More than ready for this one!

A Little Background, Part One: Tales of the Teen Titans


The original Teen Titans began as an accident of sorts. In 1964, facing lagging sales and interest, DC was trying to sell America on its New Look Batman. That campaign included an issue of Brave and the Bold intended to sell adolescents (DC's primary audience at the time) on Robin by teaming him up with two other sidekicks so that Robin could prove he was even more effective than they were, with or without powers.

However, instead of being enamored by Robin (and, subsequently, Batman), fans wrote in demanding more adventures featuring teen sidekicks all working together as a team. In response to this, the Teen Titans debuted a year later and quickly earned their own title. Writer Bob Haney seemed to gleefully pander to this energized fan-base, doling out campy efforts to celebrate mid-1960s teen culture. And yet, within three years, the teens Haney was writing to had grown up and moved on, and no one seemed sure what to do with this now unwanted fan-service property. A series of creative teams and new directions revolved on and off of the title for the next five years, but the Teen Titans were ultimately retired by 1973, never managing to regain the early success that had long since dwindled.

A brief resurgence of interest in the franchise occurred two years later in response to some reprinted Titans stories appearing in the pages of DC Superstars, but a re-launched Teen Titans title proved disastrous and (by most accounts) embarrassing in the eyes of DC editorial. Thus, in 1978, the Teen Titans were cancelled again, this time with no intention to ever bring them back. Plans were made to move most of the individual members to separate books and features, the individual characters/trademarks remaining in print while the Titans franchise itself would be abandoned to the ages.

Unfortunately for DC (but fortunately for us Titans fans), The DC Implosion of 1978 forced DC to cut back mercilessly on its published content, saving room on the page for only their most successful titles, and that killed any hope of most of these heroes finding life beyond the Titans page. Thus, the Teen Titans were left waiting in the wings until Marv Wolfman would come around to rescue them two years later.

A Little Background, Part Two: The Jericho Contract

A young Marv Wolfman and Len Wein were the first to get a crack at writing the original Teen Titans after writer/creator Bob Haney was booted from the title in 1968. At only twenty two years old, it may have been that editor Dick Giordano felt they would be more in touch with the aging teen audience the title was no longer managing to attract. After a godawful first story, the writing team seemed to be getting the hang of things and was pushing some fresh, relevant social issues that were bound to be of interest to the demographic they were courting.

Then The Battle of Jericho happened.

Teen Titans #20, already approved by DC Executive Vice President Irwin Donenfeld, would have introduced Jericho, DC's first African American superhero. However, Carmine Infantino was promoted to editorial director between the approving of this story and its completion and, upon seeing the finished product, he rejected it. A heated battle ensued between Infantino and Wolfman/Wein that nearly cost the two their jobs until Neal Adams stepped in, promising to do a last minute re-write/re-draw that would make the issue introduce a white superhero instead. In the fallout of this conflict, Wolfman and Wein were sidelined at DC and given very little new work for several years to come.

Wolfman made his way to Marvel in 1972 under the guidance of Roy Thomas, worked his way up to Editor in Chief, and then returned to an ailing DC Comics in 1980 (which was now under the leadership of Jennette Kahn), now a top writer in the field who could pick virtually any project he wanted.

He wanted the Teen Titans back.

A Little Background, Part Four: Teen Titans Spotlight on...The X-Men?

The X-Men and The New Teen Titans bear a lot of similarities and, as the X-Men came first, there have been many throughout the years who have claimed that the New Teen Titans was little more than a rip-off, prompting Wolfman to deny that he modeled any of the Titans after the X-Men. I don't see the New Teen Titans as an X-Men rip-off, and I definitely don't feel that any individual Titan is a direct imitation of any X-Man, BUT the X-Men were the hottest superhero team of the time period, DC's superheroes were languishing in a creative wasteland, and I wouldn't be too surprised if comparisons to the X-Men figured somewhere in Wolfman's pitch to Kahn. Or maybe it was more of a subconscious thing; when you have a comic franchise that everyone is talking about, celebrating, and espousing respect for, how do you NOT draw influence from that in creating a team of your own?

Suffice to say, I do believe the X-Men, along with Mal and Lilith, serve as a partial basis for the new members introduced in New Teen Titans.

Let's break it down:


Raven



Take the mysterious aloofness, all-knowing-nature, and alluring forbidden dark arts of Lilith and give her the looming threat of Dark Phoenix: a beloved character with a dark and powerful inner self that could lose control at any moment and destroy the universe.


Starfire



The forbidden, non-Arian beauty with vacant white eyes who innocently flaunts her ignorance of Western culture (which includes inadvertently flaunting her sexuality, much to the delight of male readers) and yet is unmistakably powerful and terrifying when she wants to be feels a whole lot like Storm at the get-go. Wolfman ultimately takes this character in very different directions, but the two feel very similar on paper.


Changeling



Of all the former Titans (including Titans West members), Beast Boy was one of the more forgettable and least likely to be missed. But Wolfman completely reinvents the character, making him younger and playful instead of the same age as the other Titans and generally angry at the world. Why? Perhaps because, in this incarnation, he mixes the playful theatrics of Nightcrawler with the pimply comic relief of Kitty Pryde.



Cyborg



Victor is the only new addition to the team that seems to have no correlation to an X-Men character. Sure, he's big and metal, but any similarity he has to Colossus ends there. Instead, he borrows more from Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four, The Changeling often playing off of him like a Johnny Storm.




In short, no, Marv Wolfman did not rip-off the X-Men, but I do believe the X-Men partly informed the characters and characterizations he created for this run. Combine that with Wolfman's investment in the 1968 Titans, and you have a pretty full explanation for where these characters came from.

I thin the X-Men comparison is most apt in approach to the stories. Wolfman focuses heavily on characterization and inter-team relationships, while also setting up immediate action plots and longer form subplots, building to epic conclusions. the structure was extremely similar to how Claremont and Byrne had been doing X-men, though it was hardly unique. There was also a certain outsider status and a more contained group of villains. Beyond that, similarities mostly stop. Mal and Jericho probably inform the choice of a black character, though racial mixes and gender mixes were regular considerations in team concepts, in this period, as execs looked to broader markets. The New X-Men were made international to build on Marvel's foreign sales and this had similar focus, in character types (domestically, though) Cyborg is as much inspired by Deathlok, a character that Perez had worked on, as Mal or even Colossus.

I think people go looking for points of comparison, because NTT was a very Marvel book in style, in contrast to much of what DC was putting out. Even Conway had adapted to the DC model, when he came over, though Englehart pretty much stuck to his guns. However, his initial time there was relatively brief.

Titans was a book that excited me from the start. I missed the DCP debut ((had the All-Star Squadron and Outsider previews, though) because I didn't see the issue on the stands. I did see number one and had it and number 2, as soon as I saw them. Then, I had a bit of a gap, until 6 and 7. I wasn't driving yet and regularly earning an income; so, I missed a few issues, before getting it regularly, after the first year.

I assume you haven't forgotten the New Teen Titans Digest story and will come to then when it's time.

I can't really think of anything else related to the pitch.

Wolfman says he was not trying to emulate X-Men, but was going for a Fantastic Four feel as a family book. He also has indicated that his biggest goal in developing NTT was less about getting that book back and more about getting off the books that DC put him on when he came over from Marvel. DC put him on World’s Finest and Brave & Bold and Wolfman hated writing team-up books.