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Post by Icctrombone on Apr 7, 2019 14:08:29 GMT -5
I re-read NTT #2 and this is my impression of the issue and your thoughts: 1. I give it a B+ or so, too. Deathstroke is one of my top 5 or so characters of all time and he has a great intro in this issue. I struggle a bit with how he was manipulated into helping his son by the Hive. But if you follow his story , you will see that this relationships with his wife, sons are a weak spot and apparently the Hive knew they could exploit it. 2. Shaxper says- They were already planning to introduce another Wilson son down the road. Of course, when we finally get around to meeting Joey more than three years from now, he won't end up matching what's being said of him here. When His GF says " you're going to end up just like them" doesn't mean that they are both criminals, it just might mean that his family has it's share of tragedy. 3. I don't see this scene being a problem-  In the previous issue his GF is upset with his relationship with bad people , so I'm thinking he's already in the employ of the HIVE and they are playing the long game giving him the powers to draw Deathstroke into their plans. 4. I don't think the person in this sequence is Trigon.  Remember , there are other people in that world she comes from. 5. Cyborg does use the white sound weapon again but he has a trow away line that suggest that it's one of the only weapons that worked. Maybe he was being insulting or maybe he didn't have confidence in his pops gadgets. 6. Perez does the layouts for the issue which suggests that maybe he is still doing assignments for Marvel. 7. The Bathing suit scene between Donna and Starfire is weird. What exactly is Koriandr complaining about? She's wearing clothing the entire time we know her, so is it that they relax/ swim in the nude in their planet? 8. I have a nit pik or question- Slade makes the comment that the power is killing his son because it's feeding off his own energy. What is powering Slades power? |
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Post by tarkintino on Apr 7, 2019 14:50:17 GMT -5
Wolfman and Perez are very deliberate about this. Basically seems like their pretext for Donna to arch her and moan while one of guy touches her. Thirty-four-year-old Marv Wolfman also refers to Donna as a "lovely teenager" in this issue, which is a bit cringey If you think that's cringey, wait until Tara Markov is introduced... Marv Wolfman on Cyborg and Sarah Simms (introduced in The New Teen Titans #8): MW: "At first I thought of it. And then decided there was nothing wrong with a good healthy friendship that is not based on a sexual background between them. I received a letter that sort of helped me change my mind, from a black leader who felt that we had seen a lot of interracial relationships, but we haven’t seen that many good, solid black-black relationships to show that a black hero doesn’t always go together with a white heroine and vice-versa. And that sort of got me thinking. That came very early in the relationship, that it made a lot more sense in terms of their needs to be very good friends. He has no girl friend who he is totally in love with in a sexual way at this time. He’s just very good friends with her, And that in itself is a slightly different relationship. ”Although the "black leader" Wolfman refers to is unnamed, he would be incorrect about black comic characters' romantic relationships, particularly where black males are involved. In the late 60s through the 1970s--despite the flood of African and/or African American characters introduced at DC, Marvel and Archie, more often than not, they always had the characters--black males in particular--only have romantic relationships with a woman of the same race. In this period of comic book history, this included (but was not limited to) T'Challa, Sam Wilson, Archie Comics' Chuck Clayton, Luke Cage (especially Cage in the 70s), and yes, the Teen Titans' own Mal were all involved with black women. Wolfman's statement reads as more of a concession, that the introduction of Sarah Simms was a step in a different direction, but the platonic road would be pursued, removing the chance for backlash from any racists amongst the readership, and (possibly) certain advertisers who would have argued against the book doing anything "controversial." The way it was handled at the height of the titles' popularity, where one would have thought the creators would have more flexibility to explore something new with this subject matter:  |
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Post by spoon on Apr 7, 2019 15:14:11 GMT -5
I am going to take this opportunity to shamelessly cross-promote a thread I started that has zero replies but may be of interest to fans of the Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans: classiccomics.org/thread/6061/east-coast-comicon-2019-secaucusThere's a convention in northern New Jersey (not far from NYC) in May that I might go to. Both George Perez and Marv Wolfman are listed among the guests. As Perez is retiring from public appearances after this year, this should be one of his last few convention apperances. If you click on the link to thread, you'll see a link to the convention website. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Apr 7, 2019 16:47:25 GMT -5
I am going to take this opportunity to shamelessly cross-promote a thread I started that has zero replies but may be of interest to fans of the Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans: classiccomics.org/thread/6061/east-coast-comicon-2019-secaucusThere's a convention in northern New Jersey (not far from NYC) in May that I might go to. Both George Perez and Marv Wolfman are listed among the guests. As Perez is retiring from public appearances after this year, this should be one of his last few convention apperances. If you click on the link to thread, you'll see a link to the convention website. Sorry spoon, I did read it and I'm in the NJ area ( Staten Island) but my cash flow is down since I've been sidelined with a busted ankle. |
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Post by badwolf on Apr 7, 2019 17:05:57 GMT -5
Although the "black leader" Wolfman refers to is unnamed, he would be incorrect about black comic characters' romantic relationships, particularly where black males are involved. In the late 60s through the 1970s--despite the flood of African and/or African American characters introduced at DC, Marvel and Archie, more often than not, they always had the characters--black males in particular--only have romantic relationships with a woman of the same race. In this period of comic book history, this included (but was not limited to) T'Challa, Sam Wilson, Archie Comics' Chuck Clayton, Luke Cage (especially Cage in the 70s), and yes, the Teen Titans' own Mal were all involved with black women. Wolfman's statement reads as more of a concession, that the introduction of Sarah Simms was a step in a different direction, but the platonic road would be pursued, removing the chance for backlash from any racists amongst the readership, and (possibly) certain advertisers who would have argued against the book doing anything "controversial." Blade also had a black girlfriend (also written by Wolfman!) |
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Post by spoon on Apr 7, 2019 17:25:27 GMT -5
I am going to take this opportunity to shamelessly cross-promote a thread I started that has zero replies but may be of interest to fans of the Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans: classiccomics.org/thread/6061/east-coast-comicon-2019-secaucusThere's a convention in northern New Jersey (not far from NYC) in May that I might go to. Both George Perez and Marv Wolfman are listed among the guests. As Perez is retiring from public appearances after this year, this should be one of his last few convention apperances. If you click on the link to thread, you'll see a link to the convention website. Sorry spoon , I did read it and I'm in the NJ area ( Staten Island) but my cash flow is down since I've been sidelined with a busted ankle. Ouch. I hope go well with your recuperation. Good to know another poster in the area. |
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Post by rberman on Apr 7, 2019 17:39:31 GMT -5
Good write-up. I too was struck by Deathstroke's weak motivation for accepting the contract on the Titans rather than using his considerable wealth and power to crush H.I.V.E. for killing his son. The use of "Slade" in "Teen Titans Go!" is because the words "Deathstroke" and "Terminator" are not only redundant but also disallowed on kiddie TV. I have just one question:  Who is this "Starfire" of whom they speak? Last issue she was "the girl." Now she has a name. Where did it come from? Did they see it in the roll call on the splash page? In Robin's Raven-induced dream from the preview, they were calling her "Starfire." Is this a bootstrap paradox in which Robin told everyone to call her by the name that he had foreseen they would be calling her? |
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Post by Icctrombone on Apr 7, 2019 17:43:04 GMT -5
I thought they started calling her Starfire in the issue # 1.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 7, 2019 21:02:32 GMT -5
MY issue 2 comments:
- In my head, Starfire HAS to actually kiss someone to get the language because.. reasons. The panel where they're holding her back, for instance, she's touching someone, but no language happens.
- I definitely recall they had times in their relationship that they fought because Robin tried to reign her in, and she didn't want to be controlled... I feel like that was definitely an ongoing issue.
- To answer Shax about her power bolts, IIRC, in the Blackfire are we find out that they are related to being part of the royal family, so only they have them, but I could be misremembering.
- The 'Slade' think on the cartoons I always assumed, as others said, was because 'Deathstroke the Terminator' was both too 90s and too scary for a kids show... they referred to him as Slade in the original serious Teen Titans cartoon as well.
- I never thought Raven was talking to Trigon there either, but rather a person who was hiding her/buying her time to get ready to fight Trigon.
- I never really thought too hard about Grant... the idea of the motivation is clear, and it works, so that was good enough. That panel is hard to make sense of for sure if you analyze.
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 7, 2019 21:24:38 GMT -5
Starfire's bolts are due to Psion experimentation, as we will see in Tales of the New Teen Titans. Same for her sisters powers.
Loved this issue, more than the first. Only quibble was Ravager's thigh boots and the light blue of his chain mail. Deathstroke was great from the start. He's mostly referred to as terminator and that is the way I recall him being named in most dialogue, until the Schwarzenegger film debuted and was a hit. After that, the Deathstroke name was emphasized. Why both? Why not? It has a nice piratical, mercenary name.
The HIVE though, needed something other than the standard hooded robes. Pretty old school,for what was a very modern comic, at the time.
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Post by rberman on Apr 8, 2019 5:17:54 GMT -5
I thought they started calling her Starfire in the issue # 1. I looked a couple of times but could not find this in #1. |
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Post by shaxper on Apr 8, 2019 6:34:30 GMT -5
I don't recall if the discrepancy was explained when Jericho shows up, but I wonder if the plan was originally to introduce him as another Terminator/Ravager type later on. That's my guess as well.  Wolfman so overplays his hand with Grant that he actually gives him two entirely different moments where Grant swears revenge on the team. The first is when the apartment gets trashed, and the second is when Kory intervenes in Grant's fight with his girlfriend. He's a total one-note character who seems to exist just to get this conflict with The Terminator going. Good question! I love that lettering too. I also enjoy Starfire more with the mystery and innocence implied by someone who cannot speak the language. The animated Teen Titans series capitalized on this by having Starfire speak a more broken English that made her stand out as a naive innocent, even while possessing a fierce heart. I enjoyed that contrast. Vic does end up in an interracial relationship pretty early on. This is not to say your theory is necessarily wrong. Could be they just decided to try it with someone outside of the core team instead. I was going to comment on this in my review, but I honestly wasn't sure what to say. I can't decide if that was awesomely compassionate, weirdly morally wrong, or nice but inconsistent with who Raven is after this issue. Why not just take his pain away, after all? She does that in all the later stories . His plotting is tight. As for the long, sprawling narrative blurbs, I'm a junkie for those. They were ubiquitous and enormously popular at Marvel during this time, especially with Claremont, McGregor, and Moench. |
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Post by tarkintino on Apr 8, 2019 6:47:22 GMT -5
Vic does end up in an interracial relationship pretty early on. This is not to say your theory is necessarily wrong. Could be they just decided to try it with someone outside of the core team instead. Read the Wolfman quote--and unless i'm not remembering the series properly, that panel has the one white woman (Sarah Simms) Cyborg had a relationship with end up as platonic as Wolfman intended. |
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Post by shaxper on Apr 8, 2019 6:57:31 GMT -5
Patience, Tark. I still have an entire page of replies to read through  |
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Post by shaxper on Apr 8, 2019 7:49:27 GMT -5
I re-read NTT #2 and this is my impression of the issue and your thoughts: 1. I give it a B+ or so, too. Deathstroke is one of my top 5 or so characters of all time and he has a great intro in this issue. I struggle a bit with how he was manipulated into helping his son by the Hive. But if you follow his story , you will see that this relationships with his wife, sons are a weak spot and apparently the Hive knew they could exploit it. It really is impressive how many antagonists Wolfman and Perez are already prepping in this second issue: Terminator, the H.I.V.E., and the coming menace of Trigon. Most impressive of all, this intricate little plot with the H.I.V.E. manipulating the Terminator leaves both looking like bad-asses, neither seeming like the other's chump. Well, she also referred to them as "thugs" in the previous panel. Unless she was referring to the H.I.V.E. Yes, but they hire out an assassin to kill the Titans at Grant's request. And the assassin they hire is...Grant? Interesting. But aren't all the others peace-loving? I assumed when the eye beams shot out that it had to be Trigon. Yeah, I discussed this in my review for the first issue. This is the final month that he is on Avengers. I'm not sure what else he was doing for Marvel at the time. She implies that her people wear clothing for the purpose of armor. Of course, what she was wearing didn't cover much, and it would be weird for slavers to let their slave keep her battle armor on. More puzzling still, if Kory's planet was so cold that she savors the heat of Earth's son, why was she already scantily clad before coming to Earth? Really good point. |
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