I see your pointless information and raise it!

To quote my own Superman in the Post-Crisis Review thread:

"The original concept for the Superman reboot came from Frank Miller and Steve Gerber and envisioned a depowered Superman, some of the more fantastic elements of the mythos (for example: Superboy) being removed from continuity, and Lex Luthor as a business tycoon. Marv Wolfman fought hard to get on the project but knew that DC wanted a bigger powerhouse creative talent on the book, so he recommended John Byrne. Wolfman and editor Andrew Helfer shared the original pitched vision for a Superman reboot, but Byrne, a longtime Superman fan, wanted the campier/more fantastic elements back in continuity. Thus, while the initial emphasis is on a depowered/less perfect Superman facing depowered, less fantastic enemies, Byrne begins reintroducing those more fantastic elements (including Mxyzptlk and a Pocket Universe Superboy) by the fall of 1987."

New Teen Titans #17 (March 1982)



"The Possessing of Frances Kane!"

Script: Marv Wolfman
Pencils: George Pérez (breakdowns); Romeo Tanghal (finished art)
Inks: Romeo Tanghal
Colors: Adrienne Roy
Letters: John Costanza

Grade: C+

Does it matter these days that this is the first appearance of Frances Kane? Apparently she is a hero named Magenta now. News to me.

Anyway, it sure seems like this issue was setting her up to become a new member of the team, and then there was a change of plans at the last moment. Why else introduce a new teenager and spend a whole issue giving her powers and an origin story? And yet, by the close of the story, her powers were just extra magnetic waves in the brain and are neutralized:



And Marv and George tack on this lame explanation where some Green Lantern villain a Titans fan wouldn't know was causing all this from the great beyond.



This last minute explanation would be earned if Doctor Polaris had some plan to try this again, but he doesn't. He's going to get back "someday," but he has no idea how or when. So why add this detail at the end?


But I guess this isn't the end of the story for Frances Kane, here. Curious to see how that plays out.


Concept-wise, this is essentially Stephen King's "Carrie" with superheroes. And, while I know nothing about the 1972 film "The Possession of Joel Delany," it's a good candidate for the story's title inspiration. I can tell you that, while I found the mother in "Carrie" disturbingly believable, Wolfman's religiously oppressive mother feels less authentic, working far more in service of the plot than delivering any believability:




It's ironic. I've argued before how most of the New Teen Titans drew inspiration from Claremont's X-Men, and yet, in a little less than two years, it's Claremont who will be doing the creative borrowing from Wolfman and Perez with the introduction of Magik, a character seemingly modeled on Raven (who, herself, seemed to be partly modeled on Dark Phoenix). And yet, there might be some of Frances Kane to be found in Magik too.


In terms of plot, I found this one a bit clumsy and un-engaging. For one thing, I discussed in the last review how Wolfman and Perez are struggling with the idea of how new conflicts are going to come to the team. Last issue, they sought one out and took the injustice personally (which I liked). This time, they are having it conveniently thrust upon the team. What are the chances, of all the people in the world who can suddenly spawn a magnetic demon large enough to destroy New York, that it would happen to Wally West's childhood sweetheart exactly while he was back in town AND visiting her home?

Incidentally, I'm still sick of Wally and need him to leave the team already. Why do Marv and George keep waffling on this?

For another thing, what exactly was Doctor Polaris' goal? When this happened in Carrie, it was her latent subconscious at work. In so many other films of the '70s and '80s that dealt with possession, it was an actual demon only looking to cause chaos. What was Doctor Polaris actually trying to do? How was killing Frances' father and brother going to bring him back to reality? It never makes sense.


Oh, I respect the fact that Kory is still grieving in the wake of the previous issue, but why not show that for a panel or two instead of just mentioning it in passing?



Perhaps it occurred to Marv to explain her absence after George had already done breakdowns?



Minor Details:

- Marv and George have waffled on whether or not the Titans are household names. Apparently, we are now going with the idea that they are:




- Whereas Raven's body was previously depicted as upright but lifeless when her soul-self leaves it, we've now got her soul-self working at maximum power and larger than Titans Tower while Raven is able to be present and move about freely, only unable to use her powers:




- The Titans have a new (medical?) lab:



Formerly the fifth floor storage area:



Perez is adhering to his diagram of Titans Tower (from issue #7) very carefully:




But this leaves me confused. Someone raised the point a few issues earlier how it seems unrealistic that seemingly every member of the team can operate an aircraft with military precision. Now we have to accept the idea that, even if the Titans got STAR Labs to build this lab for them, they all seem equally capable of working this insanely complex machinery. Dick, Vic, and Donna all do it in this issue.

Heck, when the insides of Titans Tower are basically obliterated by the close of this story, who has the know-how to put it all back together again?




It was one layer of absurdity to believe Vic's dad had the know-how, resources, and connections to quickly and quietly build Titans Tower on his own. Now that he's gone, who's the repairman?



- On a related note, we are never told where this takes place:



STAR Labs accepts walk-in appointments and just happened to have a lab set up for this? Or is this just the hospital down the street? We see in this issue that there are STAR Lab techs still helping Vic out on a moment's notice, I suppose.


- It's been a while since Perez has done all the penciling himself. Still, he manages to wow me with his breakdowns at least once per issue:






A mostly forgettable and uninteresting issue for me. Par for the course at this point in the run.

Donna was part of the rescue of Angela Dove



Apparently, the "relationship" was conducted secretly, and Dick is surprised Kory has developed feelings. It's a series of booty calls more than a relationship, and it really shocks me first realizing that all these years later.



And yet he is going back to college in Blue Ridge, as we will see in the next issue. So he's waffling every bit as much as Marv and George are.



I don't believe Crandall was a model. He was a con-man snuggling up to elderly widows who claimed to have gotten lost in the building as his excuse for showing up at Kory's shoot. I don't recall any explanation that he was there to work as a model.




Very nice catch.

You're correct. She mentions that she receives a regular stipend. in NTT #3.

[/quote]

I think that was the point, though. Everyone knew it was meaningless and not really love except for Kory, and ain't that just like real life friends in relationships? They fall so hard over people that are not right for them, and you're stuck on the sidelines, unsure of how to intervene and help (or even if you should). It made this entire issue feel very authentic to me, as these relationships often do seem to come up out of the blue and then vanish just as quickly.



She sort of got stuck on him in that first issue and doesn't seem able to let it go after. I guess we get people in our blood like that, sometimes. At first, she thought he was some fierce warrior come to save her after a lifetime of servitude. I can see why that impression would last long after learning who he really is and that they don't jibe very well.

But I agree. Lousy couple.

I read the Baxter run once in my twenties and only vaguely remember the first eight issues. The rest is almost entirely forgotten. Do they include a diagram of the new tower? Assuming the old one was 300 feet tall, that's more than 40 feet per level (the sixth level is almost 3x taller than the remaining five), which doesn't match what we've seen of the interiors thus far. Even if you include the subterranean levels and count the sixth level as triple tall, the private quarters would still each be over twenty feet tall.

I'm going to guess that the preposterous 300 foot idea comes from the (equally preposterous) need to fit the SkyJet into the horizontal section of the "T." If the jet is 75 feet long (75 feet tall when vertical), and the horizontal section is 25% the height of the whole building to keep the "T" proportional, then the whole building has to be 300 feet tall.

This in turn probably goes back to the (also preposterous) rocket that the Fantastic Four house in the top of the Baxter Building. Think of the thrust involved in vertically launching a rocket big enough for half a dozen passengers, and then think of the forces exerted on a hollow girder frame building. Uhh.... yeah.