Teen Titans
The Teen Titans are a superhero team appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, frequently in eponymous monthly series. As the group's name indicates, the members are teenage superheroes, many of whom have acted as sidekicks to DC's premier superheroes in the Justice League. The original team later becomes known as the Titans when the members age out of their teenage years, while the Teen Titans name is continued by subsequent generations of young heroes. Created by Bob Haney and Bruno Premiani and first appearing in 1964 in The Brave and the Bold #54, the team was formed by Kid Flash, Robin, and Aqualad before adopting the name Teen Titans in issue 60 with the addition of Wonder Girl to their ranks.
Over the decades, DC has cancelled and relaunched Teen Titans many times, and a variety of characters have been featured heroes in its pages. Significant early additions to the initial quartet of Titans were Speedy, Aquagirl, Bumblebee, Hawk, Dove, Harlequin, and three non-costumed heroes: boxer Mal Duncan, psychic Lilith, and caveman Gnarrk. The series would not become a genuine hit until its 1980s revival as The New Teen Titans under writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez. This run depicted the original Titans now as young adults and introduced new characters Cyborg, Starfire, and Raven, as well as the former Doom Patrol member Beast Boy under his new alias of Changeling, who would all become enduring fan favorites. A high point for the series both critically and commercially was its "The Judas Contract" storyline, in which the Teen Titans are betrayed by their teammate Terra.
The 1990s featured a Teen Titans team composed entirely of new members before the previous members returned in the series Titans, which ran from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Subsequent stories in the 2000s introduced a radically different Teen Titans team made up of newer DC Comics sidekicks such as Robin III, Wonder Girl II, and Impulse / Kid Flash II, as well as Superboy, some of whom had previously featured in the similar title Young Justice. Later prominent additions from this era included Miss Martian, Ravager, Supergirl, Kid Devil, Blue Beetle III, and Solstice. Concurrently, DC also published Titans, which featured some of the original and 1980s members now as adults, led by Dick Grayson in his adult persona of Nightwing. Important storylines for the 2000s era of Teen Titans included "Titans Tomorrow" and the company-wide crossover Infinite Crisis.
In the 2010s, The New 52 reboot in 2011 added new characters Bunker and Skitter to the 2000s roster, although the volume proved commercially and critically disappointing for DC, leading to the return of the original Titans in 2016's DC Rebirth era, alongside a new cast of Teen Titans led by Robin V alongside Aqualad II and Kid Flash III, later joined by Red Arrow. Later storylines saw the elder Titans establish a Teen Titans Academy for young heroes and serving as the DC Universe's main heroes during Dark Crisis when the Justice League were declared dead.
The Teen Titans have been adapted to other media numerous times, such as in the animated television series Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go!, and the live-action television series Titans. Within DC Comics, the Teen Titans have been an influential group of characters taking prominent roles in all of the publisher's major company-wide crossover stories. Many villains who face the Titans have since taken on a larger role within the publisher's fictional universe, such as the assassin Deathstroke, the demon Trigon, and the evil organization H.I.V.E..
Publication history
Original incarnation
Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad team up to defeat a weather-controlling villain known as Mister Twister in The Brave and the Bold #54 by writer Bob Haney and artist Bruno Premiani. They appeared under the name "Teen Titans" in The Brave and the Bold #60, joined by Wonder Woman's younger sister Wonder Girl. After being featured in Showcase #59, the Teen Titans were spun off into their own series with Teen Titans #1 by Haney and artist Nick Cardy.The series' original premise had the Teen Titans helping teenagers and answering calls. Comics historian Les Daniels noted that Haney "took some ribbing for the writing style that described the Teen Titans as 'the Cool Quartet' or 'the Fab Foursome'. The attempt to reach the youth culture then embracing performers like The Beatles and Bob Dylan impressed some observers." Green Arrow's sidekick Speedy makes guest appearances before officially joining the team in Teen Titans #19. Aqualad takes a leave of absence from the group in the same issue, but makes several later guest appearances, sometimes with girlfriend Aquagirl. Neal Adams was called upon to rewrite and redraw a Teen Titans story which had been written by Len Wein and Marv Wolfman. The story, titled "Titans Fit the Battle of Jericho!", would have introduced DC's first African American superhero, but was rejected by publisher Carmine Infantino. The revised story appeared in Teen Titans #20. Wolfman and Gil Kane created an origin for Wonder Girl in Teen Titans #22 and introduced her new costume. Psychic Lilith Clay and Mal Duncan also join the group. Beast Boy of the Doom Patrol makes a guest appearance seeking membership, but was rejected as too young at the time; existing heroes Hawk and Dove, a duo of teenaged superpowered brothers, appear in issue #21; and time-displaced caveman Gnarrk aids the team in two issues.
The series explored events such as inner-city racial tension and protests against the Vietnam War. One storyline beginning in issue #25 saw the Titans deal with the accidental death of a peace activist, leading them to reconsider their methods. As a result, the Teen Titans briefly abandoned their identities to work as ordinary civilians, but the effort was quickly abandoned. Along the way, Aqualad left the series and the character of Mr. Jupiter, who was Lilith's mentor and employer, was introduced. He financially backed the Titans for a brief period. The series was canceled with #43.
1970s revival
The series resumed with issue #44. The stories included the introductions of African American superheroine Bumblebee and former supervillainess-turned-superheroine Harlequin in issue #48 and the introduction of the "Teen Titans West" team in issues #50–52 consisting of a number of other teen heroes, including Bat-Girl and Golden Eagle. The revival was short-lived and the series was cancelled as of issue #53, which featured an origin story. At the end, the heroes realized that, now that they were in their early 20s, they had outgrown the name the "Teen" Titans. In the last panel, without speaking, they all go their separate ways.The title appeared again in 1999 for Giant Teen Titans Annual #1 , a one-shot special that reprinted selected Silver Age stories in the 1960s-style 80-Page Giant format.
''The New Teen Titans'' (1980–1996)
DC Comics Presents #26 introduced a new team of Titans, anchored by Robin, Wonder Girl, and Kid Flash and soon followed by The New Teen Titans #1. The series, created by writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez, re-introduced Beast Boy as Changeling and introduced the machine man Cyborg, the alien Starfire, and the dark empath Raven. Raven, an expert manipulator, forms the group to fight her demonic father Trigon and the team remains together. Both Wolfman and Pérez believed the series would only last six issues, due to overall poor sales at DC Comics.Wolfman and Pérez's working relationship quickly evolved to the point where they were plotting the series jointly. Wolfman recalled that "once George moved to the same town I lived in, only five blocks or so away, we usually got together for lunch and would work out a story over the next few hours. In many cases I would then go home and write up a plot based on it, or sometimes George would take the verbal plotting we did and take it from there." The series' first twenty issues focused primarily on short, one-shot storylines before both creators decided to attempt "more complex tales" and introduce villains whose "origins and motivations were very different from the norm of the day".
The team's adversaries included Brother Blood, a religious cult leader with supernatural powers, and Deathstroke the Terminator, a mercenary who takes a contract to kill the Titans to fulfill a job his son Grant Wilson had been unable to complete. Based on Wolfman's interest in occult manipulation from his previous work on Marvel's Tomb of Dracula, Brother Blood's "very dark" storyline received praise from older readers but alienated younger readers of the title.
Deathstroke's popularity led to perhaps the most notable Titans storyline of the era. 1984's "The Judas Contract", in Tales of the Teen Titans #42–44 and Tales of the Teen Titans Annual #3, featured a psychopathic girl named Terra with the power to manipulate Earth and all Earth-related materials. She infiltrates the Titans in order to destroy them. "The Judas Contract" won the Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Award for "Favorite Comic Book Story" of 1984 and was later reprinted as a standalone trade paperback in 1988. Robin adopts the identity of Nightwing, while Wally West gives up his Kid Flash persona and quits the Titans. It also featured the introduction of a new member in Jericho, Deathstroke's other son.
Other notable New Teen Titans stories included "A Day in the Lives...", presenting a day in the team members' personal lives; "Who is Donna Troy?", depicting Robin investigating Wonder Girl's origins; and "We Are Gathered Here Today...", telling the story of Wonder Girl's wedding. Tales of the New Teen Titans, a four-part limited series by Wolfman and Pérez, was published in 1982, detailing the back-stories of Cyborg, Raven, Changeling, and Starfire. Wolfman wrote a series of New Teen Titans drug awareness comic books which were published in cooperation with The President's Drug Awareness Campaign in 1983–1984. The first was pencilled by Pérez and sponsored by the Keebler Company, the second was illustrated by Ross Andru and underwritten by the American Soft Drink Industry, and the third was drawn by Adrian Gonzales and financed by IBM.