Why were the Teen Titans' hot?

[whetteon]

First let me say that I didn't start collecting comics until 1989 so this "history" of comics had already come and gone way before I was interested but I've read alot of quick inserts and fast jabs on how teen titans and uncanny x-men were neck and neck in popularity in the early 80's. Furthermore, I've read a few opinions stating that Teen Titan's "revived" DC books. This would suggest Teen Titan's was itself as important of a flag ship title that X-Men is to Marvel today. I'm anxious to hear other collectors opinions on how, why, when and who started this intersting boxing fight that ultimately left Teen Titan's a non-existant title until a couple years ago.

 

[Silver Surfer]

DC was all but dead back in the late 70's early 80's as I remember it especially when the Avengers were cranking out awesome stuff followed by the X-Men, FF, Thor and Spider-Man of course. This was one of Marvel's strongest periods next to the early SA and back then and all my friends could care less what DC was up to. I did buy the Teen Titans when they came out and it was entertaining (not outstanding), good art by Perez but after the first 25-30 issues it lost its luster.

[Foolkiller]

I don't agree that it lost its luster after 25 or 30 issues... to me, the best storyline of the whole run came in TT 42-44, the Judas Contract.

[the blob]

perez was a hot artist and NTT was better than a lot of the DC stuff, on par with a lot of marvel stuff.

 

the x-men/NTT one shot sold what, four trillion copies?

 

at one point there were what, three different NTT series out (the first one, the expensive baxter paper one and "tales of the NTT"--- maybe there were more, i forget), so obviously some people were reading it

 

it just didn't sustain it for 20 years

 

and by the time NTT was sputtering the batman movies and year 1 had really helped boost the Batman franchise and Superman had come back (I guess with Byrne... I'm not sure what impact, if any, the superman movies had on the comic)

[shadroch]

Tales of The teen Titans was the original series,only with a new title. When the Baxter book came out,for the first year,"TALES" featured new stories but after 12 issues,it reprinted the Baxter series.

There was a third Titans book for awhile.

Teen Titans Spotlight featured various characters from the Titans family.

I thought Titans had lost its edge in the thirties but it did come back strong with THe Judas Contract,one of the best arcs I've ever read.

[whetteon]

What would be a run down of issues that any Teen Titan fan MUST have? I figure 1-3 are safe bets along with TT 42-44... Any others?

[the blob]

yes, right, "spotlight" was the third title, my bad. straight to the quarter bin those went.

[Zonker]

What would be a run down of issues that any Teen Titan fan MUST have? I figure 1-3 are safe bets along with TT 42-44... Any others?

 

I think all the way up through #27 ("Runaways") is prime stuff. The non-Perez fill-ins start showing up at #35...

[Point Five]

It's great to see this New Teen Titans thread start up today...I was literally walking to work this morning and thinking about starting one. (So thanks, whet!)

 

This was absolutely my favorite book in the mid-1980s, and I'm still very fond of the back issues. George Perez's art was definitely a big part of the book's popularity, but more than anything (IMO) it was the highly enjoyable storytelling by both Marv Wolfman and George (from memory, GP was brought on as co-plotter pretty early on). The characters were written with a depth that is completely alien to most super-team books…we see characters slowly evolve, tiny conflicts arise between characters over time, and seeds planted in the earliest issues that would have reprocussions years later (a la Neil Gaiman's Sandman, to borrow a more modern example). New Teen Titans #1-50 (1980-85) and New Teen Titans 2nd series #1-5 (the one on the spiffy Baxter paper) is still one of the best and most consistent runs I've ever read, in any title.

 

Here's a very subjective list of my favorite issues:

 

1st series:

#2, #9-10: The intro of Deathstroke the Terminator, one of the many classic villains created in this series.

 

#13-15: The quest for the killers of the original Doom Patrol, and the re-intro of the Brotherhood of Evil. (In general, I thought it quite cool the way they built on the foundations of a lot of silver/bronze age stories.)

 

#26-27: "Runaways": A gritty and quite graphic storyline about kids using and selling drugs. Extremely powerful.

 

#28-#34, Annual #2: The beginning of the Terra storyline, when she joins the group. Still one of my favorite characters of 1980s comics. (A more subtle motif in these issues is Robin's frustration at making a name for himself in Batman's shadow, and the tensions in his relationships with others...)

 

#38: “Who is Donna Troy?” Delves into Wonder Girl's unknown past…tearjerking stuff.

 

#39: The issue when Robin leaves the group (he will soon rejoin as Nightwing). An issue without any huge battles or villians, just a focus on the characters in their private identities, and some beautifully written moments. (Actually, many of these "quiet" issues are among my favorites.)

 

#42-44, Annual #3: The Judas Contract storyline…as Foolkiller says, it's among the very best of the run, period. At the time, it was the culmination of nearly two full years of suspense.

 

#50: Double-sized issue with the wedding of Donna Troy. No “supervillian crashes the wedding” clichés here, just more beautiful writing and quiet moments here, and some entertaining cameos by other DC universe characters.

 

2nd series:

#1-5: An extremely powerful storyline about Raven and the return of Trigon, with a surprising amount of violence & horror…at the time, I found it to be quite shocking stuff. Some of the very, very best of Perez's art here too.

 

Whichever issues you try, I don't think you'll be disappointed as long as you stick with the 1980-1985(86?) period…even the few “filler” issues are head and shoulders above the average superhero comic (again, IMO).

Great, great stuff!

 

--Jon

[FlyingDonut]

This one:

 

[uclapeterg]

I don't agree that it lost its luster after 25 or 30 issues... to me, the best storyline of the whole run came in TT 42-44, the Judas Contract.

 

I agree. I also liked the baxter 1-5 where Trigon came to almost kill the TT.

[jbud73]

Ah the shameless plug by Donut. I have to say FD you should run to the bank with your mask on for what that copy of yours last week sold for. At WonderCon this book started to eek its way onto the walls of some dealers - though it sat there all weekend priced between $25-$35 in NM (I had a look at all 4 wall copies and beleive they were 9.4s, one which I bought for $15 I may sub as its a 9.6 candidate. Anyway off of the economics and on to the issue at hand.

 

I agree with the short synopsis of the previous post, but they falied to Mention BrotherBlood and Blackfire (StarFire's Evil sister) storylines invloving these villans were great.

 

The original run before the reprints started in the 60s?? I dont remember offhand are all worth looking into.

 

The Baxter Series was good for the first 25 issues, then George Leaves and doest return until issue 50 - the falloff isn't so pronounced between 25-50, but after he leaves for good the post 50 non-Perez issues really start to go down hill.

 

I'm at a loss to say why exactly NTT failed, I think in this instance Perez and Wolfman reallt were a Team effort, you are correct George became co-plotter and by the time they hit the Judas Contract he could be considered a full partner in the plotting. NTT demonstrated a few things that I think have reoccuring themes in comicdom.

 

1. Desparation, DC was desperate, they were getting hammered by Marvel and allowed Marv and George a lot of creative freedom to do what they wanted. Other instances of this are the O'Neil Adams Green Lantern run and the New X-Men run, where lagging or near cancellation allowed creators to shoot from the hip without repercuission as the publisher had little to lose.

 

2. Quality story and art for a sustained period. You could see the development of story and art as Marv and Goerge started to gel, even though they are both great talents a nice run of 50-75 issues in continuity is a nice way to perfect a writer artist relationship.

 

3. Finally I'll try and comment of where the train derailed. There are 3 common themes here. A) The impact of Perez - especially him leaving. I have been reading the Conan chronicles by Dark Horse and when Barry W. Smith leaves, they replace him with Gil Kane and then John Buscema both quality artist. When Perez leaves its Romeo Tanghal. You have to replace quality with quality or story and art will suffer. DC's failure to do this is probably the biggest nail in the Titans coffin. The series helped prop DC up in dire times, once Batman and Superman and Crisis and Swamp Thing had resurrected them, they were not exactly great in their support of NTT. B Marv and George started to become the DC Universe, from Crisis to History of the DC vese they started taking on huge projects and this undoubtedly hurt their ability to commit to NTT and might have burned them out thereby losing some of the magic, it might have even strained relations with them, though there has never been any evidence of that. A Rock band only has so many tours in it, NTT lost maybe 3 years of Marv and George together on the book because a few of their creative tours were spent elsewhere. C Leave it to the publisher/editor to a good thing. There is some evidence that DC started to reign NTT in after it became successful, or rather after it started to falter a bit. Many have made light of the Editorial change that came on the heels of Perez's second departure I believe. I kow Marv has illustrated that he wanted to leave the book himself in the late 90s, or early 100s because the environment became hostile, but stayed on to see his creation through. So they took away top art from the book and replaced it with inferior editors.

 

Thats my 2 cents anyway. NTT was the book of my youth, along with X-Men and Swamp Thing. Buy the first 50 issues of the 1980 series its just great stuff. At its peak with Titans West and Team Titans and Deathstrokes own series it did account for a nice segment of the DCverse.

[Zonker]

Many good points there! But did you really enjoy Team Titans? For me, that alternate-future Titans group was just a 2nd-rate, needlessly-convoluted Days-of-Future-Past-knockoff.

 

Speaking of which, that's the other reason I think the New Teen Titans lost steam-- the constant rebooting of continuity related to Donna Troy. One very nice thing about the early days of the 1980s re-launch was the more or less seamless mix of the new (Starfire, Cyborg, Raven) and the old (Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, plus the Doom Patrol resolution courtesy of Beast Boy). I think the post-Crisis Who is Donna Troy/Wonder Girl/Troia/Darkstar mess was the beginning of the end.

[FFB]

What would be a run down of issues that any Teen Titan fan MUST have? I figure 1-3 are safe bets along with TT 42-44... Any others?

 

You need Tales of the Teen Titans Annual #3 along with Tales of the Teen Titans #42-44 to get the full Judas Contract storyline. Or just buy the TPB and see if you like it first.

[uclapeterg]

Isn't it #2, not #3?

[FFB]

Isn't it #2, not #3?

 

Nope.

[october]

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=17081&item=6516338477&rd=1

[jbud73]

Let me preface this buy saying I am one of the bigger NTT fans out there - the only orginal art I collect is Perez pages from NTT. Having said that - OMG that price just defies logic. I paid $75 for my CGC 9.8 Tales of the NTT 44 (first Nightwing) and I had to talk myself into it and still think it was a suspect move. From an investment perspective you just paid ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE TIME 9.2 guide. FOR A MODERN, er well late bronze book, that is not know to be particularly rare.

 

Where is that website that makes fun of CGC modern purchase multiples - is he still doing that?? if not too bad this one could be in the Hall of Fame.

[uclapeterg]

That's not really bad, is it? That's a great issue to have.

[october]

That's not really bad, is it? That's a great issue to have.

 

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that spending $800 on a modern is ALWAYS bad, no matter what the little number says on the top of the plastic case.