Pitch a Direction: Titans

[bearman]

As many of these posts state, there is nothing wrong with the Fab 5, or many of the Titans that followed. It’s the writers, or editors who mandate that these experienced crime fighters are all consistently lesser than the Justice League.
A ridiculous concept after all this time.

[astro@work]

As many of these posts state, there is nothing wrong with the Fab 5, or many of the Titans that followed. It’s the writers, or editors who mandate that these experienced crime fighters are all consistently lesser than the Justice League.
A ridiculous concept after all this time.

Agree. The roster was never the problem for me. I LOVED the Fab 5 + Lillith as the core, and the introduction of Bumblebee. I also enjoyed Titans Hunt through maybe the first 12 issues of Titans. It was this baffling need to have the JLA run roughshod all over them that soured me. Then tossing out most of the lineup with little care and bringing in a new lineup with the insistence "they're not friends" that REALLY soured me on the book. The original concept I liked. The writing, no, which I would also blame on obvious editorial interference.

Where DC went wrong was deaging everybody when the DCU rebooted with nu52, but failing to deage the Fab5. This was probably done to keep the 2nd gen (Conner, Cassie, Tim, Bart) and 3rd gen (Damian) on the board. But it undermined my favorites (Dick, Donna, Wally, Lillith, Roy).

So how to fix them? Lean in to the "college age" of these characters. That's where young adults usually "find themselves". And forge lasting relationships. And rebel a little. Honestly that was the moment I was waiting for in the last arc before the new roster...that moment Dick, Donna & Co. finally screamed a big F U to the JLA and told them to quit bossing us around. (But it never came, sadly). It gives them a unique role because the JLA are "adults" whereas the Fab 5 are "young adults". Not the same.
And leave out any convoluted reasons for being.

[Ascended]

So how to fix them? Lean in to the "college age" of these characters. That's where young adults usually "find themselves". And forge lasting relationships. And rebel a little. Honestly that was the moment I was waiting for in the last arc before the new roster...that moment Dick, Donna & Co. finally screamed a big F U to the JLA and told them to quit bossing us around. (But it never came, sadly). It gives them a unique role because the JLA are "adults" whereas the Fab 5 are "young adults". Not the same.
And leave out any convoluted reasons for being.

I dunno man, I feel like we've already been there. And no one is going to do it better than Wolfman did with the whole "finding themselves" thing. That's been a part of a bunch of narratives for these characters, both as individuals and a team, since NTT ended and it rarely goes well. Seriously, Im over it. I'd much rather see these guys move past the "college era/finding themselves" phase and enter the "young gun professional" phase. Still young, but they know who they are and what they're doing and they're hungry and ambitious. Their mentors aren't worried about the proteges screwing up anymore, they're starting to worry that their now former proteges will end up getting promoted above them. Not that it'll actually happen in the DCU; the Titans will be a step under the League at best, always. But I'd much rather they be just a step under than still being in that "entry level" position.

I'd rather the Titans not have to tell the League (once again) to f*ck off because they're mature enough, capable enough, and independent enough, to not *need* to tell the League a thing.

[SiegePerilous02]

I don't know how well received it was by X-fandom overall or if anyone else here has read it, but I just read the Zeb Wells run of New Mutants and I LOVED it. It'd kill to have a Titans reunion be even half that good. THAT's how you do a reunion title with young adults still functioning as a team and being independent. The Titans lend themselves to that even better because they are not part of a wider franchise like the NM are with the X-Men (so we got a lot of Cyclops, but he was better utilized than the JL), they are their own franchise.

Looks like Abnett took over the NM title after Wells...

Yeah except for literally all the stories about how Bruce wants and is training Dick to be better than him. It is the job of the mentor to get their students to surpass them. If not they're bad mentors.

And Dick decided for himself he couldn't be better than Bruce at what Bruce does, at least not in all the ways Bruce does things. He is less mentally compromised and doesn't have the same drive, and that's ok because he's healthier and stepped out of Bruce's shadow and embraced the qualities he was better at, which made Bruce proud. Bruce explicitly says so at Donna's wedding, they made their peace with each other like adults before Crisis screwed it up.

Dick surpassing Bruce in some areas but not all does not reflect poorly on Bruce. Dick being a competent adult and standing on his own two feet as Bruce's equal (if different) peer makes him a good mentor. And Bruce is never going away, so it's all moot anyway (plus we have some post-Crisis stories where sidekick X, usually Tim, is stated as being the most likely to some day surpass Bruce, not Dick). Making them peers, at least on paper, provides two properties instead of sidelining one for another.

Superman you kind of have a point on with LOSH, but Batman wasn't training to be a superhero perse, and certainly not for the situations he finds himself in. Oliver is also not in that camp and J'onn came into his role as a Martian protector and warrior into adulthood, though M'gann wasn't every really his young protege for any particular length of time.

There are those old forgotten stories where Bruce was the first Robin and hung out with Superboy, from the same era the Fab 5 were sidekicks. Beyond that, you're right on Ollie, but there is also Dinah (post-Crisis Dinah grew up with her mother's legacy and began training as a teenager with vigilante crime fighting in mind) and the pre-Crisis Hawks, who I imagine must have been trained early to be warrior bird police.

My basic point is, think of all that Bruce has learned and created and figured out that he did not have access to when he started his training. Dick has all of that AND he's mentally less compromised.

But does he have the same drive and the innate mental capacity to learn and master all that stuff? He has access to Batman who is passing down his skills, but he has his own skills and not all the ones Batman gives to him are going to be suitable for him. He's a great detective, but not as good as Bruce. Which is fine, because (when the writers and editors know what they are doing) he's a better leader.

A lot of people think Dick is too boring because he's so great, but how does that even apply in a world where Bruce always overshadows him? And don't pretend he doesn't just because Dick changed his name to Nightwing. We're in a Titans thread, after all.

I think those people are foolish because both Bruce and Dick are awesome and should be used to their full potential.

He does, but he doesn't have to. Dick became Nightwing when the Titans were at the height of their popularity and Batman didn't overshadow him then. It was moving Nightwing back to the Bat-Books that hurt the Nightwing brand in the long run, not the identity and path itself. He did great as Agent 37 also, a Nightwing who traveled the DCU like that has huge potential and it doesn't require Batman to be messed with. Catering to 90s/2000's nostalgia and putting Nightwing back in Bludhaven doing Batman-lite things, despite Seeley clearly wanting to avoid it, screwed Nightwing over. But the writers and fans need to get it in their heads that Nightwing doesn't have to be in Bludhaven, and Batman similarly doesn't have to be everywhere even when their not aging him out of the books.

[Ascended]

I think those people are foolish because both Bruce and Dick are awesome and should be used to their full potential.

Shouldn't *every* character be used to their full potential? What the hell is the point, otherwise?

As far as Im concerned, if the former sidekicks are written and treated as fully capable, badass heroes who are more than able to handle the job and stand toe-to-toe with their former mentors, all that does is make everybody look better.

Also, if people are worried about the Titans or whoever hitting the glass ceiling that keeps the League on top....why not raise the League, and that ceiling, higher? I mean sh*t, that's basically what's happening in Snyder's JL, so why aren't the Titans being allowed to step up as well, and fill the void the League used to? If the League is dealing with threats to the multiverse, let the Titans deal with threats to the universe.

[Ibara]

Like alot of people have said before, the Titans don't need a "hook" or "purpose" beyond essentially being a superhero team that saves the day (just like the Justice League, X-men, Outsiders, etc.) - what they need is for editorial to care enough to give them a chance to live up to expectations. Have them become an essential voice in the DC tapestry and not just former sidekicks who aren't as great as the "real deal."

Direction-wise you can do anything with them. Take on the role of the outsiders, a covert-ops group that goes and does what the League cannot. Utilize them to explore and connect different DC rogues and pantheons - dive into the Amazons, Atlantis, the Lantern Spectrum or even have them go on adventures centering around one League member (Diana, J'onn, etc.) - I really don't like the idea that these superhero teams are so insulated that they think a group of 7 is the answer to any problem the universe has. Have the Titans become the Multiverse traveling team repairing the damage their predecessors have done to the fabric of reality. Have them lean into "young" and "modern" creating a "start-up" hero team that is more in tune with the needs and functions of modern society - they're more accessible, more relatable, have a greater social voice and incur the pitfalls of each (they have groupies, fandoms, their words can incite thoughtless behavior - they have more celebrity and have to maneuver around people putting themselves in danger to see what they're up to and fake threats to get their attention).

In essence the direction can be anything. The Titans(Fab 5) should be a group of superheroes who grew up wanting to be superheroes, mentored by superheroes, and have bonded and continue to bond over the family they've created for themselves - I see them more as a Fantastic 4 than a Justice League jr. The Teen Titans are a group of young heroes in adolescence - they're discovering who they are, they question, they rebel.

[Masterff]

I see a lot of points in this thread. Some of them are points that I agree with, others are points that I very much disagree with. For starters: shelving the brand is a mistake at this point in time. Could I have seen a time where not having a Teen Titans team would've been beneficial? Yes, during the New 52 era specifically. But now the (Teen) Titans have a hit television show on a moderately successful streaming service as well as a, whether you like it or not, incredibly successful and lucrative children's TV show. To have them disappear from the comics entirely is a bad idea, and it's not going to happen, not completely. And I wouldn't want it to. The Titans literally brought DC back from bankruptcy, I don't care what Didio says, they deserve respect.

I was going to come in here and suggest a Titans team that outside of a core four doesn't have a set team, and I'm still going to suggest it, but that isn't going to be my main point because I've come up with another that I like more based on the responses here. But first, that team: cancel the Teen Titans team indefinitely, to start. There is only one team of Titans, and it is this one. A team on part with the Justice League that deals with similar, if more centralized, threats. It is lead by Nightwing, Donna Troy, Starfire, and Wally West. These are the only four members of the team that appear in every arc and if we're working off of current continuity, make it five and change Wally to both Raven and Beast Boy. They are the constants. Otherwise, the remaining two to four spots on the team belong to the other Titans - Omen, Bumblebee, Guardian, Cyborg, etc, who sub in based on the arc. There's also a younger team that takes the focus sometimes that the Titans are teaching. They're all based in the tower.

The other option that I like more upon reflection is a group of Titans that is diametrically opposed to the Justice League. The League hasn't had a team that directly opposes the things that they do other than as a group of villains as a long time, they haven't had a true heroic rival. Why can't or shouldn't that be the heroes that they have trained that should for all intents and purposes not be as jaded as the league is. A more optimistic, A-Level superhero team. That's what the Titans should be. Define the Titans as being on the same level of the League in an event that forces them to oppose each other... philosophically. And The Titans should be written as the ones in the right, and correctly so at that. Then spin the team out of the event (in an ideal world for me this would be Nightwing, Donna Troy, Cyborg, Omen, Beast Boy, Terra, and Starfire) and have them deal with Justice League level threats as well as threats that are limited to the Titans. Have them prove their worth and continue to paint them as good as the League in other titles as well as their own. Maintain the rivalry, but make it a rather friendly one. Make the Titans the... friendlier alternative to the League. Still have them based in a Titans Tower, ideally the one in New York or a newly introduced Jump City. Where the League is untouchable in their lofty satellite... the Titans portray themselves as human and approachable.

I agree on many terms BUT!!

1.) Why Starfire? There are many others who are more powerful etc.
and only because she is a long-time member doesnt make her more logical for the team...

2.) Every combination has also different chemistry etc.

3.) Whats about CONNER,CASSIE,TIM,BART??
They also earned their place in the Titans...

and CONNER for example is one of the main-protagonists in the YOUNG JUSTICE TV Series..

I was always a fan of 2 Titans Teams

1.) Classical Team with Dick,Donna,Wally,Roy........(30 Years old)
2.) NEW Team with Tim,Cassie,Bart,Conner...........(25 Years old)

[darud]

Like alot of people have said before, the Titans don't need a "hook" or "purpose" beyond essentially being a superhero team that saves the day (just like the Justice League, X-men, Outsiders, etc.) - what they need is for editorial to care enough to give them a chance to live up to expectations. Have them become an essential voice in the DC tapestry and not just former sidekicks who aren't as great as the "real deal."

I think this is the best way to say it.

The NTT which for me are the classic team, by far the best and the most successful incarnation of the team, were started (by Raven) as a team formed to fight one of the most powerful villains in DC, Trigon. Someone that the Justice League couldn't even face when he had show up in force, or were used by him as simple pawns before to eliminate them.

Titans level of power and importance was established ever since the first issues when Starfire had KO-ed Wonder Woman or Raven had easily take down the entire JL. You knew from the start they are not the sidekicks, a lesser version of JL but they are a team of their own just as capable as JL (or even more capable in some specific circumstances). In fact I think just Dick and Wally were former sidekicks at that time, Donna I don't think was WW sidekick and obviously Raven, Starfire, Beast Boy and Cyborg were completely independent characters who changed for good the Titans. Even then Dick was moving away from Batman shadow and becoming someone of his own (eventually getting to Nightwing) and Wally will eventually become the main Flash. The Fab 5 alone simply don't work to make Titans as a peer team to JL, from multiple points of view, including DC editorial who can't let them surpass their more established mentors or seniors.
The NTT on the other hand, can easily rival JL as importance and power level due to many independent, original and powerful characters unrelated with those in JL. You have Raven, the daughter of what is basically the archetype of Satan in DC, you have Starfire, a powerful alien princess that can rival even WW, there is Cyborg with his unique abilities (lets say can be replaced at least partially now by Steel), same as BB.

Once they get established on that level they started to form bonds, more closer friendhsip and even love relations, but that was both natural and without to replace or overshadow their importance as superhero team.

My view is they should form back the NTT more or less, including to stop deaging Raven and BB, its just silly (I understand they wanted them to be part of TT to increase their popularity but obviously couldn't work well with some kids as Damian age). Its similarly with JL almost always having their core members around and nobody complaining why Batman, Superman, WW and so on are always there. Same with the Titans, they almost always should have Raven, Starfire, BB, Nightwing, Donna, Cyborg and Wally. I get that one of these can't be part of the team now, unfortunately, but the idea still stand

The DC need to allow them to go back to their status from original NTT era and to move out from JL shadow. Even become a sort of rival team as power and capacity to deal with whatever threats.

They can still fight from time to time their established villains, ofcourse (Trigon, Deathstroke, Blood, HIVE etc) with new takes and new stories, is no need to always have Slade infiltrating Terra in the team or so, he can think to other, new plans. They can fight new villains or threats, can switch villains with JL etc (Deathstroke is anyway fighting those too, Titans can fight Lex or Despero for example). But they need to be a team of their own, as independent as possible from JL (even if still cooperating with them in important issues) and with at least similar power levels and importance. That's how they became back in the day the great success they were and influenced the DC and Titans until today (see the big success that cartoons and the new live series it have, and all of those are based more or less on the NTT comics of Wolfman and Perez)

[Dred]

Beast Boy was not independent. He was a Doom Patrol character/survivor and was basically the team sidekick as a kid. He even had a couple of appearances in the OG Teen Titans (but wasn't allowed permanent membership because he wasn't a teen yet).

The view that we should just redo the NTT is the most common approach at "Fixing" the Titans brand and has been done so many times that there's barely any other kinds of stories. If you think this idea fixes it then you have ignored the history of the franchise

[Lightning Rider]

3.) Whats about CONNER,CASSIE,TIM,BART??

Even more difficult to ponder IMO

[Ascended]

Like alot of people have said before, the Titans don't need a "hook" or "purpose" beyond essentially being a superhero team that saves the day (just like the Justice League, X-men, Outsiders, etc.) - what they need is for editorial to care enough to give them a chance to live up to expectations. Have them become an essential voice in the DC tapestry and not just former sidekicks who aren't as great as the "real deal."

I think its been largely proven that this just doesn't fly.

Those other teams do have a purpose; the League are the first and last line of defense; the greatest, most capable heroes (well, usually) dealing with threats no single hero could handle solo. They're SEAL team 6 for superheroes. The X-Men are a school teaching young superhumans how to handle their powers, not to mention the "civil rights" topics and themes. The Outsiders are the covert group doing the dirty work other heroes can't be seen doing. They all have a reason for being together.

DC has tried to say that the Titans are a team just because they're a team. Friendship is magic, and all that. And it does not sell. It does not work. It has not worked for thirty years. So yeah, maybe the Titans *should* just be a group of highly capable, powerful, confident heroes working together to save lives. Maybe that *should* be enough. But history proves it's not enough and nostalgia doesn't change that. Whatever the Titans are, it seems clear they need a mission statement beyond "we like each other!" And more to the point, that mission statement has to be put into practice and more than just lip service. DC has tried, in the past, to say the Titans are a training ground for young heroes. That's cool, that works. But not when your roster consists of adult, experienced heroes with only two young, inexperienced ones, like Devin Grayson tried to pull.

Ultimately you're right about editorial. A good editor, with a decent creative team, probably could pull it off and make the Titans work as a team that's together simply for the sake of it. I mean, at least in theory the right people behind the scenes could make any premise work. But that doesn't seem to happen. And even if a specific talent came along who did pull it off, the title then rests squarely on that talent and as soon as they leave, things go south again. Johns is a good example here. He did the whole "training ground" thing too, only with a few more "students" and it was the last time the Titans were really worth anything. But once he left? The premise started to come apart under the weight of lesser talent.

Perhaps it would work if DC allowed the Titans to grow and evolve. Perhaps they could remain a team simply for the sake of it if they were all bigger and badder than DC currently lets them be. Perhaps if they moved beyond the NTT phase in life and started dealing with bigger, badder League level problems, the Titans being a team simply because the world needs them to be would fly. But it appears that, as long as the characters aren't allowed to move beyond where Wolfman left them, their friendship just isn't enough.

[Lightning Rider]

Ascended, didn't you once pitch a story about Beast Boy becoming famous like he always wanted to as a comedic actor, but then struggling with still wanting more out of life? Something to that effect. Might have been just one among many "where they ended up" story ideas you were throwing around for the titans.

[darud]

The view that we should just redo the NTT is the most common approach at "Fixing" the Titans brand and has been done so many times that there's barely any other kinds of stories. If you think this idea fixes it then you have ignored the history of the franchise

I must disagree here. The brand worked better (even if they didn't reached the original NTT era) when they did have something similar or close to NTT and when they were able to still keep a status of their own, more or less independent from JL and at least close to them as abilities to resolve problems. The mistake always made with them after the height of NTT was to put them in lesser positions in the shadow of JL, subordinate them to JL, deage some of the most important members and break the team balance, eliminate from the team some of the most important members and so on. The cartoons (and even the live series) aren't such successful for nothing, they basically followed more or less the steps of their comicbook source material. I don't remember if they mentioned even once the JL in the original cartoons, let alone consider them some seniors to ask for help, and that I think is still in top ten most watched or downloaded series of DC

No ofense but its silly to say they can't tell anymore stories with NTT and their established villains. Its like complaining that you can't tell anymore stories with a JL made of Superman, Batman, WW, Aquaman and so on, or with villains such as Joker, Darkseid, Luthor and whatever, because those were also done in the past.

You just need good writers with imagination and free reign from DC editorial to allow them to put back the Titans on the place they were during NTT golden era, when they were rivaling the JL and were fighting threats that even JL wasn't capable to deal with. As I said is no need to retell the exact same stories with exact same development but you can definitely use same characters in new ways

[Dred]

I must disagree here. The brand worked better (even if they didn't reached the original NTT era) when they did have something similar or close to NTT and when they were able to still keep a status of their own, more or less independent from JL and at least close to them as abilities to resolve problems. The mistake always made with them after the height of NTT was to put them in lesser positions in the shadow of JL, subordinate them to JL, deage some of the most important members and break the team balance, eliminate from the team some of the most important members and so on. The cartoons (and even the live series) aren't such successful for nothing, they basically followed more or less the steps of their comicbook source material. I don't remember if they mentioned even once the JL in the original cartoons, let alone consider them some seniors to ask for help, and that I think is still in top ten most watched or downloaded series of DC

No ofense but its silly to say they can't tell anymore stories with NTT and their established villains. Its like complaining that you can't tell anymore stories with a JL made of Superman, Batman, WW, Aquaman and so on, or with villains such as Joker, Darkseid, Luthor and whatever, because those were also done in the past.

You just need good writers with imagination and free reign from DC editorial to allow them to put back the Titans on the place they were during NTT golden era, when they were rivaling the JL and were fighting threats that even JL wasn't capable to deal with. As I said is no need to retell the exact same stories with exact same development but you can definitely use same characters in new ways

They de-aged their members so they could put them back on the team. Previous attempts at recreating the NTT were no more successful than this last attempt at putting the Fab Five together, which is the first time that's happened since NTT on any significant basis. Go back and look at the success of even Johns' Teen Titans (which had a reunion of most the NTT cast + YJ cast which a lot of people like) or the 2008 literal "let's just put the NTT together again" team and they did not stand out saleswise, and inevitably were cancelled -- admittedly in the 08 Titans and 03 TT's case it happened with Flashpoint. Same with the 99 Titans series which was lead by NTT members and had some new folks put in ie: The NTT formula. Basically you can look up any Teen Titans/Titans comic over the past 20 years and you'll find a bunch of NTT injected into it.

Chasing the NTT dragon is something that they've done every five or so years. They literally just tried it by sticking Raven and Beast Boy onto the team with Donna and Dick. Sound familiar? Yet the series is cancelled, the entire impetus for this thread, after trying to make it more like NTT and its sales continued to tank.

NTT hit a zeitgeist where the JL was crumbling due to many of the members struggling outside the comic (Barry, Hal, even Wonder Woman was having issues in the 80s) and JL wasn't the bar anyone was afraid to measure up against at the time. NTT moved in on that turf. But since then, the JL has regained their status and any book with "titans" in the name has always been the B or C or D team. NTT was successful because Perez was great and they had a space to be the lead team book at DC. That's the long and short of it. If JL is the lead team book then Titans will always suffer regardless. It'll be a medium selling book like it has been since the mid 90s.

The reason why this latest Titans run hasn't succeeded is obvious. The original team was literally not allowed to do anything. Booth and Abnett have both come out and said that they weren't allowed to do any of the stories they wanted to. There was plenty of excitement going into the book because it had an amazing hook led into it by DCU Rebirth, and they intentionally (and I would say maliciously) refused to capitalize on it. They brought in the JL to **** on the team twice -- editorials' favored heroes popping in just to remind everyone that the Titans suck and you should read JL. This is and always will be the problem, not whether or not the team has Starfire and Raven on it. If the roster itself was the only thing that affected sales then you'd have seen that success replicated on, say, Rebirth Teen Titans which injected Starfire, Beast Boy, and Raven into it! They even had a Kid Flash and a Robin! One Cyborg short, but unless you think Cyborg is the lynchpin holding the franchise together I'm not seeing a correlation.

[Ascended]

Ascended, didn't you once pitch a story about Beast Boy becoming famous like he always wanted to as a comedic actor, but then struggling with still wanting more out of life? Something to that effect. Might have been just one among many "where they ended up" story ideas you were throwing around for the titans.

I did! This was back when Vic still had a solo. The idea was to take Gar out of the Titans book and make him a supporting character in Vic's. Gar would've gone into semi-retirement as Beast Boy (and start going by Changeling again when he did suit up!) and focus on his acting career. He would've made his name as a "Andy Serkis" type of actor; the guy who takes weird, crazy, silly, inhuman characters and brings them to life. And Gar would've taken that fame and influence and become a vocal activist. Y'know those Hollywood types who are always speaking up for some cause or another? Gar would've been like that, cranked up to 11. And his new influence would've helped thousands of kids in need across the nation, making him a far more effective hero as "Gar Logan: Hollywood Star" than he ever was as "Beast Boy: Least Mature Titan."

And yes, it was just one of several ideas I had for what the "next step" in the lives of the Titans could look like. I love these characters, and I love them hanging out together, but I'm sick of reunions that force them back into a twisted illusion of the NTT era. They're older, more experienced, and should have moved beyond those cycles that writers keep bringing them back to. I thought if the characters could move forward in life, it might bring a new sense of purpose and direction to the Titans IP as a whole; focus on the individual parts and the larger whole will work itself out. At least that was my theory.