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The REAL Teen Titans

Haus of Mystery

21:44 / 24.01.07

Spinning off from a comment I made regarding George Perez being the epitome of 80's superhero art, I started thinking about the Titans. Wolfman & Perez created a team comic to rival the Byrne & Claremont dream team on X-Men in the early 80's, but I know very little about it. But there's something sexy abou the Titans. They just seemed so post-Disco...spangly open top costumes and weird sexual politics. Robin all grown up and hanging with his new alien girlfriend. Donna Troy as a gay icon...
And the Tower! That towerblock in the T-shape! Has there ever been a cooler HQ than that?
I remember a friend telling me that when he read the Titans as a kid, he felt terribly grown up, that he was reading something beyond his ken, and I think that 'adult' soap operatic feel was probably key to it's success.
Like I said I haven't read it. What are the key stories? Is it any good? Did it make you feel weird?

Titan's GO!

Robert B

01:06 / 25.01.07

Yeah, I remember the kid in high school that introduced me to the team. It was my gateway into DC (followed by Watchmen and the 80s Question series and then G-Moz on Animal Man). Anyways, it was weird and foreign but really cool as well. I guess the key stories I remember were the Trigon ones (probably more than one of these I'm sure) and the Terra one where she betrays the team. Also, I remember later Nightwing being in bed with Starfire more often than not but that was New Titans territory.

That's all I've got...

Char Aina

01:32 / 25.01.07

Has there ever been a cooler HQ than that?

dude!
like, uh...the batcave?

i mean, seriously.
it's a cave!
full of bats!
what's not to love?

the T is good, but if godzilla comes along you better not have a room in one of the arms.
plus, earthquakes.

Benny the Ball

05:33 / 25.01.07

The woman with poisonous fingernails, people having affairs, Jericho being just plain weird, people almost dying because they were having affairs - TT used to be very very good back in it's day.

Alex's Grandma

06:58 / 25.01.07

For a while back there - I'm guessing about '83/'84, the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans was really the only thing worth reading. Well that and Doug Moench's 'Batman' (Ok, it is possible to download the poor man's photo these days, but back then, it wasn't ... And he did seem to care about his work. More than anyone has done since, even though ... well in spite of everything.)

It's a source of instense irritation, now that I've thought about it, that the Eighties, pre-Watchmen, has been written out of history. At the time, the Wolfman/Perez 'Teen Titans' was gripping melodrama (up until about #40, basically, after that they ran out of steam, bit still ... they provideded more bang for one's buck than all that, um, stuff that Grant Morrisson's utter crap that we still put up with.)

Wolfman and Perez, briefly, knew how to entertain.

Support them, if you can!

Haus of Mystery

13:53 / 25.01.07

toksik - what's the Batcave good for?

Brooding and wanking (often at the same time)

What's the Titan Tower good for?

SEXY PARTY TIME!!

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

16:42 / 25.01.07

See, I always wanted to hang out in a giant upside-down rocketship that wasn't going anywhere.

EvskiG

18:52 / 25.01.07

Yeah! The REAL Teen Titans!

Robin! Kid Flash! Aqualad! Wonder Girl! And Speedy!

In the late 1960s! Using slang like Snapper Carr! And fighting off a giant disembodied ear by playing the Beatles on transistor radios!

Wait, that's not what you mean by "the good old days"?

EvskiG

18:55 / 25.01.07

Mr Tricks

22:39 / 25.01.07

some of those radios look vaguely like iPods.

Haus of Mystery

09:05 / 26.01.07

Pfeh.

Sixties pop revivalism = done to death.

Spaniel

10:27 / 26.01.07

Yep, early eighties late seventies for me (if you're gonna go the revivalism route)

Haus of Mystery

11:33 / 26.01.07

Fantasy Titans story title no.1:

With Great Parties must come Great Comedowns

The Natural Way

12:54 / 26.01.07

Can't cut and paste on this computer, so it's difficult to link to it, but it seems the Titan's book was part of the eighties 'Just say no to drugs!' campaign.

So, after all that partying at Studio 54 and Titan's Tower with Bob Evans and Jerry hall, they turn to Reagan, white T-shirts and clean living... The worst 'comedown of all' - the 8O's

This Sunday

18:19 / 24.08.07

Reading random Titans books, Teen, New and other flavors. I only vaguely paid attention to them back in the day, being not much of a DC-fan. Most slashable team primed for sweaty fanfics ever? Pick two Titans who can't be easily paired off into some sexxy. Can't do it, can you? And they're the flashiest, the shiniest, the most self-embarrassing! X-Men crossed with the Legion of Superheroes with more impromptu dancing, waking up wondering what they were thinking, and being glammer than glam in a giant T. Or under it. Arsenal had it right: everybody's incredibly good-looking and friendly, and you don't have to pay rent. And there's a built-in firewall that keeps much of Dan Jurgens' changes from effecting greater continuity, that may, someday, in a beautiful world of tomorrow do the same for much of Johns'.

It's been covered before, but bears hyping again.

Also, I miss the cartoon and it's tie-in book.

Grady Hendrix

03:28 / 26.08.07

The Perez/Wolfman Titans were truly great, but even after that run ended I still remember thinking of them as some kind of dark, adult superteam. Yes, I was lame, but the Titans always seemed so grown-up. They were the only superheroes that I genuinely felt had working genitals underneath their spandex. Robin/Nightwing seemed like the ultimate bachelor, Garth (Garth?!? what a WASP name) seemed like the ultimate chicken and Kory seemed like the ultimate lust object while Wonder Girl seemed like the woman you'd most want to be in a relationship with...it's sad to think of what an impact these fictional twenty-somethings had on my libidinal development.

Grady Hendrix

12:27 / 26.08.07

I always suspected that Garth and Cyborg were the Apollo and Midnighter of the team.

Also, I remember poring over depictions of their apartments (apartments! for a superhero?) with their thick rugs and floor-length drapes and coffee tables and eat-in kitchens.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

15:37 / 23.01.08

For anyone interested, Marv Wolfman is writing a Raven miniseries, "...delving into Raven's past and giving her a new life — but first she must survive the horrors of high school! Can the Titan's empath endure the wave of teen angst at school, especially after someone begins killing students? Emotions are driven sky high thanks to the reappearance of the Psycho Pirate's Medusa mask, and there's no way anyone can contain it once it has fallen into the wrong hands. Titans fans new and old dare not miss this one!"

I'm not really enthralled by the idea, although it to would be fun to see Psycho-Pirate again, but I am intrigued because Damion Scott will be doing the covers and interiors:

Cover #1

Cover #2

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