Review: New Teen Titans Archives Vol. 2 hardcover (DC Comics)

This is part two in our series on the New Teen Titans Archives:

And then there were the Greek gods.

I have a confession to make -- I don't really like DC Comics stories about the Greek gods. Bringing the Greek gods on the scene has always seemed an excuse for writers to use overly flowery language and make esoteric references to myths I've never read -- indeed what kept me out of Wonder Woman for a long time was the incessant use of the gods, and I loved when they got a makeover in Greg Rucka's Wonder Woman run.

Marv Wolfman and George Perez introduce the Greek gods to the New Titans for the first time in volume two of the New Teen Titans Archives. While I enjoyed very much the multi-part story that gives the women of the New Teen Titans a chance to shine on their own, I couldn't help but see "Clash of the Titans" as the launching point for not only a slew of Greek god-focused Titans adventures, but also the launching point for the modern age Greek god stories by Perez, Phil Jimenez, and others in Wonder Woman, which never enticed me as much as, say, watching Deathstroke throw down with the Titans.

To be sure, Wolfman uses aspects of the Greek gods and the Amazon mileu to great ends. The parent/child conflict of the Greek gods is a perfect foil for the Titans' own struggles; Wolfman also offers an excellent page where Raven and Starfire debate which is more like the Amazonian peace-loving warriors, well illustrating the dichotomies inherit in the Wonder Woman mythos.

The second major story in this volume, which teams the Titans with the remnants of the Doom Patrol, might rank as one of my favorite Changeling stories. Nowhere the is the multi-faceted nature of Wolfman and Perez's Titans better present than when Garfield Logan, who for twelve issues has been little more than annoying comic relief, finally gets truly angry and risks his life to try to save his missing stepfather. The writers provide a turn for this character that is both surprising and completely natural, and it demonstrates the strength of the series even more than how well-rounded the main characters always are.

For modern Teen Titans fans, there's an interesting short story at the end of this book where the eventual Tempest and Red Arrow, Aqualad and Speedy, team with the New Teen Titans. The story itself is a rather simplistic "Say No to Drugs" tale, but it's fascinating especially to see Speedy -- not yet his current Cheshire-loving, Huntress-dating self -- in a rather staid role. I should mention here too that fans of the current Wally West will barely recognize his pre-Crisis incarnation throughout these books; he's conservative, reserved, and not at all the outgoing Wally we know now, and I'm learning a lot about the character that I hadn't realized before.

[Contains full covers, introduction by Marv Wolfman, bonus story]

So those are some off-the-cuff thoughts about New Teen Titans Archive volume two. I'm curious to hear from some readers who also read these volumes, or who recall reading the original series, and how these stories struck you now and then. I'll be back soon with thoughts on volume three.

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Number 658


The prince in the pool


Something I like a lot about John Stanley's stories is the fantasy element. His Little Lulu stories really soar when his imagination is let go. Unlike Tubby, who had an hallucinatory childhood, seeing ghosts and hobnobbing with little men from Mars, Lulu had her feet on the ground and didn't usually go off into flights of fancy until she had Alvin as an audience.

"The Prince In the Pool" originally appeared in Marge's Little Lulu #11, from 1949, but I scanned it from the 1959 Dell squareback, Little Lulu and Alvin Storytelling Time #1.

In "Prince" Lulu becomes a Dickensian character, the poor little girl, so poor she is turned away from the poorhouse; she is cold-heartedly told to live in a doghouse. But the dogs turn her away, too. Now that is poor!








Happy New Year, everybody. I'll be back January 1 with a special #1 issue.

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Review: New Teen Titans Archives Vol. 1 hardcover (DC Comics)

As it comes time to the end of the year, I've been looking to my shelf to see what I might've meant to read this year and never got around to. One such set of books is the four-volume New Teen Titans Archives, the only DC Comics archives from the "modern age" of comics.

If any comic can be considered above reproach, these ground-breaking stories by Marv Wolfman and George Perez certainly fall into that category. Rather than a formal review, what will follow here and in the next few posts will be some more off-the-cuff thoughts and observations in reading this series, which is likely a must-read for anyone wanting full exposure to DC Comics history.

[This review well spoils the New Teen Titans Archive volume 1]

One of the first things that struck me in reading these stories (New Teen Titans #1-8) is how the writers set up these characters as near perfect superheroes. Of course, you and I know the exploits of the original New Teen Titans as the stuff of legends, but back then no one had heard of Cyborg, Starfire, or Raven -- and yet by the end of the volume, Wolfman calls them "the best of the best." Though the Titans do face some growing pains in learning to work together, they are all for the most part natural superheroes, even those like Cyborg who had been "normal" until just before the start of the book. Superheroing for them is the easy part; it's the emotional journey of finding themselves that proves more challenging.

Contrast this with the modern incarnation of the Teen Titans. Whereas the New Titans needed no adult supervision nor anyone to train them to use their powers, the Teen Titans under Geoff Johns warranted a chaperone. I chalk this up in part to needing to give the original Titans something to do in the current era, but also a strange shift in our sensibilities -- in the wake of any number of school shootings, I wonder if this reflects a "children are dangerous" ethos in the mid-2000s that wasn't present in the early 1980s.

I recognize, of course, that there's something of a purported age difference between the Wolfman/Perez and Johns-era Titans. At the same time, we could argue, a story is what its creative team makes it: Johns' Titans no more needed a chaperone than the writer wanted them to have one -- that is, chaperones could have been written out of the series and subsequently have been.

In fact, the most recent Sean McKeever Teen Titans team functions without adult supervision, but that team highlights the other difference from the Wolfman/Perez era -- those heroes are not the best at what they do. Sure, the Wolfman/Perez era Titans bicker and some don't get along with others, but not on the scale of McKeever's Titans, nor do they suffer the kinds of humiliating failures that McKeever's do (Red Devil throwing essentially a frat party, and Wonder Girl alienating a whole room of potential recruits, to name a couple of examples). The Wolfman/Perez stories highlight to me how it's possible to have interpersonal drama on a team book without outlandish or overly melodramatic storylines (and this is a difficulty of many modern team books, not just McKeever's Teen Titans).

In reading the first volume of the New Teen Titans Archive, I tried to approach it as if I knew nothing about the characters, and I found the mysteries inherit in the series quite compelling. At the center of it, of course, is Raven and her reason for bringing the Titans together -- more than the slow revelation of Trigon or that Wolfman and Perez keep Raven's features hidden until the emotional scene with her mother Arella, what always gets me is the scene just after the Titans fight the Justice League, after they find out that not only might Raven have brainwashed Kid Flash to think he loved her so he's stay in with the Titans, but also that Raven approached the Justice League before the Titans and the Justice League rebuffed her because they could sense Trigon's evil within her -- when the Titans walk away and the team seems disbanded, that's just a perfect dramatic moment.

My second favorite is the mystery surrounding Cyborg's origins. I think everyone can tell from the start that Cyborg is a little too mad at his father, Silas Stone -- mad enough that we can tell that probably Silas isn't the villain that Cyborg makes him out to be. Then the Titans Tower comes along and it seems its creator might have nefarious purposes, and then we find out Silas created it (a fact unfortunately never referenced these days) and that he's dying, and that it was Cyborg's mother who caused the accident all along, when Cyborg blamed Silas for his mother's death. So many twists and turns, wrapped up in such a wonderful, bittersweet ending -- Wolfman says they really hit their groove on the book in the third volume, but the stories in this first book are really quite remarkable.

Finally, I remained impressed through this reading how Wolfman and Perez managed to tie every story back to the theme of family. Most notable are not just Raven's issues with Trigon and Cyborg's with his father and Robin's with Batman, but how the Titans' very first enemy, the Ravager Grant Wilson, unknowingly competes with his father, Deathstroke the Terminator. I also appreciated that even seemingly silly villains like the Fearsome Five contain the siblings Mammoth and Shimmer -- in the same vein as we now see in Geoff Johns' material, there are no throwaway characters here, but rather everyone has some sort of roundedness that makes them pop off the page.

[Contains full covers, introduction by Marv Wolfman, preview story and pin-up pages]

That's my take on the first volume of the Teen Titans Archives, in which the Titans come together, get a headquarters, and fight Deathstroke, the HIVE, the Fearsome Five, and Trigon. Thoughts on volume two coming soon.

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Number 657


Pappy's advice


Yesterday we had a Blackhawk story set in the Amazon. Here's another Amazon story along with some advice. You may thank me someday. When in the jungle looking for someone if you come across a man with a pet ape, and the man introduces himself as Dr. Death, do not tarry, do not linger. Turn around and walk, no, run away from him.

The dumb people in "The Shrunken Heads of Dr. Death" would have benefited from that advice.

From Quality Comics' Web of Evil #12, 1954.

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Number 656


Amazon killers!


Hope you all had a nice Christmas. I don't know about you but it's nice to get it over with. Now that I have all my presents I can stop being nice to people.

No, really. I lie. I like to be nice. I like to show you stories you might not otherwise see. My presents to you.

This last Sunday of 2009 we have a Blackhawk story from 1952, "The Root of Evil." The cover of this issue, #51, has the blurb, "Wild-Eyed Killers of the Amazon!" The art is said by the Grand Comics Database to be by Bill Ward, but the inking doesn't look to be his. It's heavy, nearly blobbing out the beautiful girl, but lucky for us, not quite.

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Number 655


Rudolph in Gorgonzola


What?! It's Christmas again, already? Didn't we just have Christmas a mere 365 days ago?

To commemorate the day I need to go back to my childhood and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, 1953 edition. No, not my first childhood, but a subsequent childhood (I've lost track of how many childhoods I've had). I bought this comic at a San Diego Con in the 1980s. They aren't that uncommon because they sold very well for DC Comics during the 1950s. The annual series ground to a halt in the early '60s after 12 issues. It was revived for a time when Rudolph reappeared in a couple of DC's tabloid-sized comic books of the early '70s, and also in DC's tiny eyestrain digests.

Rube Grossman is credited with the artwork. Grossman, who had an animation background, went back into animation after his stint at DC Comics. He died in 1964.

To all you Pappy's readers, Merry Christmas!

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