writer is terrible.
And to this I ask; Is Greg Pak a terrible writer way past his prime? Truth would make you say yes, but Totally Awesome Douche Hulk would prove you wrong.

But you just gave an example that highlights the clear difference between Marvel and DC. Pak churns out cruft/filler at DC while at Marvel he goes back to writing aces. Clearly editorial environment matter, we don't know how or why, but it does in this matter.

[Outside_85]

I don't think knowing the exact mechanics is necessary. The people involved with Titans were involved editorially with E2/WE and RH&O/Lobo. I don't think it takes much to see there were behind the things shenanigans where editorial tried did stuff the writers were probably not comfortable. Whatever it was, we have generally seen time after time that these editorial shenanigans lowers the final quality of a book.

Yes, but you don't know if there are any of those here, you just assume there are because it's the same people behind the editing desk. You can blame them ofc... but I'll reserve right to spare them from blame when some of these things were just crappy ideas at the end of the day.

Take Lobdell as an example, he could turn out a decent RH&O issue according to it's readers, Tynion couldn't, yet Lobdell (under the same editors) could barely manage to write a decent TT issue over the course of 3 years.

But you just gave an example that highlights the clear difference between Marvel and DC. Pak churns out cruft/filler at DC while at Marvel he goes back to writing aces. Clearly editorial environment matter, we don't know how or why, but it does in this matter.

It doesn't need to have anything to do with that. In this specific case it could be down to Pak writing possibly the best Hulk story in the last decade, so he knows his stuff in that department.
Or it could ofc just be that Superman readers that cant deal with any story that changes anything in the Superman world, like; support cast, love interest, powers, world view (If you go back you can find them throwing fits over each of these at one time or another, even before the New 52).

[godisawesome]

Okay, I am a Scott Lobdell hater. I don't think he gets the generation of character is Titans at all, and I don't think his Red Hood books will ever be more than mild diversions.

But I do think a good deal of Teen Titans' continuous failure can be put at editorial's door, not just for occasional ghost writing, but also just bad editorial oversight and overloading on a guy who clearly started failing after a certain point.

-The most recent one involves a claim by someone labeled "Scott Lobdell" in a Henchman for Hire review of the issue where Harvest came back. The poster claimed that Lobdell was brought on specifically to get Superboy out of the series and tie up the plotline he was involved in using Harvest, and then to bring in the Doomed character. I tend to believe this, because it's really hard to see why anyone else would want to use Harvest, and because the issue was postponed for a few weeks to make the call. So the implication, which I believe, is that Lobdell was brought in and handed a rough outline of what they wanted, and what they wanted was a bad character to remove someone they'd screwed up really bad.
-

[Bruce Wayne]

It doesn't need to have anything to do with that. In this specific case it could be down to Pak writing possibly the best Hulk story in the last decade, so he knows his stuff in that department.

He knows his stuff for Superman and wrote some good and even I would say excellent stories including the Doomsday story for Forever Evil, the Year Zero Tie-in and the Secret Origin comic. His entire problem on Action is editorial in nature. The quality of the output for recent Action is closer to the Darkseid origin story from Forever Evil (which was definitely an editorially mandated work) and is likely the same reason: he has editorial messing with him.

[kcekada]

Hoping for an a guy with red hair and is the same age as the rest of the team is why I am reading this series.

Yeah, I want to see someone who looks like the guy from my old comics. I'm okay with a black Kid Flash -- but Wally will always be the red/brown-haired kid in the awesome yellow/red costume to me.