Teen Titans from the Beginning (reviews by shaxper)
May 18, 2017 19:42:48 GMT -5
fred2, dbutler69, and 1 more like this
Post by shaxper on May 18, 2017 19:42:48 GMT -5
Teen Titans #22 (August 1969)
"Halfway to Holocaust"
Script: Neal Adams
Pencils: Neal Adams
Inks: Nick Cardy
Colors: ?
Letters: John Costanza
grade: D
The conclusion of the Neal Adams Trilogy (as I'm calling it) ends just as much a mess as when it began. This time, it seems like the story was abruptly cut short in order to make room for the second feature. Heck, Adams had been hinting for two issues now that something was causing Wonder Girl's powers to disappear, but instead of getting to that revelation here, it gets tacked on to the B feature rather abruptly and nonsensically:
(note: this image is from the second story in this issue)
It also doesn't help that, as much as I respect the hell out of Adams as a penciler, his vision of alternate dimensions just...isn't good. Whereas Cardy made Dimension X a mysterious, shadowy, other-worldly series of images, Adams gives us something else entirely:
I kind of wonder if Adams hadn't been trying to get assigned to write and draw this title permanently and, having failed in that, was just sort of throwing in the towel at this point. Sure enough, very little of this story makes sense, it's poorly paced, and the visuals aren't your standard Adams quality.
...And now the story we actually want to talk about.
"The Origin of Wonder Girl"
Script: Marv Wolfman
Pencils: Gil Kane
Inks: Nick Cardy
Colors: ?
Letters: Gaspar Saladino
grade: B-
Infantino may have done his best to ensure Wolfman wasn't getting any steady work at DC in the wake of the Teen Titans #20 controversy, but Giordano was still throwing him scraps where he could, and thus we have this back-up feature, only two issues after Wolfman got thrown off of this title.
Wolfman tells the story of this assignment as follows:
Now, I've already disputed his assertion here that Wonder Girl didn't exist prior to joining the Teen Titans (you can read it here), but now I'm going to take him on about the rest of what he says here as well. While he may very well have asked Giordano if he could write this piece (and as a now semi-starving writer at DC, I can think of several reasons why he would), the fact is that Giordano had been getting letters about Wonder Girl for months now, all because of a little story that occurred ten months prior to this issue:
The Wonder Woman title had taken on a new direction, the Amazons leaving and subsequently causing Wonder Woman to no longer have powers. This left fans demanding to know why Wonder Girl was still at full strength, and several clever letters had even come in over the past few issues, noting that Wonder Girl had never been given an origin and might, in fact, not even be an Amazon.
Having read all of these letters over the past few months, it leaves me far less impressed with Wolfman's contributions here. Seems to me he's just writing down almost exactly what some of those letters were saying. The short of it is that Wonder Girl was an infant rescued by Wonder Woman and brought back to Paradise Island
where she was ultimately given powers via the Purple Ray so as not to feel left out. As origins go, it isn't much, but there is one aspect of the thing that I've always found intriguing: Wonder Girl's parents who died in that fire had left no records of themselves, and the apartment she was found in was not being rented out at the time. In past readings, I've always just assumed Wonder Girl's parents were squatters, but Wolfman may have been leaving it open for a larger mystery. Maybe their past was erased, or maybe they were hiding from something/someone. Nothing gets done with it in this title, but it intrigues me all the same.
There's also one aspect of this story that continues to puzzle me:
Wonder Girl needs a place to stay? Great, let's go find her an apartment.
Except for one small question this leaves me with: how old are the Titans?
In previous appearances, they've seemed to be maybe 15 or 16 years old, but now Wonder Girl is old enough to co-lease an apartment with a total stranger? I'm used to DC characters of this era being relatively stagnant and not doing much growing/changing, but clearly something happened somewhere along the way between this
(Brave and the Bold #60)
and apartment hunting.
I suspect this goes along with Infantino's new focus on the older teens that Marvel was luring away from DC instead of that 12 year old boy living in Dayton Ohio that Donenfeld had everyone writing to (2). Sure enough, the second half of this story seems designed explicitly to appeal to teenage girls. No way boys would find much interest in this sequence:
"Ohhh. Ten strokes AND THEN you let it set. I'll have to try that next time!"
but there's a very purposeful rebranding at work here:
and it's not hard to see where Giordano got the idea from:
Important Details:
- Origin of Wonder Girl
- Wonder Girl gains the alias "Donna Troy," which will subsequently stay with the character far longer than the name "Wonder Girl" does.
- Wonder Girl gets a new costume
- First appearance of Sharon Tracy, Donna's new roommate
- In the letter column, Giordano claims a total of five people wrote in to protest Aqualad's leaving the Titans.
(1) Wolfman, Marv. "ORIGIN OF THE NEW TEEN TITANS." ORIGIN OF THE NEW TEEN TITANS. Marvwolfman.com, 2010. Web. 21 July 2016.
(2) Catron, Michael. "The Comics Journal." Bob Haney Interviewed by Michael Catron Part Four (of Five) «. The Comics Journal, 10 Jan. 2011. Web. 21 July 2016.
"Halfway to Holocaust"
Script: Neal Adams
Pencils: Neal Adams
Inks: Nick Cardy
Colors: ?
Letters: John Costanza
grade: D
The conclusion of the Neal Adams Trilogy (as I'm calling it) ends just as much a mess as when it began. This time, it seems like the story was abruptly cut short in order to make room for the second feature. Heck, Adams had been hinting for two issues now that something was causing Wonder Girl's powers to disappear, but instead of getting to that revelation here, it gets tacked on to the B feature rather abruptly and nonsensically:
(note: this image is from the second story in this issue)
It also doesn't help that, as much as I respect the hell out of Adams as a penciler, his vision of alternate dimensions just...isn't good. Whereas Cardy made Dimension X a mysterious, shadowy, other-worldly series of images, Adams gives us something else entirely:
I kind of wonder if Adams hadn't been trying to get assigned to write and draw this title permanently and, having failed in that, was just sort of throwing in the towel at this point. Sure enough, very little of this story makes sense, it's poorly paced, and the visuals aren't your standard Adams quality.
...And now the story we actually want to talk about.
"The Origin of Wonder Girl"
Script: Marv Wolfman
Pencils: Gil Kane
Inks: Nick Cardy
Colors: ?
Letters: Gaspar Saladino
grade: B-
Infantino may have done his best to ensure Wolfman wasn't getting any steady work at DC in the wake of the Teen Titans #20 controversy, but Giordano was still throwing him scraps where he could, and thus we have this back-up feature, only two issues after Wolfman got thrown off of this title.
Wolfman tells the story of this assignment as follows:
""The original series featured the teen sidekicks of DCs older super-heroes. Instead of Flash, there was Kid Flash. Instead of Batman, there was Robin, etc. In many ways this was DCs Junior Justice League.
But there was a problem. Instead of Wonder Woman there was Wonder Girl. Only, unlike Robin, Kid Flash, Speedy and Aqualad, there never was a Wonder Girl in DC continuity. Not a real Wonder Girl at any rate. There was a character in the Wonder Woman comic called Wonder Girl, but, according to the comics at the time, she was actually a computer simulation of Wonder Woman as a girl and not a separate character at all. But back then writers and editors might not have read all the DC Comics, or they may have elected to ignore the fact that this Wonder Girl didn't exist, so they put her into the Titans, and, as a fan, I kept thinking something had to be done. We couldn’t have a ‘fake’ hero fighting alongside all those ‘real’ characters.
So I, a fledgling writer to say the least, pitched the idea of writing an origin of a ‘real’ Wonder Girl story to then editor, Dick Giordano, and somehow he must not have been paying attention because he actually bought it. I went about the task of creating an origin to explain this character who didn't exist. This Wonder Girl couldn't be a young Wonder Woman as a girl but had to be her own person." (1)"
But there was a problem. Instead of Wonder Woman there was Wonder Girl. Only, unlike Robin, Kid Flash, Speedy and Aqualad, there never was a Wonder Girl in DC continuity. Not a real Wonder Girl at any rate. There was a character in the Wonder Woman comic called Wonder Girl, but, according to the comics at the time, she was actually a computer simulation of Wonder Woman as a girl and not a separate character at all. But back then writers and editors might not have read all the DC Comics, or they may have elected to ignore the fact that this Wonder Girl didn't exist, so they put her into the Titans, and, as a fan, I kept thinking something had to be done. We couldn’t have a ‘fake’ hero fighting alongside all those ‘real’ characters.
So I, a fledgling writer to say the least, pitched the idea of writing an origin of a ‘real’ Wonder Girl story to then editor, Dick Giordano, and somehow he must not have been paying attention because he actually bought it. I went about the task of creating an origin to explain this character who didn't exist. This Wonder Girl couldn't be a young Wonder Woman as a girl but had to be her own person." (1)"
Now, I've already disputed his assertion here that Wonder Girl didn't exist prior to joining the Teen Titans (you can read it here), but now I'm going to take him on about the rest of what he says here as well. While he may very well have asked Giordano if he could write this piece (and as a now semi-starving writer at DC, I can think of several reasons why he would), the fact is that Giordano had been getting letters about Wonder Girl for months now, all because of a little story that occurred ten months prior to this issue:
The Wonder Woman title had taken on a new direction, the Amazons leaving and subsequently causing Wonder Woman to no longer have powers. This left fans demanding to know why Wonder Girl was still at full strength, and several clever letters had even come in over the past few issues, noting that Wonder Girl had never been given an origin and might, in fact, not even be an Amazon.
Having read all of these letters over the past few months, it leaves me far less impressed with Wolfman's contributions here. Seems to me he's just writing down almost exactly what some of those letters were saying. The short of it is that Wonder Girl was an infant rescued by Wonder Woman and brought back to Paradise Island
where she was ultimately given powers via the Purple Ray so as not to feel left out. As origins go, it isn't much, but there is one aspect of the thing that I've always found intriguing: Wonder Girl's parents who died in that fire had left no records of themselves, and the apartment she was found in was not being rented out at the time. In past readings, I've always just assumed Wonder Girl's parents were squatters, but Wolfman may have been leaving it open for a larger mystery. Maybe their past was erased, or maybe they were hiding from something/someone. Nothing gets done with it in this title, but it intrigues me all the same.
There's also one aspect of this story that continues to puzzle me:
Wonder Girl needs a place to stay? Great, let's go find her an apartment.
Except for one small question this leaves me with: how old are the Titans?
In previous appearances, they've seemed to be maybe 15 or 16 years old, but now Wonder Girl is old enough to co-lease an apartment with a total stranger? I'm used to DC characters of this era being relatively stagnant and not doing much growing/changing, but clearly something happened somewhere along the way between this
(Brave and the Bold #60)
and apartment hunting.
I suspect this goes along with Infantino's new focus on the older teens that Marvel was luring away from DC instead of that 12 year old boy living in Dayton Ohio that Donenfeld had everyone writing to (2). Sure enough, the second half of this story seems designed explicitly to appeal to teenage girls. No way boys would find much interest in this sequence:
"Ohhh. Ten strokes AND THEN you let it set. I'll have to try that next time!"
but there's a very purposeful rebranding at work here:
and it's not hard to see where Giordano got the idea from:
Important Details:
- Origin of Wonder Girl
- Wonder Girl gains the alias "Donna Troy," which will subsequently stay with the character far longer than the name "Wonder Girl" does.
- Wonder Girl gets a new costume
- First appearance of Sharon Tracy, Donna's new roommate
- In the letter column, Giordano claims a total of five people wrote in to protest Aqualad's leaving the Titans.
(1) Wolfman, Marv. "ORIGIN OF THE NEW TEEN TITANS." ORIGIN OF THE NEW TEEN TITANS. Marvwolfman.com, 2010. Web. 21 July 2016.
(2) Catron, Michael. "The Comics Journal." Bob Haney Interviewed by Michael Catron Part Four (of Five) «. The Comics Journal, 10 Jan. 2011. Web. 21 July 2016.
