Geoff Johns to exit Teen Titans

Who is the new writer?

So now…who’s taking over?

That would be current Robin scribe Adam Beechen beginning with TEEN TITANS #47.

Some people have already seen his name solicited on upcoming issues of “Titans East” – that’s because Adam’s come on early to co-write “Titans East” with me to get a sense of the team and to set the stage for his run as I close out mine. There are going to be some shake-ups and, more importantly, you will see the beginnings of a second Titans team forming…though not necessarily what you’re expecting. Adam’s especially nailed the characters of Kid Devil and Miss Martian and he’s delved head first into the vast Titans history to soak it all up.

I’ve been a fan of Adam’s work for a long time, starting with HENCH and his stories on the JLU book, and I’m anxious to see what he does with the TEEN TITANS. I’ve already heard a few ideas on where he wants to take the team and I’m really looking forward to them.

:crossarms:

I love Beechen, and I’ve been wanting to write more about his Robin run lately. This is great news, particularly because I’ll start buying Teen Titans regularly again. The last year and half, maybe two (whenever Titans Tomorrow ended) really hasn’t been to my taste, so I let the book lapse. Titans East drew me back in due to Batgirl.

Well played, DC Comics. You trick me into talking about not buying a book and then you put a scribe I really enjoy on it. Well played, indeed.

This is going to sound weird coming on the heels of my “Ollie Queen is a jerk!” post, but hear me out.

I love character turns, be it heroes gone bad (Zoom, Batgirl, Eradicator) or villains gone good. It’s always interesting to see that breaking point that makes someone change. This post is about a villain who went good.

Paul Booker was a crap villain. He called himself Major Disaster, wore a disaster of a costume, and had a disaster of a career. To be quite honest, I haven’t read a lot of his early work just because it looked so awful. He’s got on pink gogo boots, a blue body suit, and a lighter blue hood. It’s a costume on par with some of Scarlet Witch and The Wasp’s worst excesses, but not quite as bad as Susan Richards’s negative-space 4 costume from the ’90s.

Booker joined the JLA at Batman’s request. Yes, the same Batman who gave Huntress the old heave-ho. The JLA were MIA and he had a Substitute League lined up in case of emergencies. Booker so liked the respect that he stuck around on the team and ended up proving his worth. He even made it onto the JLElite, before finally retiring.

Booker’s face turn for JLA was more of an “Okay I’m good now guys” rather than a gradual shift, but it feels right. Here is a guy that, in another world, could’ve been a true hero. He could theoretically prevent disasters, or come up with new ways to research them. The problem is, he’s selfish. He decided to look out for number one first and foremost, and ended up crap villain. He’s had tastes of the good life during his stints in the Suicide Squad and Justice League Antarctica, but he never hit the big times until the JLA accepted him.

He brings an interesting dynamic to the team for a couple reasons. One, he’s a reformed villain. As he says at the beginning of the Rules of Engagement arc, “Vote from the reformed criminal type! If more capes hunted down more bad guys, we’d have a lot less crime!” He doesn’t look at things like the other heroes do. He’s a very to-the-point, man-of-action type. If there is an easy solution that solves the problem well, do it! Why not?

Second, Booker is a big, dumb lug in the Bibbo Bibbowski/Lobo vein. He doesn’t say exactly what’s on his mind because he doesn’t really think. His brain isn’t just not connected to his mouth, it’s not connected, full stop.

Case in point. When the Elite gets together, they’re masterminded by Naif al-Sheikh, who can best be described as an Arab, male, and chainsmoking version of Amanda Waller. He’s got crazy black-ops and intelligence clout, so much so that the JLE gets approval based on his word alone. al-Sheikh sees these men and women as “demons playing in the robes of angels.” They terrify him, and that cannot be. He wants them to share a secret so that they can begin to build a trust. He wants them to explain why they fight for the light from the shadows. Booker’s response? “I, umm… this is really gay. Can’t we just go kick the @&#% out of some bad guys, “sir?”

This man is “Hurrrr!” incarnate! Another example. Booker’s been talking about Kasumi, an assassin on the team with something to hide. This scene follows:

Yes, Booker. You got zapped because it’s that time of the month. That is it exactly.
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AVALANCHE

Uncanny X-Men #141 (1981)

Here we go with Avalanche’s first appearance, fighting alongside Mystique and her mutant terrorist squad. He had a scene earlier out of costume where he looked completely generic. It was one of those scenes that makes me wonder if it’s a law that whenever a supervillain team is introduced, all the members need to fight each other over something petty while showing off their powers.

“Nobody calls me that! Now I’m going to hypnotize you into thinking you’re a chicken!”

“Hey, leave him alone, ya creep! Eat heat rays!”

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That’s a pretty fair summary of Bruce Wayne: Murderer, innit?

Anyway, I’m a pretty big fan of Cassandra Cain, former Batgirl, and by extension, her father David. He’s one of the many, many people who trained Bruce Wayne in the way of the Bat and father of Cassandra. He’s the hitman people go to when they want it done right and without the tights. Deathstroke? Sure, fine, he’s the bomb. But, he’s loud, obnoxious, and all of his children are completely crazy. Deadshot? His deathwish makes him take unnecessary risks, and who respects a hitman in a tophat?

I think I’m rambling. Time to ramble in a more productive direction!

Cassandra Cain turned bad OYL. I like the heel turn myself, but a lot of other people don’t. There are a couple of reasons why, but one I’ve heard is that she would never turn evil because she hates her father. That’s one thing I cannot agree with.

I think that both David and Cass love each other. it is definitely a father/daughter-type of love. David definitely loves his daughter. After Batman beats him to a bloody pulp, the only thing he cares about is keeping his tapes of her training in his possession. At one point, he gets involved in a high speed chase away from government agents while carrying those tapes. He watches his “home movies” while drinking in the dark and reminiscing about the old days. At another time, he refuses to kill her when he is hired to. Later, he breaks out of jail to give her a gift. Let’s not even mention the cockamamie insanity that was Bruce Wayne: Murderer.

David Cain is that guy who would look his daughter’s first date in the eye, smile, and inform him that he can put a bullet through a butterfly’s eyeball at twelve hundred yards with one eye closed. Then, he would slide back a secret panel beside the fireplace, revealing the poor kid’s entire family, kidnapped, bound, and gagged.

David: Bring my daughter back by 2200 hours, untouched, or I will feed your father your fingers.
Boy: Uh, yessir
Cassandra: Oh, Dad! :rolleyes:
*canned laughter*

(I would read this comic.)

If anything, I’d say that he has a very genuine, if opportunistic, love for his daughter. She is his biological offpsring who he raised from birth. I think that he originally intended to raise a weapon, but instead, he raised a daughter. A particularly lethal and skilled daughter, but a daughter no less.

I think that Cass loves her father, too. She allows him to escape capture more than once, up until recently, and I think that the fact that he is her father is the only reason why. The problem is, she doesn’t like him very much. She killed a man at eight years old and saw exactly what happens when someone dies. She saw the fear, the hate, and the terror that comes when someone is killed and it wrecked her.

I think it’s important to realize that she wasn’t raised with any sense of right and wrong, beyond “landing punches is right, missing punches is wrong.” She saw death firsthand and was shocked into right and wrong. She realized the upbringing her father gave her was completely, utterly, and if I may be so punny, fatally wrong. So, she left. At, uh, eight years old.

My point is that Cassandra loves her father and he loves her. He raised her for half her life, and it’s kind of clear in early flashbacks that she loved to impress him. She liked having his support and admiration. He liked seeing her turn into the greatest martial artist on the planet.

That was a loving, but abusive, relationship. It’s comic booky, and kind of out there, but it is definitely physical child abuse. Cass knows it and David knows it and it strains their relationship. She doesn’t know if she can forgive him for turning her into a murderer and I feel like he’s feeling pretty guilty about using her.

It’s interesting that when Cass finally gives in to being the ultimate warrior her father raised her to be, her first action is to try to remove him from the field of play. She acts out of spite and hate, but it seems like she’s also playing the role of spurned child. Being Batgirl was taking the high road. It was antithetical to her father’s way of life. It was her way of atoning for her sins. She was Batgirl out of guilt. The new Cass, OYL? Well, the hard way turned out to be too hard for her. She wants revenge.

Deep down, though, I don’t think she actually hates him. She’s lashing out and being selfish, just like a kid would act. She’s Bruce Wayne screaming “I hate you!” at his parents before they died.

I think that the Cass/David relationship could easily hold up to, say, a four issue miniseries. Set it post-Robin, after David gets away from her and the League. Cass goes after her father in a big way. It’ll end with both of them on a burning rooftop, out of ammo, exhausted, and bleeding. So exhausted and broken that they can do nothing but talk. I’m talking serious breakdown-in-tears, heart-to-heart here, but on a burning building in a tropical location.

It ends with the reconciliation that’s been due since Cassandra’s past was first revealed. David Cain and Cassandra Cain finally work through their issues and their past.

Anyway, idle musings.

You know what else would be extraordinarily dope? Cassandra Cain is running the League of Assassins now, right? She offed Nyssa al Ghul?

Well, Talia has a son who may not be too happy that his aunt was killed by the former sidekick of his father.

Damien vs Cassandra. Son of the Bat vs the Greatest Warrior Who Ever Lived? Batboy vs Batgirl? Count me in!

Adam Beechen interviewed at CBR

It is sure to make a few waves regarding Cass Cain, but here’s a bit that I liked:

RT: Did you like the character?

AB: She’s a great character. Her central struggle to rise above what she was raised to become is terrifically compelling stuff. I went through and picked up a number of months’ worth of issues prior to One-Year-Later. So I was around for the last major storyarc, and I got the trades of the first few storyarcs, all of which were excellent.

Ours was not an easy story to write because it was a radical shift in a major character who had struggled for so long for her entire existence to overcome the way she was brought up. But I have friends who have worked hard to triumph over bad decisions or bad circumstances and have done really well for a time, only to fall back. It’s a sad thing to watch happen, really painful, but it happens, so it seemed plausible to me in Cassandra’s case.

RT: Are you satisfied with the way it was handled?

AB: I wish I could have taken more time with it, and explored more about why she changed and more about the information that shook her life up. My inclination is to spread that information and build the story gradually. Initially the arc was going to be six issues, but the arc was compressed to four issues, so some of the information was compressed as a matter of necessity. Maybe too much.

If I could do it over again, I would get into it a little more so that, while it wouldn’t make fans of Batgirl happy, it would get in there and explain what happened a little bit better.

Beechen isn’t exactly the pitchfork-and-tails demon I’ve seen him described to be on message boards by Cass fans. His mustache isn’t even long enough to twirl!

“What people often forget, of course, is that Magneto, unlike the lovely Sir Ian McKellen, is a mad old terrorist twat. No matter how he justifies his stupid, brutal behaviour, or how anyone else tries to justify it, in the end he’s just an old bastard with daft, old ideas based on violence and coercion. I really wanted to make that clear at this time.”
–Grant Morrison

I’m not usually one to complain about comics companies “destroying” characters. In fact, I think it’s kind the kind of stupid invective that gives comic fans such a negative fanboy image. “Destroying” is a loaded term, and there’s much, much better ways to express your feelings on the matter. This may be my attempt at that, or my attempt at putting my foot in my mouth. U DECIDE.

I do think, however, that comics companies can make/allow some fairly terrible narrative choices. Turning Xorn into some kind of Jerry Springer-esque twin brother was one. Actually, every time Xorn has been mentioned outside of Morrison’s New X-Men has been a mistake, I think. Identity Crisis left a bad taste in my mouth, despite Rags Morales’s excellent art. I liked the scene where Batman and Robin are trying to get to Tim Drake’s house before his dad dies. That was powerful, but the death of Jack Drake? Bleh. He was a cool dude. Mark Millar turning the New Warriors into patsies? Bah, Doom says.

So basically what I’m saying is, not everything comics companies do is great. Big surprise, huh? I once read a comment Keith Giffen made about the death of Blue Beetle. He said he wasn’t mad about it, and that his only feelings on the matter were “I would’ve done it differently.” I think that’s all any fan can really say. “I would’ve done it differently.” Mark Waid once said something like “Comics is the only industry where 90% of your audience thinks that they can do it better than you.” It’s true.

Long, rambling introductions aside, DC screwed the pooch on the Batbooks when they made the main man overly angry, right? Well, what about the satellite titles? Catwoman went from a must-read book to “Peace out, homey!” all in the space of one issue for me. Batgirl has renounced her title and is pretty much a villain now.

I am okay with one of these things, but I do not like the other. Let us begin, then.
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You’re reading this, so this is your favorite site, right? RIGHT?

So tell your friends. Tell your mother, your father, your baker, your barber. I’m super-successful, and work on a magazine that has more readers than there are people on earth, but that is not enough. I crave attention. I am a megalomaniac. Two steps away from getting a metal faceplate and being Hermanos de Acero, I swear on my as-yet fictional tragic radioactive accident that gives me powers.

I don’t want posts to be met with dead air. I want back and forth, I want comments, I want to get people talking or laughing or something. You know what you get with posts by me? Generally snark-free insight on comics, the likes of which you can only find on a mountain in Tibet. I still haven’t written “Dark Knight Strikes Again Doesn’t Suck So Stop Telling Me To Not Like It, STUPID” or “Batgirl Going Evil Was A Bad Idea, But Now That It’s Over, It Could Be Great” or “Top Five Black Males in Comics” or “Top Five Black Females In Comics Who Aren’t Photon Or Storm” yet, but c’mon! They’re coming.

There’s two other guys on this site who’d love some love, too. Wanderer has tons mouths to feed because he keeps adopting adorable little babies. It’s kind of weird how he’s accessorizing his clothes with his children, and I really don’t approve of the cute, but demented, “Baby Pyramid,” but help this man out!

Gavok? Eh, he’s cool. He’s got a sweet What If…? article in the works. He’s subjecting himself to some of the worst excesses of the ’90s for you. You want to know what ones to read and which will give you terminal stupid shock? Wait a few days. You’ll see. This man, this monster… he does it out of love.

So get the word out. Link to the good articles, comment on the writing, start up a blog war with us so that we can get some free publicity, rap beef style. Link us (but not our images, I pay for this site out of pocket, kids) to your busy comics message boards if we say something you hate/love/don’t care about really. Talk us up on your livejournal. We’ve got an RSS feed right here and (oh snap) a Livejournal feed here! I’m going to add these links to the sidebar later today to make them easier to find.

See those rotating banners up at the top? They’re 700×200 jpegs (though one is a gif) and you can make your own. All it requires is a funny, serious, or really just any random moment from a comic and the word “4thletter!” in an unobtrusive spot in black or white. If you’ve got a good one, send it to 4thletter@gmail.com, okay?

C’mon, folks. Get the word out. Is you is, or is you ain’t, my baby?

Next Monday seemingly marks the end of one of the greatest eras in animation. For fourteen years, we’ve been given what people call the “Diniverse” (named after a guy who barely writes actual episodes anymore). It started back in 1992 with a primetime showing of Batman: the Animated Series and after all these years, it’s going to die out with the finale for the fifty-eighth spin-off, Justice League Unlimited.

Lord knows the Diniverse made its stamp on both the world of animation and the world of comics. Characters like Harley Quinn were introduced… as well as more forgettable folk like Livewire and Lockdown. The comic version of Supergirl started wearing the white t-shirt and tight skirt made popular by Superman: the Animated Series. John Stewart took Kyle Rayner’s place as the token Green Lantern on the Justice League roster. Batman Beyond showed up in the pages of Superman/Batman for no reason whatsoever.

There are obviously changes here and there over how certain characters are portrayed. Many consider the Kevin Conroy-voiced Batman to be the defining version of the character, compared to the close-minded, paranoid caricature he’s become in the comics. Sure, the Joker kills people here and there on the cartoons, but at no point would they ever have him cripple Batgirl and strip her naked in order to drive her father insane on Cartoon Network. In the comics, Green Lantern and Hawkgirl have never been an item, nor has a big chunk of the JLU roster been members of any Justice League roster. Hawk and Dove sucked in both mediums, so there is that. Read the rest of this entry �