Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
CHEEKS'CHOICE: "IF I RAN THE TEEN
TITANS..."
(PART ONE)
The choraled e-mail response to the last one of Unca's little exercises in Shameless Self-Indulgance, re: the cobbling up of interesting and/or viable super-team rosters, was (and remains) so gratifyingly fulsome and unstinting in its approval -- you're all just so darned nice to Unca, you know that? -- that he's decided to brave the shoals of potential disaster, once more, and cast one jaundiced eye towards yet another of DC's perennial action assemblages.
To wit: the Teen Titans.
After which, of course: you're all gonna be
screaming and spitting at Unca, once again. 
You see: Unca knows -- KNOWS, mind --
how a goodish number of you TITANS diehards out there are, when it comes to
his whole, ticklish "line-up" business.
There's this weird, inexplicable fannish folles de many, you see -- an ongoing online article of faith which, like toadstools, grows best in the darkness, unexamined -- that the TITANS series is, by rights, all about six or eight particular comics characters; and (concurrently) that any proposed team roster sans said laundry list of characters is, de facto, "incorrect."
Not the "real" Titans, in other words.
"Wrong."
"Bogus."
"The Titans, you see" -- said faction explains, witheringly -- "are all about... whaddyacallit... relationships, okay? They're... like... y'know... family."
"Gotta have the original Titans, don'cha know. Nightwing. Gotta have Starfire. Gotta have whatever the hell Donna Troy is calling herself, this week. Gotta have the junkie. Gotta gotta gotta."
Just a great, whopping, steaming wheelbarrow load
of purest, unreconstituted horsepoopie, in other words.
A quick couple of bites of the fabled Reality Cookie, here, before we totter another step further, campers'n'camperettes:
1.) There are four -- and ONLY four -- "original Titans," in any meaningful sense of the phrase.
Robin, the Boy Wonder; Kid Flash; and Aqualad founded the team, in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #54 [June, 1964].
Wonder Girl hooked up with the aforementioned trio, in their very second appearance [THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #60; June, 1965].
There are NO OTHER "original Titans."
[UNCA CHEEKS' ASIDE: ... and, just to
drive a nice, sharp stake into the rhetorical breast of the inevitable objection: Speedy didn't even meet the rest of the team until TEEN TITANS
#4 (1st series), 7/66; and didn't begin making regular appearances with same
until issue #19, three years after THAT. Don't even
start, all right...?]
2.) Unca would also like to take this opportunity
to point out (although... geez louise... he really shouldn't have
to, you know?) that -- had Marv Wolfman and George Perez heeded
the sulky, siren call of the fannish hoi poloi, re: this whole
"gotta gotta gotta" business -- Cyborg; Starfire; Raven
and Changeling would never have been allowed to make their respective
debuts within the pages of DC COMICS PRESENT #26 (October, 1980); four characters
who have, retroactively, been accorded the status of "essential Titans."
(It's all done with mirrors, apparently.)
For the record, then: the initial ratio of "Real" Titans to Heretical Newbies, a la Wolfman and Perez, was three (Robin; Kid Flash; Wonder Girl) to four (Cyborg; Starfire; Raven and Changeling)...
... and: it only resulted in the most popular (and longest lasting) incarnation of the TITANS franchise ever, is all.
Something to bear in mind, certainly, the next
time someone starts up with that silly, self-important "We-Are-Family"
plainchant again.
3.) The present-day incarnation of DC Comics' TITANS title -- leaning heavily (one might even say desperately) on the aforementioned "family" fence post; with only one team member out of TEN a virgin to the ranks -- has been (not exactly a secret, here) a terrible, crashing fiscal letdown for said company; even by today's less-than-stellar sales standards.
One cannot (I think), in all due fairness, lay the
blame for this principally upon the talents involved, re: the current TITANS comic. Devin Grayson (an interesting and talented
writer; most evident in her phenomenal recent work re: BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHTS) is something of a "fan favorite" writer, nowadays. Initial
series co-plotter Phil Jimenez is, I believe, even more of one;
as is new scripting addition, Jay Faerber. So: it ain't 'zactly
as if DC had turned over the storytelling reins to the likes of -- oh, say --
Ron Marz and Rob Liefeld.
More to the point: I'd readily venture that (if anything) Ms. Grayson and her storytelling co-conspirators are wholly in synch with the preferred cant of the online TITANS partisans, re: this whole "gotta gotta gotta" business; lassoing the now older (and vastly changed) Donna Troy, Wally West, Roy Harper, etcetera into the present-day TITANS corral, and hammering the now familiar "Fam-il-LEEE! Fam-il-LEEE!" gong for all they're bloody worth.
... and, yet: the series languishes on the sales charts.
Even under the joint shepherding of no fewer than three "fan favorite" writers.
Even with no fewer than SEVEN of the "gotta gotta gotta" characters (Dick Grayson; Wally West; Donna Troy; Roy Harper; Victor Stone; Garth; and Princess Koriander) in regular and prominent attendance.
If fannish principle is correct, in this instance, then...
... that really shouldn't be happening, should
it...?
Unca's going to indulge his cranky and wizened self, just once more, in Pointing Out The Nakedly Obvious, here; and then we'll (finally) have all the essential spadework decently accomplished, re: The Line-Up Thang.
In 1980: Donna Troy was an admirably
straightforward and sympathetic character, spun off from a recognizable and
iconic comics heroine; Wally West belonged to no team, other than the
Titans; Dick Grayson was still "Robin, the Boy Wonder"; Roy Harper
wasn't a handgun-brandishing pistolero; and Vic Stone was... you
know... black.
In 1999, on the other hand -- nearly
twenty years later -- Donna Troy is this weird, unsettling raped-throughout-the-millennia
"Troia" character; Wally West has graduated to The Big (Justice) Leagues;
Dick Grayson is now more firmly (and properly) entrenched within the
darker, more dire "bat"-camp than ever before; Roy Harper SHOOTS people,
with Really Big Guns; and poor, put-upon Vic Stone (who deserves
far better) now looks like the illegitimate love child of longtime METAL
MEN character Gold.
Whereas (it should bloody go without saying) that the whole "Forward, Forward Into the Past" approach enjoys no louder or more resolute champion, online, than Unca...
... maybe -- just maybe, mind, now -- this is one of those unfortunate meta-fictive instances in which too MUCH has been allowed to change, over the two decades betwixt Then and Now; and You Really Can't Go Home Again.
... and: maybe folks should maybe kinda sorta just... I dunno... accept the reality of that, in this particular situ.
Accept the f-a-c-t that certain once-beloved heroes and heroines have been rendered so unrecognizable -- and, apparently, unpalatable -- over the years, in the names of "character advancement" and "realism" ("Hey! Let's morph Speedy into a teenage Punisher clone!" "Hey! Isn't it just about time for a fourth or fifth new Donna Troy origin?") that they are, ultimately, no more capable of bringing back those cherished, Wolfman/ Perez-era TITANS memories than would be (say) the spandexed roster of TEAM YOUNGBLOOD.
Just maybe, mind.
I mean: she gave you everything -- EVERYthing -- you all said you bloody wanted...
... and, f'chrissakes:: judging from the sales...
you still aren't happy.
So: how to fix, then...?
Wellllllllllllllll... first off: Unca's more than willing to be the one to bite the metaphorical bullet, in this instance, and play The Awful Online Heretic.
Unca's not using the following "gotta gotta gotta" characters:
Arsenal. Cyborg. Flash. Nightwing. Starfire. Troia.
Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Get it all decently
out of your systems now, then.
Three of the aforementioned (Arsenal; Cyborg; and Troia) are their old, fondly remembered "Teen Titans" selves in name only, nowadays. (If that, even.)
Two of 'em (Flash and Nightwing) have
graduated up into the ranks of infinitely cooler and more prestigious
"peer groups," ultimately: the former, the Justice League of America;
and the latter, the hotter (and more interesting) cluster of "Bat"-title
primary characters, as the Darknight Detective's designated second-in-command.
(... which... c'mon, now... really and truly has gotta be waycooler than
hanging out with Bumblebee and Gnarrk, swapping "Great Frog" stories.)
And, as for Starfire: once a feeb, always a feeb.
That's okay. Keep right on screaming.
Just makes it easier for the snipers to find
you, is all.
Let's start out with an eminently logical choice for New Team Leader, then:
1.) TEMPEST
Unca's certainly not wholly unsympathetic,
you see, to the notion of Continuity With Prior TITANS Incarnations.
The former Aqualad -- once the very four-color definition of Useless, and Then Some -- underwent some way serious storytelling sea changes, back in '96; within the pages of his eponymous four-issue limited series.
Attractively (re-)haberdashed in a real grown-up's costume (i.e., one sans dorky li'l shorty-short panties); gifted with brand new and tres formidable super-powers (i.e., heat and cold generation); no longer fatally hamstrung by that unwieldy "sixty-minutes-out-of-water" weakness; and newly posited as a decisive (and uniquely charismatic) hero, overall: Aquaman's one-time protege has been with the Titans since the proverbial Day One.
As such: he is perfectly positioned to assume the not-inconsiderable duties and responsibilities of Resident Big Dawg, TT-wise.
Let's start out with this guy, then; and see what happens when we "build" around him.
I mean: who else would you prefer in
that position, given who's left, anyways: Kole, f'chrissakes...?
WHAT HE BRINGS TO THE PARTY: Someone who's actually used to barking out the occasional order, re: the whole "Atlantis" thing... and seeing it carried through. A damned decent amount of firepower. And virtually immaculate "credentials," as a longtime TITANS guy.
Plus: Unca doesn't want the "gotta gotta"
tribe should go creeping through the undergrowth alongside the house, looking
for him.
2.) RAVEN
Character conflict (as a trusting Unca assumes we are all sublimely aware) is A Good, Good Thing, in serial adventure fiction.
At its unquestioned storytelling height (i.e.,
those initial three, four years of publication): the Wolfman/Perez-era
TITANS series boasted no better; more fascinating; or more inherently conflict-GENERATING
character within its ranks than this little lady, right here.
A sultry, shadowy teleporter, empath and psychic healer -- with one of the eight or ten all-time coolest comics heroine costumes ever, to boot -- the demon's daughter known only as Raven served Wolfman and Perez both reliably and efficaciously as a veritable story-generating machine in earrings and heels; whether by means of divisive interaction with her own teammates (e.g.: psionically forcing Kid Flash to fall in love with her, in order to maintain and assure his continued presence within the ranks), or else by dint of her less-than-happy parentage. (Raven's Daddy Dearest, you see, was TITANS foeman ne plus ultra TRIGON: an all-but-
omnipotent multiversal tyrant, readily capable of giving even the storied likes of Darkseid a run for his despotic money.)
On a more immediate level, however; and more importantly, insofar as our own storytelling purposes are concerned...
... Tempest and Raven have some interesting... history
between 'em, tension-wise.
(You can just keep all of that goody-goody,
touchy-feelie "oh-we're-all-family-here-we-Titans" spaghetti sauce, all
right? Stories. Are. CONFLICT. End of
sentence. End of paragraph. End of novel.)
Well into the dramatically dire (and less charitably recalled) "second half" of author Wolfman's TITANS tenure -- in which more than one significant storytelling miscue was made, along the way ("Kole"...? DANNY CHASE -- ?!?) -- the formerly fascinating and alluring Raven was "neutered," thematically; "cured" of her uniquely daemonic tendencies, and transmogrified, forthwith, into just another sappy "let-me-share-my-
feeeeeeeelings-with-you-for-eighteen-or-twenty-pages" types so weirdly beloved by a certain stripe of comics fan, nowadays.
@#$% it. This is comics.
Unca Sez: bring the bitch back.
WHAT SHE BRINGS TO THE PARTY: ... that's not
a serious question, is it...?
3.) ROBIN
Oh, sure. Right. Like Peter [YOUNG
JUSTICE] David shouldn't oughtta have to bloody share, when it
comes to the (comparatively) whey-faced and innocent amongst DC's spandexed
set.
If that much-bruited "Titans-As-Surrogate-Family" business
really and truly does possess any discernible meta-fictive merit, ultimately
-- and Unca is willing to play along with said surmise, certainly; if only for
sweet argument's sake -- then it's well past time, in his humble
estimation, that we brought a few new chromosomes into this partic'lar
storytelling gene pool. (Otherwise: we end up with the four-color
equivalent of inbreeding, ultimately. Brrrrrrrr.)
Canonically speaking: "Robin, the Boy Wonder"
has been an integral TITANS mainstay longer -- and to better storytelling effect
overall, certainly -- than has "Nightwing"; and, as matters presently stand,
said super-team suffers from a noticeable (and wholly deplorable) lack
of adolescent members. (Something which -- believe you me -- Unca intends
to fix, by golly by jingo, before all is said and done.)
Plus -- as will be made more than manifest, elsewhere hereabouts -- the induction of Master Timothy Drake affords us any number of interesting roster possibilities, "family"-wise.
Besides: the character's just too blamed smart
to be wasting his time alongside the hopelessly addled likes of Superboy,
and Impulse.
WHAT HE BRINGS TO THE PARTY: ... other than the fact that he's freakin' Robin, you mean...?
Get a grip, people. F'chrissakes.
4.) SPOILER
Again: if "character interaction" IS so bloody "key," re: the TITANS series...
... then: let's do it up right,, is
what Unca says.
She's the costumed, crime-bustin' (and nigh-infinitely sardonic) daughter of a long-time super-villain.
She's an unwed mother.
Whose mother (with whom she's still living, incidentally) has flatly and expressly forbidden her to go out crime-fighting.
... and, oh yeah: she has the major league hots for a certain well- known Boy Wonder, while we're at it.
Be honest, now: is there anyone out there
who seriously believes that Jessi Quick affords anything like
the same storytelling mileage, all things being equal...?
Plus: Spoiler's inclusion substitutes another
honest-to-gosh young'in for one of the increasingly long-in-the-tooth
present-day Titans. (...and, boy: talk about a series wandering,
wandering away from its actual, baseline conceptualization, huh...?)
WHAT SHE BRINGS TO THE PARTY: A nice, healthy dollop of capital "A" Attitude (nicely countering the "ohhhhhhhh-Kory-you're-my-sister" codswallop so depressingly prevalent, these past ten TITANS years, or so).
My God, but Unca's gonna be getting himself
all sorts of e-mail from the TITANS faithful, this week.
5.) GREEN ARROW
Following the Timothy Drake daisy chain of
interpersonal howdyy-do the other way: we've got this here
right interestin' fellah.
Taking the assigned slot clumsily vacated by the former (and much-
missed) boy bowman, Speedy: the ace archer (and Grand High Martial
Arts Marshall of the Annual Whupass Parade) known as Connor Hawke blossomed
nicely under the auctorial tutelage of comics scrivener Chuck Dixon;
making him one of the vanishingly few "legacy" DC characters who isn't
so relentlessly annoying as to engender actual feelings of reader despair, outright.
Moving beyond the whole praising-with-faint-damns thing, however: Green Arrow's monastic idealism and naivete play so gosh-darned perfectly off the Gotham City-savvy, MTV-canny Timothy Drake's semi-
cynicism; giving their conversational back'n'forth a wholly off-kilter (but decidedly pleasant) "Abbott and Costello"-type flavor, when handled just so.
... and, again: we've got the whole "youth movement"
thing workin' double-overtime for us, by this point.
WHAT HE BRINGS TO THE PARTY: ... a costumed
archer who isn't a junkie, for one thing. (Remember when the Titans
actually had one of those...)
6.) CHANGELING
DC keeps trying and bloody trying to squeeze
all of the goofy, giddy f-u-n out of this character, nowadays;
an auctorial approach tantamount to tarting up Marilyn Manson as one
of The Three Tenors.
Former Wolfman/Perez-era Titan Gar Logan serves as perfect attitudinal median betwixt Titans Then and Titans Now: "looser" than Raven and Tempest, yet more practiced in things TT-ish (obviously) than Robin, Spoiler or Green Arrow.
(It'd be kinda cute, actually: placing
the naturally irrepressible Gar in a situation where he's one of "The Old Guard,"
by default; and weighing the urge to play Mr. Good Example against the equally
insistent instinct to caper and cut up, as per usual.)
Additionally, of course: we're talkin' 'bout
a super-power which has always marked Gar Logan as one of the most deceptively
powerful of the Wolfman/Perez TTers, overall. (This is the
fellah, you may recall, who once pretty much did the Ubangi Stomp allllllllllllll
over a frantically backpedaling Deathstroke, the Terminator.)
Not to put too fine a point on it, then: the Titans just plain old need this guy, really.
WHAT HE BRINGS TO THE PARTY: Think back to your absolute, all-time favorite NEW TEEN TITANS sequences, all right?
Be honest, now: how many of 'em involve
this character...?
Ooooooooookay, then.
Longtime site regulars will doubtless recall how --
in each and every one of these little "If I
Ruled [Fill-In-The-Blank]" exercises -- Unca always saves the genuine,
stone weirdness for the very last lastest page.
Ain't no diff'rent this time out, friends and
neighbors.
Turn straightaway to Page Two of this article, if you will...
... and, remember: ANYthing can happen, with
the crazed likes of Unca drooling and cackling behind the wheel.
"MORE COMIC BOOKS," YOU SAY...?
The DC Comics Sub-Directory
The Marvel Comics Sub-Directory
The Miscellaneous Comics Sub-Directory
The "Gotta Find That DC Character" Menu
The "Gotta Find That Marvel/Miscellaneous
Character" Menu