I actually read your post offline before I left for my annual Thanksgiving Dinner with my family.

I gave it more thoughts and I find this story to have everything under the Sun, romance with Donna and Speedy, Robin's problems with Donna, big ugly monster that Donna was involved in and an exciting adventure involving tents and some special bonding time. Nice get go with Lilith and all and I felt that I did not give this story enough credit due. I gave this story a D+ because Donna being scolded by Robin and the romance angle of Donna and Speedy. Right now, I give it C+ and possibly gunning for a B- or better because this story pretty much had everything going for.

So, I'm sorry that I gave this too much negatives to begin with and spent some time during the day to think about your original post. I was wrong and you were right; and it's a fun story to read and don't mind it that I'll read it again on a later date.

About my friend, his name is Jeff and he used to run a Comic Book Store in my area and he sold his business to a dear friend and he move it to Medina just northwest from Bellevue Washington and I go there on a monthly basis to pay for my mailing expenses of sending single comic book issues.

He has 45,000 to 60,000 single issues in his basement at his home along with our (I had 80 of them and he had the rest) entire collection of Marvel Masterworks and DC Archives Editions. I don't have much room, I live in a 455 square feet Condo and I go to his house to read Marvel and DC books in that format. I have a key for his basement and I can go there anytime from 10am to 4pm -- Monday to Friday to read comic books for nothing.

Been doing this for 5 years running. My friend retired from Comic Books business 3 years ago and he's married and I have been friends with him since College. I spend about 3 hours a week reading books there.

Teen Titans #44 (November 1976)



"The Man Who Toppled the Titans"

Script: (begun by) Paul Levitz; (completed by) Bob Rozakis ¹
Pencils: Pablo Marcos
Inks: Bob Smith
Colors: Jerry Serpe
Letters: Ben Oda

grade: C-

Two years after the unceremonious cancellation of the Teen Titans, DC was entering into a new era. Under Jenette Kahn's leadership, a number of titles were cancelled, new titles launched in their place, even prior to the so-called "DC Explosion." As this great reshuffling was taking place, Managing Editor Joe Orlando noted that the Teen Titans reprints in DC Super-Stars and Super Team Family were selling exceptionally well, so he pushed for a revived Teen Titans to be one of the new launches of 1976/1977. ²


Within the story itself, the reason for the Titans' return is both explicit and totally vague. We learn that Mr. Jupiter "closed shop" (that's the last we will ever hear about the controversial character in this title) and that Mal has been running a Titans monitoring station ever since, while the rest of the team returned to their solo careers:



(so...like...suddenly NOTHING bad happened for two years? On the next page, Robin indicates that the alarm can only be triggered by a Titans member, but then why all the monitoring equipment?)

And a false alarm triggered by Dr. Light reunites the team long enough to stop him. But what's completely vague by the close is why the team decides to return to active duty as a result of this adventure:




After all, Levitz emphasizes explicit interpersonal tensions throughout this story. Perhaps trying too hard to evolve the Titans property in order to compete with Marvel's character-driven storytelling, virtually every character in this issue is in conflict with one another.



and none of that appears to resolve itself by the close, so why does punching out Dr. Light suddenly make everyone want to become a full time Titan again?


Truly, it's not a good story. The action sequences are uninteresting and non-sensical, right down to Speedy somehow whipping this arrow out of his quiver:



(Must be one of them 'magic quivers')

but the one thing this story does right is finally give Mal a meaningful place on the team. Originally introduced immediately after the Teen Titans had discarded their costumes and powers in order to focus on fighting more street-level injustice, Mal no longer made sense on the team once the Titans returned to their status quo.

Bob Haney tried to address and fix this problem in a backup story for Teen Titans #35, entitled "A Titan is Born," but it ultimately changed nothing beyond giving Mal a temporary boost in self-worth. I've repeatedly argued that Mal was held back AND deliberately left off of the covers at the request of higher-ups, and it's been abundantly clear that many at DC had a problem with race, or at least saw it's depiction as a threat to their bottom line, since the Jericho fiasco in Teen Titans #20.

So now, five years since it first became clear that Mal no longer "fit in" on the team, Levitz and Rozakis have a clear path to finally empower the character under the watch of Joe Orlando in this new reign of Jenette Kahn.

We watch Mal's clear transformation from being forgettable and ineffective



to the new costumed hero who saves the day by the issue's close


(Wait...WHY would the Titans have The Guardian's costume? And why would Robin be storing that exo-skeleton at the Titans' monitoring station when it was obtained as the result of a Batman caper?)



Mal also goes from being the only one who still cares about the team to getting the reunion he wants at the close, presumably as a direct result of his saving the day.


Unfortunately, when the editorial reigns pass to Julie Schwartz next issue, this transformation stuff will all go out the window:


It's tempting to see Schwartz's actions here as those of a holdover from the Infantino Era still trying to thwart the introduction of a black costumed superhero, except Schwartz was the editor when John Stewart debuted as a Green Lantern five years earlier. So I'm a little lost as to why this overdue transformation for Mal is going to get deep-sixed after only one issue.


In the end, we have a lousy story that only does one thing right, and it gets reversed next issue. Ouch.


Important Details:

- The Teen Titans reunite after a two year absence. Interesting that real time runs concurrently with DCU time in that respect. If we're going to toss entire years away that carelessly, how much longer are they going to be TEEN Titans?

- Mr. Jupiter has "closed shop"

- Lilith's whereabouts are unknown

- Mal becomes The Guardian, aided by an exo-suit that grants him super strength



Minor Details:

- The letter column offers speculation about the whereabouts of all the missing Titans (except Mr. Jupiter, who everyone just seems glad to be rid of). What's surprising is the inclusion of Beast Boy, who worked with the team exactly once a full ten years earlier and never actually joined the team:



When Haney would continually bring him up in the letter column over the years, I thought he was just pushing his own agenda. But no, it seems like fans must have genuinely latched on to this character, perhaps explaining his inclusion in the next revival following this one.


- Special mention is made of Speedy's past drug problem, implying that the Titans haven't seen him since that time:



...but we definitely saw Speedy as a cleaned-up, active member of the Titans multiple times after that 1971 storyline.


- Whereas the team never seemed to have a set mission or defining agenda once they evolved beyond helping teens in need in their earliest days, Levitz and Orlando are quite explicit about what the Teen Titans are and are all about in the opening narration of this reboot:



and it's echoed in the solicitation DC is running across its titles this month:



"Mal, the newest Teen Titan"? Ouch.


Rozakis echoes this vision of the team in a 2003 interview:




Perhaps not the new start fans were clamoring for, but it's a new start all the same, and getting a consistent writer on the title (as of next issue) as well as a consistent editor (well, no. That's not going to end up happening) just might help things along.








¹ Greenberger, R. (n.d.). Westfield Comics Blog » For Your Consideration: DC's Teen Titans: The Bronze Age Omnibus. Retrieved November 25, 2018, from www.westfieldcomics.com/blog/interviews-and-columns/for-your-consideration-dcs-teen-titans-the-bronze-age-omnibus/

² Burkert, T. (1981, July). Teen Titans History. Amazing Heroes, 1(2).

³ Bob Rozakis Teen Titans Interview. (2011, June 28). Retrieved November 25, 2018, from www.titanstower.com/bob-rozakis-teen-titans-interview/

As much as I am not loving this first outing, the increased interpersonal relationships and absence of Lilith would seem to be right up your alley

Page 2, panel 1, second word balloon: "You guys are really too much! After two years, you get an emergency signal..."

Cei-U!
[best Dr. Doom voice]You DARE question my omniscience?!?[/end best Dr. Doom voice]

If DC is moving in real time Robin should be like 50.... but obviously that's silly.

However, if 2 years past since the last Titans story, and he was already in college then, he'd definitely have to be at 19 (more likely 20).

THis is why they never mention years and ages in comics anymore

I'd imagine it was a simple matter of making the costume easier to draw.. that exo-skeleton would be tough, I'd imagine.

Teen Titans #45 (December 1976)



"You Can't Say No to the Angel of Death (or Can You?)"

Script: Bob Rozakis
Pencils: Irv Novick
Inks: Vince Colletta
Colors: ?
Letters: Ben Oda

grade: C-


All the limitations of this short-lived relaunch considered, I still feel its single greatest weakness is its thoroughly unappealing covers. There are no super-heroics to be found, nor even exciting action. It just truly looks like a hate crime in progress, no dramatic shadowing implying a deeper meaning nor social message behind it. It's just...unfortunate. I can't imagine kids wanting to read this, and I seriously wonder if adults would have sought it out either. Plus, am I the only one who initially thought that was Dick Grayson wailing on poor Mal??

But this issue has nothing to do with hate crimes, nor even Mal's race. As discussed in last issue's review, Julie Schwartz becomes editor as of this issue and immediately scraps the Guardian direction for Mal. I mean, it's not like that was the entire focus of the debut issue of the relaunch or anything, right? So now, Mal has a distinct (if nebulous) new power, in which he can magically even the odds in any fight just by blowing on Gabriel's horn, but he has no costume, (as of yet) no superhero name, and the means by which he gets this power is absurdly wacky:



No explanation offered for HOW Mal beat the angel of death, by the way. Does the angel of death always offer such fair fights to people? I think we'd have a lot more people alive today, walking around and discussing their competitions with death if that were the case.

And what an odd/foreboding restriction on Mal's power: if he ever loses, he dies. Even Superman loses sometimes. Why include that restriction, and how in the world is Rozakis going to continue to work with it?


Schwartz's influence over this issue is otherwise hardly felt, other than their being more emphasis on this story happening on Batman's turf. Rozakis is extremely unclear about where the Titans are now located (they have a cave hideout, but we don't know where), but the story takes place in Gotham, one scene specifically occurring at the Wayne Foundation, and the bad guys logically (if mistakenly) assuming that, because Robin is involved, Batman will soon follow.

Meanwhile, Rozakis is continuing to "Marvel"ize the Titans, providing continuity and a recap in that opening panel:



(we have NEVER seen that kind of continuity in the Teen Titans before)

and continuing to provide interpersonal conflicts, only now they are less savage and more rooted in compassion:



For the second time in two issues, doors are being slammed and members are threatening to quit, but there is a sense of "team" at the center of it all that wasn't present last issue.


Karen Beecher makes her first cameo appearance here, seemingly included just so she can show up as Bumblebee next issue. It's not like she actually plays any part in Mal's drama beyond this moment:




And, speaking of expanding out the cast, Rozakis finds the most ridiculous means of bringing Aqualad back as an active member:



No further explanation needed. The Gabriel Horn brings him there, so now he's going to drop everything and be an active member again, as if he hasn't been inactive since 1969.

Which, then, begs the question: why not Lilith? Is Rozakis afraid her precognitive powers will spoil most plot lines, or does he just not want to overload the team with white women?


All in all, while I'm truly not sure whether I enjoyed or was thoroughly turned off by Mal having a boxing match with the angel of death, and while I'm not sure how I feel about his new power and lack of identity (even if last issue's new identity was borrowed), I think the one part of this story I unequivocally enjoyed was the bad guys. Instead of just having the team fight some street gang, Rozakis gives The Wreckers a back story and a surprising amount of characterization:



This could have been The Dead End Kids, or Kirby's Newsboy Legion. We were cheering for these kinds of characters three decades earlier, and somehow Rozakis has soured them in a post-Vietnam world (their leader having served there). I would have liked this explored a bit more, but Rozakis isn't interested in depth, so we were lucky to get this much from the villains of the issue.



Important Details:

- Mal gains Gabriel's horn and surrenders his Guardian identity after only one issue

- 1st cameo appearance of Karen Beecher (later Bumblebee)



Minor Details:

- The Titans HQ at this point is said to be in a cave and is presumably in or near Gotham City. I guess Rozakis isn't too concerned with how Robin can be an active member here and a full time college student in New York at the same time.