New Teen Titans #21 (July 1982)
"Beware the Wrath of... Brother Blood!"
Script: Marv Wolfman
Pencils: George Pérez
Inks: Romeo Tanghal
Colors: Adrienne Roy
Letters: Ben Oda
Grade: A
For the past six months, Marv and George have been telling smaller, done-in-one stories in an effort to plan out the future of the franchise. Here, the fruits of that labor are apparent. Whereas the weakest part of the first year of Titans stories was almost certainly the plots and antagonists (even Deathstroke--awesome as he is--seemed a poor match for the team) we've got Blackfire, Terra, and the runaways story arcs on the horizon, and this issue introduces Brother Blood.
Trigon and Deathstroke seemed too far outside of the Titans' wheelhouse, the Doom Patrol storyline didn't feel like their conflict at all, and the rest of the villains felt...well, stupid. Finally, here's a sinister villain perfectly suited for a team of teenagers who aren't
quite Justice League level: a cult preying upon wayward teens. It's the kind of plot I could have seen Bob Haney writing in the Sixties, except Marv and George dress it up and make it into a far more sinister threat. They truly put us inside that temple
and show us what it feels like to be in the cult from the inside:
So much more thought goes into the Church of Blood than was ever lent to Trigon or The Fearsome Five. Though, I'll admit that the concept loses me at this panel:
Wait. Is this an obscure cult preying upon wayward youth, or is this an underground society infiltrating the top eschelon of society? If anything, my adolescent brain began confusing the Church of Brother Blood with the H.I.V.E. at this point.
And really, if Blood has infiltrated such top ranking members of government and society, why is he concerned with recruiting and controlling teen runaways? Especially while running such an elaborate and high-tech operation right below their feet:
It doesn't really make any sense, which is a shame considering how much heart and brain-power Marv and George have clearly put into this, the Titans' most carefully considered nemesis yet.
Plus, nuns in blood-red habits toting laser guns is all kinds of bada$$.
So do we ever find out who attacked them while they were pursuing Vic's old girlfriend?
Or did Marv and George just forget about this? It seems completely forgotten by the second half of the story.
In terms of character development, there's so much going on here. Kory is still grieving over her first "love" five issues later, and yet that grief is evolving. Instead of merely locking herself away, she is able to consider loving Robin again
and she steps outside of her own grief and immediately empathizes with Cyborg when his ex-girlfriend is murdered:
It's deep and subtle character progression.
Meanwhile, whereas Raven once assembled this team simply because they were the next best thing to the JLA, this may well be the first time we see her start to feel true affection for any members of the team:
Dick continues to impress me. Whereas he was in a place of great self-doubt when he first joined the team (I discuss this from the perspective of Robin's evolution outside of the title
here,
here, and
here), he has since eased into the role of a nearly ideal leader. And while he is always the man with the plan, his single strongest leadership quality throughout these past few issues has been empathy. He always seems to understand and care about each member of the team, clearly seeing the link between their emotional well-being and the effectiveness of the team as a whole.
I'm hard-pressed to think of a single team leader in comicdom who does this better.
And Cyborg, we HAVE to talk about Cyborg!
First, the whole Sarah Simms bit. If you're new to this discussion, you may have missed the long back and forth about how Sarah Simms was originally supposed to be a love interest for Vic, but that Wolfman somehow decided it would send the wrong message to force an interracial relationship, so the whole thing got scrapped. At this point, it still
seems like Wolfman and Perez are pushing for a romantic relationship. It's the first time Sarah says she just wants to be "good friends," but look at the context:
Vic is feeling pressure to get close to her, so much so that he has kept away for weeks. Sarah is attempting to take the pressure off and keep him close, and check out the look she is giving Vic when their reunion is cut short by news that his former love is in trouble:
It's a classic complication Marv is introducing -- a second lover (or, in this case, the grief over a murdered former lover) pulls the protagonist away from the love interest. And boy does it work. Vic never gives a second thought to Sarah in the remainder of this issue as Marv and George remind us just how powerfully we can still grieve for someone we'd thought we'd put behind us.
Wow.
Finally, while Marv still struggles with what the hell to do with Wally, I at least appreciated this little exchange that made the team feel just a little more real to me:
Not the kind of conversation we're used to seeing heroes openly discuss in comics-code approved books in 1981. Of course, in the constant "borrowing" back and forth between Wolfman and Claremont, we'll see a discussion remarkably similar to this one pop up in the pages of Claremont's
New Mutants #10 seventeen months later, in which Roberto and Rahne share a brief but deep exchange about their shared Catholic faith.
I would also be remiss in mentioning that this is the first cameo appearance of The Monitor, four years prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths:
Wolfman's idea for The Monitor was very different at this point, and no one was envisioning a COIE yet. According to Wolfman,
"I had the character about 18 years ago. I called him the Librarian then because I didn’t have a good sense about names and thought that it would be a neat idea to do that. You know, one villain that the whole company could use. I didn’t have to sell it to Marvel, because they already had one universe, but when I came back to DC I indicated that I wanted to do it here. Everyone liked it but forgot to hand out the sheets I gave for their writers. So I have to redo it indicating how far you can take the character from month A to month B. Like for three months you can only show this much and after six months you can show that much, and at the end of a year we can reveal who that character is and start getting into interesting stories that all the writers can pick up on."
(Comics Journal #80, March 1983)
-1st appearance of Brother Blood
-1st cameo appearance of The Monitor
-Death of Marcy Reynolds (murdered by the Church of Brother Blood)
Minor Details:- The Titans look bada$$ when mourning:
- Further evidence that Raven's soul self and physical self can now operate independently of each other, which wasn't initially true:
and yet both seem to exhibit the same personality/identity.
- Am I the only who who feels like the folks who wrote
The Naked Gun (1988) must have read the beginning of this issue?
And why the hell do the Titans just show up in the middle of the ballgame, asking the players where the bomb is without calling ahead to the stadium and telling them to evacuate the place?
They only send Raven and Starfire down to find the bomb. That gives Dick plenty of time to pick up a phone.
In spite of some of the minor logical issues I have with the Church of Brother Blood, I have to say that this was the best issue of the series we've seen thus far and (I hope) the beginning of a whole new era in which Marv and George are no longer planning as if this title is going to be cancelled any month now. As a kid, I remember this being the first issue in the run that I really cared about, and the adult me agrees.
That's when you know you are old!
