"Blah Blah Family Blah Blah"!!

These days, it's de rigueur for group action franchises to insist that their bands of thieves/heroes are superior to others because they are "family"--I'm looking at you, Fast & Furious and Guardians Of The Galaxy!

Sorry, guys, but Bob Haney was there first.

Lilith has come up dry in yet another attempt to find her birth family...

But she pulls a Dominic Toretto in declaring that it doesn't matter, because...

Right on!!

I like that Robin's skirt is shorter than Lilith's...

From Teen Titans #43 (1973)

A Modest Proposal: Long Live...The Titans?

Look, it's such an easy solution, I'm amazed that I never thought of it earlier.

DC's curse, all along, has been near-instant buyer's remorse each time they do some reboot/relaunch. And nowhere has that been more evident with the Legion Of Super-Heroes.

With the post-Crisis reboot, John Byrne had insisted that there had never been a Superboy. Well, that mucked up Legion history a bit, as the Legion was famously "inspired by Superboy" to become a team of teenage superheroes.

There were easy ways to deal with this, of course. Ignore it. Use the old "all records of this era were lost" trope along with the "Crisis left our memories fuzzy" excuse (which works well enough for the Rebirth nonsense). Find a convenient substitute to inspire the Legion and/or participate in their earlier adventures if you need to (Mon-El, Dev-Em, etc).

See? It's not that hard!!

But no, someone decided that they just had to have Superboy back in the Legion history, because that cover of Adventure #247 was just too damn iconic or something. So just 7 issues into Byrne's run, Superboy was back--only now he had been from a "pocket universe" all along (not an alternate universe, which had clearly been banned by Crisis!), and that young Kal-El been a pawn of the Time Trapper all along, so he could make the Legion strong enough to thwart Mordru, so he could take over time himself later.

Of course, this meant that, essentially, the Legion had been "inspired" and founded by a villain--but that's not important, as long as we have a Superboy back!! All our old Legion stories can be read exactly the same as they had been!! Yay, for immediate and reactionary retcons!!

Oh, and it ended up not mattering after all, because a few years later they rebooted the Legion so there was again no Superboy in their history...and then a few more years later they did it AGAIN!! Bless you, DC! (Seriously, when are we going to get one of those "Marvel The Untold Story" books for DC?!? I'd pay big money for just a chapter on "What the hell was going on behind the scenes with the constant jerking back and forth on Superboy/Legion...")

And now that there is a Superboy again in the Rebirth thingie, and DC continues to pretend that they're serious about bringing the Legion back, well, we can go right back to the way things used to be--young Jon and his (still untold) adventures will turn out to have inspired the creation of the Legion...which is why they start every meeting by burning a house pet to death...

But there was then, and still is now, a better option--why can't they just decide that the Legion Of Super-Heroes was inspired by the Teen Titans?

It almost makes more sense, doesn't it? At the time of crisis, they were both "Baxter" series, so they were in the same comics ecosystem, as it were. The Titans were a team of super-powered teenagers, not just one guy, so in many ways they could make a better inspiration for the multi-powered, multi-planetary Legion. And, of course, the Titans still existed in continuity, so no one would have to go through redonkulous continuity convolutions to make old stories "work."

As a special bonus, since many incarnations of the Teen Titans have them fighting or rebelling against their elder heroes, that would make them an especially keen inspiration for the Threeboot Legion.

That would also solve the difficulties of Superboy being so over-powered compared to the rest of the Legion. Because let's face it, like the Justice League animated series with Superman, Superboy was just in Legion fights to get knocked out early by kryptonite/magic/Darkseid so the reader would realize how tough the bad guy was while the rest of the team rallied to beat him.

There was a reason that Superboy was initially severed from the Legion, pre-Crisis: having young Kal-El and Mon-El and Ultra Boy (and sometimes Supergirl) around at the same time was just too top-heavy, power-wise. That is a problem you wouldn't have if you decided to have the Titans, singly or en masse, take the occasional jaunt to the 30th (31st...) century.

I just don't see the point of frequently rebooting, if all you're going to do is go straight back to the old way...especially when there's was a perfectly good way to take things in a slightly different direction with some of the marvelous toys in your near-infinite toy box. Like the Titans...

Still, I should probably consider myself lucky. Somewhere, in the back on Dan DiDio's mind, is a version of the Legion inspired by Superboy-Prime...

Manic Monday--Why Fans Shouldn't Ask Pros to Sign Things At Conventions!

Someone is trying to ruin the Olympics!

Robin, your guardian is a millionaire--you could afford to have the Beatles play for you personally!!

Anyway, the Titans head to Tokyo for the summer games...

But...

Look, if you're going to pay extra money for a blank cover--my god, are you people insane or what?--you really can't be sure that it won't explode when you hand it to the professional of your choice and the ink chemicals from his sketch of Harley Quinn as a plucky Star Fleet ensign mix with some substance in the over-priced paper and explode all over the place!!

I'm just sayin'...

From Teen Titans #4 (1966)

Why Aqualad Will Die Alone!

It's Emergency Letter Time at Teen Titan headquarters!

But not everyone is as focused on Emergency Letters as they should be!!

Oh, Garth...you are soooo smooth with the ladies!

No wonder Tula died rather than hang around with you...

(Emergency Letter time?!?)

From Teen Titans #5 (1966)

The Comic Detective--Labor Day Trailer!!!

The most annoying thing about being an obsessive comics nerd? When, in some other media, you see comic books, and it completely takes you out of what you watching as you quickly try to determine what the hell those comics are. Have I read them? Are they consistent with the time frame of the movie? What is that odd bit of cover?!?!?

Today's example? The trailer for the forthcoming film, Labor Day, starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin. The film is set around Labor Day, 1987, and at about 25 seconds into the trailer, at some discount department store we see glimpses of a spinner rack full of comics:

So, to hell with the movie--what about these comics?

This is a case for...The Comic Detective!!!!

Let me emphasize that 98.7% of my "detective" work came from searching about The Grand Comics Database and Mike's Amazing World Of Comics, two of the most invaluable research tools out there. They did all the hard work...I just looked stuff up on their sites!

So, let's start with the first shot of our comics rack. The first thing that we notice is that there are two separate issues of Teen Titans Spotlight next to each other:

That's not too crazy--those of us old enough remember how haphazard and random some of those K-Mart spinner racks could be. They are consecutive issues: #9 & #10, cover date April and May 1987. Mike's Amazing World has as street dates of January and February--a little old, but again, old school spinner rack. We can mostly give those a pass.

Next in the rack:

As the cover notes, this was the final issue of Tales Of The Legion Of Super-Heroes. It's cover date is December 1987, but--and it's a big but--it wasn't on sale until September 27--well AFTER Labor Day. It may be a sloppy spinner rack, but it can't have time travel powers. FAIL!!

Proceeding to the next side of the rack, we have:

Oops. Batman #398 was cover dated August of 1986, and streeted in May '86. Yeah, thing weren't often maintained well on those racks...but a 16-month old comic? FAIL.

Next:

Oh, Outcasts, how we've missed you! #1 was cover-dated October of 1987, street date of July--perfectly reasonable for that to still be on the stands.

The last one in that shot took some digging, but it is:

That was cover date August '87, streeting in May...not out of the reasonable range.

Finally, the final shot with only a tiny portion of the cover visible, turns out to be:

Another Tales Of The Legion...but 6 issues earlier, #348, June '87, street date of March. It's a bit old to be on the rack...especially given the presence of a much newer issue of the same title. Still, crap like that could happen...and at least this issue isn't from the future.

Of course, it's silly to be so hyper-critical. The art director (or some other schmoe) was given the task to fill spinner rack with contemporary comics for a scene that probably lasts 30 seconds in the movie, and that no one sane would pay much attention to. And on that level, they did a perfectly fine job, probably better then we should have expected.

Which proves what an insane loser I am, I guess. I obsess...

BTW, Paramount and Indian Paintbrush--what's up with no Marvels on the rack? It's not WB is involved in this pic, as near as I can tell--so why no love for The House Of Ideas? It would cost too much to throw a Star Brand or an Alpha Flight up there? Sheesh, talk about ruining the movie for me...

Ask The Answer Manic Monday #6--Generational Heroes

From the Ask The Answer Man column in Green Lantern #105 (1978):

Oh, how quaint. Once again nobody sent poor Bob Rozakis the memo from the future. DC doesn't believe in generational heroes any more!!

There were no "super-heroes" before Superman now, the Justice League was the first team, and this group of heroes had no predecessors/mentors.

As to being replaced by their young proteges...hahahahahahahahah. The past several years have been dedicated to ensuring that the heroes of 1979 are exactly the same heroes in 2011, thank you very much. Just try to find Wally West and Donna Troy in the Flushpoint Universe. Roy Harper will be there, but it seems as if he's never been Ollie's protege there. Garth? Good luck finding him.
And Robin? Dick-as-Batman has been rejected by the powers that be, so it's all-Bruce, all the time. And Robin is just an intern program now...so obviously he was never meant to take the cowl!

On a related issue, from the Answer Man Column in Superboy & The Legion Of Super-Heroes #253 (1979):

Of course, the answer today would be "They're ALL young!! Younger than you think!! They're so young, newborns can relate to them!! As young as you think they are, THEY'RE YOUNGER!!"

Best Of Both Worlds

Not only is this the best thing ever:

But as a huge bonus, it's still far far far far better than the version of Titans comings in the "New 52":

C'mon, DiDio/Lee/Johns...it's not too late to change to the good version!!

Oh. My. God.

From today's reveal of the New New New New New Teen Titans:

Tim Drake is forced to step out from behind his keyboard when an international organization seeks to capture or kill super-powered teenagers. As Red Robin, he must team up with the mysterious and belligerent powerhouse thief known as Wonder Girl and a hyperactive speedster calling himself Kid Flash in TEEN TITANS #1, by Scott Lobdell and artists Brett Booth and Norm Rapmund.

I have a few comments:

**AHHHHHHHHH MY EYES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sweet lordy but that's the most set hideous costume design EVER. Dear Jim Lee--please stop. The 1990s are over.

**To the weaselly claims of "not a reboot"--right. Either these are all new characters using the old names, or it's a reboot. "Tim Drake has to step out from behind a keyboard" sure sounds like he wasn't Red Robin before, and there's a conspicuous lack of the Robin symbol on his costume. And a Tim Drake who doesn't know Dominatrix Wonder Girl, W.I.L.D.Cats Kid Flash, or Emo Superboy, and wasn't Robin before...look, there's no way you can do that without a full reboot, or ridiculous selective amnesia.

Sure, it could all be explained with a few sentences; maybe they're all new, and they just used odd phrasing to describe Tim. Yup, sure.

**So, Warner...you spends millions and millions on your lawsuit to maintain ownership of Superboy...and this is what you do with him??

Seriously...at this point I'd rather have Superboy-Prime back.

**Just for the record, that had better not be Wally as Kid Flash...that is a warning, DC.

**This convinces me more than ever that DC is going to do a pretty thorough reboot on Superman himself, and I'd put money on the fact that Grant Morrison is finally going to get to adopt some version of his Superman 2000 proposal. The loss of the red trunks, separating Superman and Lois...these have long been proposals of Morrison, and he's supposedly writing Action. And what the heck...maybe DC can make the "new" Superman different enough to salvage something after 2013...

Vic Stone Has Some Advice For Roy Harper

As Roy Harper prepares to audition for a guest spot as drummer for Def Leppard, we've been asking for some perspective from other similarly unlucky residents of the DC universe. Today, Roy's fellow Titan Vic Stone, a.k.a. Cyborg, has a few words to say. Take it away, Vic:



You lost one arm, Roy? Just one? That's it? No other body parts?

Man, you better not start up with any self-pity jive, because I have you beat twelve ways to Sunday. Hell, you've got working parts that I would kill to have, if you know what I mean.

So no whining, no moping, just get yourself up and be thankful some other bits weren't removed. Maybe you can still get lucky with Hawkgirl...

Thanks, Vic.

Titans North?

Sure, the Justice League has been a broken concept for the past 3 years, with nobody creatively or editorially seemingly having the least clue of what the concept was even about.

So it's hard to complain when DC decides that it's time to start a whole "Brand New Era" in a couple of months. But really, is this progress??

So James Robinson is bringing in his pet characters from JLA: Cry For Boredom (because that's worked out so well so far); bringing in his pet characters from his run on Superman; and importing 4/7ths of the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans.

Really??

Hey, I'm all for new blood in the JLA. But don't all those Titans already have their own mag, called...Titans? Did we really need 4 of them? (I hasten to add, nothing personal against any of those characters...I'm sure they'll all be fine Leaguers. But 4??) Yeah, I know Dick Grayson Batman is a special case...but 4? What, was Beast Boy too busy? Is Titans being cancelled, or are all these guys going to be in two team books?

The three characters who are being the biggest A-holes in Cry For Boredom, plus Congorilla? You're sure about that? There's a whole DC Universe out there of interesting potential Leaguers, and Robinson brings over three he's pretty conclusively proven that he has no idea how to write?

Mon-El (in an incredibly crappy costume?) and the Guardian? Really? Someone thought that was a good idea?

Oh, and Dr. Light, whom nobody has been able to do anything with for well over 20 years now??

You know, last time DC announced a James Robinson-written Justice League title with an offbeat lineup, I was pretty excited. Sadly, that series has been one of the biggest disappointments of recent years. So color me considerably less enthusiastic for the New new NEW Justice League.

Really, 4 Titans? Did Robinson run out of characters from DC 1st Issue Special to use?

House Of Ideas

From Marvel's May solicits, courtesy of Newsarama:

NEW MUTANTS #1
Written by ZEB WELLS
Penciled by DIOGENES NEVES
They’re back together again! Cannonball, Dani Moonstar, Karma, Sunspot, Magma and Magik have been gathered once more, but can they stand against one of the most powerful X-Villains of all time? Legion is back, and the villain that thrust us into the Age of Apocalypse is scarier than ever. But what does he want with the New Mutants?

Wow. Their long separated teen hero team from the 80's now reunited as adults. Where have I heard that before??

Oh. Yeah. That.

Marvel's sincerest form of flattery is really gaining speed. Let's see, Marvel waited 20 years to...borrow...substantial portions of DC's Millennium for Skrullapalooza...9 years to "follow" JLAPE with Marvel Apes...8 years to have their heroes bumfuzzled because an evil villain is now running the country, which in no way resembles President Luthor...and now they're down to less than a year for just coincidentally having the exact same idea as DC.

At this rate, Marvel's Battle For The Cowl will be starting next week...

Re-Asking The Answer Man--1/9/1978

Back in the funky Seventies, DC had a promo page called The Daily Planet Extra which appeared each week in their titles, promoting the books that were out that week without being as relentlessly self-congratulatory as Dan DiDio's DC Nation columns.

A regular feature on these pages was Ask The Answer Man, in which DC editor and writer Bob Rozakis answered fans questions about DC. In an amazingly tiny amount of space, Rozakis banged off 3 or 4 answers per week, about who was from which Earth, what's up with this character, where's X going to appear next. It may not seem like much, but back in the pre-internet days, and with no authoritative reference books available, for a lot of people this was the only source for such official pronouncements.

(I'm obliged to note that, as memory serves me, in the latter days the questions became dominated by kids who were too lazy to go find a Comic Book Price Guide and wrote into the Answer Man such stunning questions as "How much is Flash #172 worth?" Man, I always found that annoying...it's like going to the Oracle at Delphi and asking a question like "How much should I spend on a muffler?" Drove me crazy, I tell you...)

Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to occasionally look back at one of the Answer Man columns, to see how well the answers hold up 30 odd years later. This is not to pick on Rozakis, let me assure you; as far as I know, he was always accurate at the time. But I think "re-asking" the questions can shed a little light about the state of the DC Universe three decades later.

So, presenting, the column from Daily Planet Extra for the week of January 9, 1978:

First up, we have this:

Oy. Could we have started with one more complex, more convoluted, more frakked up than this one? Let's just say that Donna's history has undergone more revisions and patches than Microsoft Vista. First they made her one of the Titans of Myth, than they made her a magical clone of Diana who actually created from a portion of Wonder Woman's soul. Then they decided that it was all true, and Donna was "the real sum of every Donna Troy that existed on every Earth, a living key to the lost Multiverse." I think that's where it stands now.

Remember how the first Crisis was supposed to clean up continuity? In Donna's case, not so much--it just opened the floodgates so every writer decided he could inflict his own clever origin on her. Wikinuity...

Next:

Hmmm...Isis is clearly on New Earth, or Earth-1, these days. But in the new multiverse, Earth-5 is essentially Earth-S, so maybe she's there, too.

Next:

Well, the Titans have reformed, and broken up and reformed and broken up ad infinitum since then. Hell, now we even have 3 Titans teams running around, so there's room for more members.

Power Girl is still a member of the Justice Society, but the Star Spangled Kid is dead. There's been a couple more since then, of course.

If Jimmy isn't a teen anymore, does that mean Elastic Lad was kicked out of the Legion of Super-Heroes?!?

NEXT:

Oooh, not quite, Bob. It was another full decade before we got to see the Secret Six again, as a regular feature in Action Comics Weekly in 1988!! (Sadly, this was after Bridwell had passed away...) Marty Pasko and Dan Spiegle revealed that Mockingbird was indeed one of the Six, Durant. But all of the original Six, including Durant, were killed in the second issue!! Don't fret...they were replaced by another Secret Six, and a new Mockingbird...who died...

It only took 17 more years for the new Secret Six, a ragtag bunch of villains, to be formed during Infinite Crisis. And Luthor was the new Mockingbird...oh, my head...

So what's our lesson? Bob Rozakis, be glad you gave up the Answer man gig, because despite the best intentions, everything became much, much, much more complicated after the various Crises.

Well, There You Go, That Makes It All Right, Then

From an interview at Newsarama with Sean McKeever re: Teen Titans #62:

Yeah, poor Wendy and Marvin. But, you know, I hope it got to people because it's absolutely a story-based death and not one of these "shock death" things. The Teen Titans are on a journey, and this is a major part of it.

Other forthcoming "story-based" plots from McKeever:

• Ace the Bathound sodomizes the Spoiler...hey, it's a major part of Robin's journey, so lay off
• Snoopy devours Peppermint Patty and Lucy...hey, it's NOT one of those "shock death" things.
• The Legion of Super-Pets takes a conversion van on a cross-galaxy killing spree, leaving a trail of dead hookers in their wake
• "Marmaduke--OH MY GOD NO MARAMADU--ahegahahgsgs..."

Story-based. Yeah, you're a real Bill Shakespeare there, McKeever.

You see now why I don't read Teen Titans?

Tales From the Quarter Bin--Uggh!

When I was a wee tyke, and had relatively few comics, I of course would re-read them ad infinitum. And some of those DC house ads intrigued the living heck outta young me. Say what you want about late 60's/early 70's DC, but they knew how to do fantastic covers. I wanted to read some of those advertised but unattainable stories soooo badly...

So look what I found in the quarter bin this week:

Teen Titans #24, 1969. In my book, that is one GREAT cover. And in the imagination of 'Lil snell, that obviously meant it must contain a GREAT story.

Uhhh....not so much.

So in a week when Bob Haney is (deservedly) getting a lot of good publicity for the posthumous Lost Teen Titans Annual, let's look back at one of his...uhhh...not so good moments.

Story-wise, this issue is completely forgettable. It's literally a Scooby-Doo plot, where the evil restaurant owner is trying to drive tourists away from the ski resort so he can buy the land. Look, they even get called meddling kids at one point!

But since the plot was old school even in 1969, what's left to talk about? Well, there's the great Gil Kane/Nick Cardy art. Or, we could discuss Bob Haney's laughably wonderful attempts to master "hip" teen dialogue:

Because really, there is nothing quite like a 43 year old white-collar guy trying sooooo hard and earnestly to cram every single dialogue balloon with lingo he picked up from Laugh-In...and I do mean every single panel.

But then there is the slightly more off-putting stuff. Specifically, the casually stereotyped ethnic characterizations. You see, the ski resort in question is Medicine Mountain, and is owned Native Americans:

The chap in the hat is Eddie Tallbow; his tribe owns the resort. Now, I'm not too huge on political correctness, and I'm the first to say that when reading material from the past, you've got to "grade on the curve" a bit, to account for the sensitivities of the time in which it was created.

But Eddie's "wampum" reference (in the very first panel of the book!) is not a good sign of things to come. Virtually every single panel with Eddie contains a "paleface" or "ugh" or "heap" or "flipped his wigwam..." And then there's "old Charlie By-And-By, the "half cracked seer and medicine man" of the tribe." Let's see what an adult American Indian has to say:

Oh, dear.

Oh, dear, again!

Hey, maybe we can insult multiple ethnic groups in a single panel:

Sigh....I know I'm being too harsh, but the sheer relentlessness of Haney's characterization by stereotype in the story is embarrassing. You might think that the "hip" 1960's teens that Haney was portraying would be a little more sensitive, but then again, they're not really hip. Haney is just parroting popular culture for teen stereotypes, just as he is for his portrayal of Indians. It's Mod Squad meets F-Troop.

Shoot, I'm being too harsh again. But at a time when some DC mags were at least making an attempt to get away from cartoon portrayals of minorities, Teen Titans was wallowing in them. It makes for a truly disconcerting read in 2008.

But it still has a great cover.

BONUS SEXUAL INNUENDO:

This got by the Comic Code??

"Wax my slats?" Oh, Donna, you and your Amazonian lustiness...