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Being Pulled In Two Directions At Once: Balancing the Juvenile and the Adult In DC's THE TEEN TITANS
(This one is for the regular denizens of the STUFFED CHEEKS message board... who voted this one as Most Needing Doing.)
Cripes, but didn't this one start out as one great, ungodly lame-o
of a series.
The problem, of course, was this: DC Comics wanted to create an ongoing series with which they might most profitably "tap" into the youthful 60's zeitgeist of the day.
Actually, that -- in and of itself, I mean -- wasn't the real problem.
The fact that the average DC Comics scripter, at the time, was carrying a well-creased AARP card in his billfold, on the other hand...
... now, that was a problem.
The first year, year-and-a-half of the TEEN TITANS series featured (originally) Aqualad; Kid Flash; and Robin, with Wonder Girl and long-time GREEN ARROW sidekick Speedy joining almost immediately thereafter. The series was appealingly rendered by the so-underrated-it-just- HURTS Nick Cardy, and was every bit as competently and professionally executed as any other DC comic of the day...
... just so long, that is, as you were willing to overlook the almost
incalculably awful "teen lingo" spewing forth from the lips of
the series' title protagonists, that is.
This one, folks, is -- quite simply -- beyond even my storied
abilities to adequately describe, in all of its demented, brain damaged
"glory." Really and truly; you just. have. no.
bloody. idea.
Imagine, if you will, the very worst episode of THE MANY LOVES OF DOBIE GILLIS you've ever seen.
Now: imagine Dobie; Maynard; and Zelda, all wearing spandex.
Okay... now stop fixating on the image of Zelda in spandex.
You filthy, rotten animals.
Everything was "gear." Everything was "ginchy." Everything was "fab," and "fave," and "... like, the ultimate utmost."
Everything was -- in short -- enough to make a fellah want to put in
long, extra hours stuffing envelopes and circulating petitions for the
DC universe's equivalent of Planned Parenthood.
Once a sufficient number of readers had inundated the DC Comics mailroom with blistering letters to the effect of: "... for the love of all that's holy... STOP. NOW." however... the editorial Powers That Be finally bought themselves a clue, on the installment plan, and handed over the storytelling reins to writers who'd been born in years whose first two digits were the numbers 1 and 9.
... and then, the series took off like the four-color equivalent
of a bottle rocket.
One of the nicest things about this series, overall, was the palpably real sense of "family" which quickly blossomed amongst the five "regulars" therein. [See picture, below]
The characters all spoke to one another (and treated one another) more like super-powered siblings, rather than simply an assortment colorfully costumed co-workers. There was an indefinable chemistry at work, here.
The actual stories (and the menaces serving as the storytelling mainsprings thereof) may have been as serious and menacing as heart attacks... but: the mood between the heroes (and heroine) was as playful as it was (ultimately) infectious.
The elder parents and/or guardians of the team's teens, by way of comparison, may have gone about fulfilling their respective self-appointed crime-fighting agendas with all due gravity...
... but: these kids, darn it, were going to have a little fun
in the process.
With the TEEN TITANS' closest overall competitors for the "youth- oriented super-heroes" market opting, at that point, either for Heavy Drama (THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES) or else increasingly labored and ridiculous breast-beating (Marvel's dour X-MEN comic of the period)... DC's "Fab Five" had their own peculiarly light- hearted storytelling "niche" all to themselves, for a delightful several years.
As the optimistic '60's gave reluctant way to the more studiedly "serious" and "relevant" '70's, however... things took a somewhat darker turn, overall.
Gone, long gone, were the days when the comics readership would allow itself the simple satisfaction inherent in a tale well-told. Hijinks and frivolity -- no matter how welcome the storytelling respite they afforded -- were declared passé. What we all wanted now (there was a vote, apparently) was spoonful after big, heaping spoonful of The Burning Issues of the Day. With a side-order of spandex.
In all fairness, however: this was not altogether a bad thing, as the concerted attempt on the behalf of DC's writers and editors led to (among other things) the induction into the Titans' ranks of their first black member.
Mal Duncan was a struggling amateur boxer from New York's "Hell's Kitchen" when he first fell in with his fellow adolescent adventurers in the Titans. And -- if, on occasion, the odd TITANS scribe or two would thumb the Angry Young Black Man button with a bit more frequency or gusto than that actually dictated by the (ostensibly) principal concerns of sound storytelling logic -- the earnest (and eminently sympathetic) character nonetheless added a welcome "everyman" aspect to the series, overall.
Another well-crafted addition to the team roster, at approximately the same time, was the mysterious red-tressed psychic known only as Lilith. [See cover, below]
Both orphaned and an amnesiac, the empathic (and emphatic) young miss allowed the Titans greater latitude in investigating and involving themselves with menaces of a more overtly supernatural "slant." This, too, was a storytelling option which became increasingly overused, as the years went by... but: the very best of these (say, issue #34's "The Witch of Dog Island") made for fine and lasting additions to the TITANS canon, overall.
(The uncontested nadir of this approach, on the other hand, was a perfectly dreadful two-issue story arc in which Lilith meets -- and falls in love with [!!] -- a long- frozen and then reconstituted prehistoric "cave teen" by the rather unfortunate name of Gnarrk. These two issues not only do not come recommended by Your Narrator, Hereabouts; they are accompanied by the urgently hissed admonition that -- should you ever wind up, inexplicably, with the offending comics in your possession -- you promptly turn them over to some appropriately-garbed-and- protected worker for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
With a pair of leaden tongs.
However: the shifting in emphasis from Frothy, Light-Hearted Frolic to Unrelenting Seriousness of Intent, ultimately, managed to turn away one reader too many from the TITANS comic. They were no longer "unique," you see; everybody else, after all, was doing the Plucked-From- Today's-Headlines thing, as well, by this point. (Some of these -- DC's own GREEN LANTERN/GREEN ARROW, for instance -- were doing it quite a bit better, truth be known.)
The Titans comic was canceled, shortly thereafter; endured the short-lived (but justly infamous) ignominy of one of the most wretched "revivals" within the annals of modern comics history; lay dormant, for a time, and then was launched yet a third time, to considerable acclaim, by writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Perez, in a series which...
... which -- unfortunately -- cannot be convincingly shoehorned into a Silver Age dedicated site without doing an archival injustice to either the one or the other.
I leave the proper chronicling of that worthy, therefore, to
other interested parties, If and When.
OTHER CLASSIC DC/MARVEL HEROES of the Silver Age
PAGE FOUR (Teen Titans, Hawk and Dove, and
the X-Men)
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