Fourcast! 45: Teen Titans vs New Warriors
May 17th, 2010 by david brothers | Tags: new warriors, podcasts, skottie young, teen titans, zeb wells-Continuity Off!
-Esther on Teen Titans!
-David on New Warriors!
-Of course, New Warriors: Reality Check
-True story: next week is the Fourcast’s one year anniversary and you won’t believe what we have planned.
-I mean, you won’t believe that we don’t have anything planned.
-(Plan something for us please.)
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-See you, space cowboy!
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NW4L!
I think night thrasher’s brothers name was DONYELL
Wait wait wait YOU’RE David? JESUS, have I been listening to your podcasts in the wrong way!
To be fair about all the Penance stuff, he’s been handled extremely well after the first couple months. Warren Ellis, Paul Jenkins and Christos Gage wrote some really good stories with him.
A good writer can save even the most cringeworthy concept. Even silly, silly Bleedball.
I always thought Terra was a great villain in the New Titans, if only because, at the time, no one thought she was the villain. Michael Chabon points this out, but I also remember this: since the X-Men came up with Kitty Pryde, and Kitty Pryde was a hero, Terra must be the same. They really played with the audience expectations at that time. Terra seems obvious right now, but at the time we really thought she was still a Titan.
Oh, and Grayson never becomes “EEVIL”, but he does become a jerk:
1. At one point, he gets brainwashed by Brother Blood and acts like a jerk for a while. One of the best issues is Dick really pissing off Donna and Donna putting Dick into a large mirror. It really brought both characters in a very neat place.
2. While he doesn’t become Deathwing, a future version of him becomes Deathwing. There’s a great scene where Dick fights Deathwing, and Deathwing preys upon his insecurities about his relationship with Batman. In the end, Dick beats the crap out of him and says, “Screw you man! Batman was the best mentor anyone could ever have.”
3. And finally, while he doesn’t become a villain, he does become Rose’s mentor for a while, at the behest of Deathstroke. A couple of very weird issues, where he takes the name Renegade (yes, like the Lorenzo Lamas character), eventually Nightwing points out this is wrong and leaves.
As far as Wolfman is concerned, the Titans books went weird when he broke up with his wife. You can almost pinpoint it, around the time of the Dick Grayson/Starfire wedding, where everything went strange. They’ve just never really recovered from it.
Okay, okay, last post (sorry, big fan of Titans):
But the reason why the Titans worked (and, consequently, the New Warriors), was that is had a good core set of sidekicks and new characters. Dick Grayson, Donna Troy, Changeling, were all sidekicks. The new guys: Cyborg, Starfire, and Raven were all characters from different genres. Cyborg was street-crime and high technology. Starfire was an alien, and could take the characters into space. Raven was mystical in nature, and could bring the Titans into magic. Even in characters, Cyborg (personality-wise) is a middle-point of Grayson and Kid Flash (and later Changeling). Starfire (personality-wise) is a middle point between Donna and Raven. They work well in bringing characters to different parts of the DCU.
The New Warriors work in the same way. Night Thrasher was new, but all the other characters are part of different segments of the MU. Firestar had contact with the MU Mutants and, particularly, the White Queen. Marvel Boy was a reservist Avenger and had contacts with the Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America/Avengers. Nova had contacts into space. Speedball was lighthearted character. Night Thrasher was a straight, street-level. Each character balanced the other character out as far as genre is concerned.
This is a great lesson for those creating teams. Each member work best in a superhero team when they represent a different genre and have different personalities that compliment each other. That’s why I have faith in Robinson’s JLA and the New Avengers, because he uses the same method to create his team, combination of new and old, varying personalities, and each character represents a different aspect of their respective universes.
what about wolfman’s marriage?
In his Comics Journal interview, he talked about his breakup with Michelle Wolfman during his time while writing the New Titans, a little after Titans Hunt and how that breakup influenced his dissolution of Starfire and Nightwing’s relationship (along with, possibly, Donna and Terry’s relationship).
– l.k.