Things to be excited about: Silver Age Teen Titans, Ghosts and Dark Horse's reprints of Marvel Star Wars...

I dropped some mega-bucks on DC's Silver Age Teen Titans Archives volumes 1 and 2, Showcase Presents Ghosts and Dark Horse's Star Wars Omnibus:  A Long Time Ago... volume 4.  These four massive books are on their way to me as I type this, through wind and rain.  Yeah, it's a dark day here in Japan with changeable weather threatening to wash out any weekend activities people may have planned now that the temperatures are easing off from the sauna range they stayed in all summer long.  Of course, with dengue fever closing Yoyogi Park in Tokyo, it's probably just as well.  Yet within my heart is a bright, warm light and its source is anticipation of some classic comic book reading material.

The Silver Age Teen Titans Archives books particularly delight me, since this is one of those series I've fallen madly in love with.  I just cannot seem to get enough of Bob Haney's socially aware writing or Nick Cardy's art.  Most especially the latter.  I've bought this material both in digital form and in Showcase format.  The digitals, on Comixology, never seem to advance past the five or so comics available in Silver Age Titans Archives volume 1.  The relatively inexpensive Showcase Titans books seem to be going out of print now.  I have copies of both volumes stored back in the US, I only have one here in Japan.  No luck getting the other one for a reasonable price.   So my unreasonable solution was to complete my Haney-Cardy-Neal Adams-and-others Teen Titans collection by paying even more for hardcover full-color stories I already own in multiples.

Teen Titans is no mere comic book series.  It is a way of life.

And since I was on a classic DC kick, what better choice to complement the superheroics than yet another Showcase Presents book featuring a horror anthology?  The artist line-up in DC's old horror books reads like a list of my favorites:  Cardy, Alfredo Alcala, Frank Redondo, Nestor Redondo, Sam Glanzman, Ramona Fradon, Jerry Grandenetti, Wally Wood, George Tuska, Gerry Talaoc and so many more.  And with Halloween coming up, I need some fun and spooky reading material.

Finally, my addiction to Al Williamson inspired my purchase of the Dark Horse Star Wars Omnibus:  A Long Time Ago... book.  I have the first three, which means I have Williamson's The Empire Strikes Back adaptation.  It also means I need his Return of the Jedi work.  And I certainly am not going to complain about having to look at stories by Carmine Infantino, Walter Simonson and Ron Frenz with inks by Tom Palmer.  This book also contains Star Wars #74, "The Iskalon Effect" (August 1983), with art by Frenz and Palmer.  It's one of the few non-Al Williamson Star Wars comics I bought during Marvel's original run of books.

Nick Cardy 1920-2013

I'm really into Nick Cardy's art.  He's one of those "I wish I drew like him" guys.  He turned pro as a teen, served in WWII, came home to the US and went back to drawing.  I haven't read any of his Aquaman books, but his Teen Titans work has made that one of my all-time favorite books and propelled him into the top tier of my comic art pantheon.  It's a joy to look at Cardy's Titans, either in color on Comixology or in B&W in one of the two Showcase Presents volumes.

Cardy could draw anything.  Giant conquistador statues walking around, jalopies, hot rods, "Big Daddy" Ed Roth, the Tokyo Olympics, go-go dancers, teenaged cavepeople, outer space, you name it.  His Teen Titans issues are just full of that elusive element we call "appeal."  There's something bright and optimistic about it and if you spend an afternoon immersed in Cardy's Teen Titans art (and digging on Bob Haney's wild and woolly socially-aware plots), it will lift your mood.

Cardy excelled at facial expressions (there's a lot of Norman Rockwell in his work at times), bodies in motion and this characteristic style of ink feathering that's loose sometimes to the point of being curvilinear zig-zags that follow the exterior contour lines at times and at others are parallel to them (see this the cover to Teen Titans #5 right here), or diagonal to them or almost perpendicular.  However Cardy did it, these touches create a distinct sense of roundness-- as if the curved surfaces of a body are falling away into shadow-- that's unique to Cardy's work.  Sometimes he'd do just a series of diagonal single hatch mark lines, but I've never seen anyone else do the zig-zag thing as successfully as Cardy.  Whenever I see that, I'm pretty sure I'm looking at Nick Cardy art, self-inked or on someone else's pencils.  Sometimes tight, sometimes loose, always beautiful.

And then there are all those covers.  What a sense of drama and design!  And masterful control of eye movement.  Teen Titans #5 (October 1966, by the way), the two foreground figures swing at you on that wrecking ball thanks to the sweet tilting action and then you go from the logo to the Ant's head, then follow the arc of movement down his leg to Robin's face, which points us as the background element of his teammates as they watch in dismay.  Robin's going to die!  An entire story in one image.  No wonder he moved on to doing movie ad work.

Nick Cardy drew the sunniest, sassiest Wonder Girl, too.

Teen Titans #5 (October 1966), Writer: Bob Haney/Pencils and Inks: Nick Cardy

Anyway, thanks for making comics a lot more fun, Nick Cardy.  You will be missed.

The Teen Titans versus the New Mutants-- reactions to authority in contrast

Bob Haney-script/Nick Cardy-art, Teen Titans #3 (May/June 1966)

Many years ago, before you and I were even born, the US government needed someone to help with school drop-outs.  So they turned to DC's premiere group of costumed teens (most of whom were sidekicks, wards or protégés of similarly-themed adult characters).  Calling Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad and Wonder Girl to Washington, D.C., concerned officials charge them with journeying to the middle American heartland and confronting their age-peers.  "Stay in school," the Teen Titans preach, "the United States government wishes it!"

People had youth on the brain back in the 1960s.  While adults and kids have always had their differences, the post-WWII baby boom expanded what they used to call the "generation gap" to almost revolutionary levels.  It started in the 1950s, but intensified the following decade due to the continued pressures of an unpopular war, struggles for racial and gender equality, new forms of musical, artistic and self-expression, the Sexual Revolution and even the cynical media exploitation of this huge, new-- and relatively affluent-- demographic.  With even a cursory reading of history, we can, just as people did back in the 1960s, divide these opposing forces into the establishment and the anti-establishment.

When "The Revolt at Harrison High" in Teen Titans #3 -- with its heroes optimistically working for the establishment writer Bob Haney (himself a self-described socialist and pacifist) characterizes as largely benign-- hit the newsstands in the summer of 1966, the anti-war movement was already in full swing.  Young people had already burned draft cards, various groups had successfully staged several large scale anti-war rallies (Haney had participated in some by this time as well) and a number of veterans had attempted to return their medals to the White House.

The next year, 1967, witnessed the Summer of Love and the Beatles' psychedelic masterpiece Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Colorful Utopian dreams seemed within reach if the young simply turned their eyes to the sky in search of diamonds and tuned their sitars to the cosmic.

Then, in 1968, the world erupted, with the Tet Offensive rocking America's confidence in its military's ability to defeat a technologically-inferior foe, two major assassinations at home, racial violence, student violence, police violence in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention, a Soviet invasion of a liberalized Czechoslovakia, tyranny stamping its iron boot on the human face forever.  

Things fractured further.  That year, American International Pictures released Wild in the Streets, in which a 24-year-old rock star becomes president of the United States and throws people over 35 into concentration camps where they’re dosed with LSD.  Coming years would see more war protests, the watershed music festival Woodstock giving way to legendary bummer Altamont, the Tate-LaBianca Murders (via the demonic influence of Charles Manson-- the perfect hippie bugbear to chill the spines of parents everywhere), the invasion of Cambodia and the 1970 Kent State shootings—an event preceded by the Ohio governor angrily denouncing anti-war protesters on campus as a “militant, revolutionary group.”

Then came further betrayals.  The crushing loss of George McGovern in the 1972 election to Richard Nixon.  Watergate.  The energy crisis.  Recession.  Malaise.  Cities like New York suffering from collapsing infrastructure.  No wonder youth culture curdled into the nihilism and anarchy of punk rock on one hand and the mindless hedonism of disco on the other.

Chris Claremont-script/Bob McLeod-art, Marvel Graphic Novel #4 (October 1982)

Which might be why just a generation after the Titans marched proudly out of Washington filled with the evangelical furor and a hopeful message for high school drop-outs everywhere, Dani Moonstar of the New Mutants, Marvel’s premiere group for costumed young people (none of whom were sidekicks, wards or protégés of similarly-themed adult characters) responds with open rebelliousness to Professor X’s demand for uniformity among his pupils.  And also why the Professor himself decides not to quash her individualism.

Bob Haney-script/Nick Cardy-art, Teen Titans #3 (May/June 1966)

The two teams take different tactics when interacting with their peers, too.  In "Harrison High," the Titans act as establishment mouthpieces, which renders their attempts at talking frankly with their age-peers awkward and forced.  They fail because few people enjoy being talked down to, especially by others their own age.  This approach pays no dividends, as the Titans learn here.  Later they take a different tactic-- strangely enough, involving violence-- and find positive results.

Chris Claremont-script/Bob McLeod, Mike Gustovich-art, New Mutants #2 (April 1983)

The New Mutants, on the other hand, have no ulterior motives-- certainly none that are government-directed-- and relate to people in their age demographic more or less as equals, so their interaction, while a bit contentious, is comfortingly naturalistic.  Within moments, the mutant students and the townies have forged the bonds of friendship despite their socio-economic, cultural and genetic differences.

But don't let me give you the idea the Titans didn't learn to swing.  It wasn't long before they got with their times and began questioning authority.  They'd drop their self-righteous pro-establishment stance and come into conflict with their mentors and the adult world at large.  That's an essay for another time.  But just think about this-- today Robin is a grandfather and Dani is my age and they're both just as confused and troubled by today’s kids as the grown-ups of yesteryear.

Teen Titans #3: And then they beat up "Big Daddy" Ed Roth on government orders

Why, Titans?  Why?  I love "Big Daddy" Ed Roth, but apparently the President's Commission on Education has a gripe with the creator of Rat Fink.  That son of a bitch Lyndon Johnson!  Oh... you mean it's really Ding-Dong Daddy Dowd and not Roth?  Well, that's okay then!

Anyway, "The Revolt at Harrison High," from Teen Titans #3 (June 1966), finds the Johnson administration trusting its anti-drop out initiative to a group of costumed kids who, if we measured IQ in houses, would have to climb up out of the basement to get to stupid.  The Teen Titans in this issue are ultra-establishment types who believe when Uncle Sam says "Jump!" you jump, right across the Pacific into Southeast Asia where, if you're lucky, you come back minus just your innocence or part of your leg.  Or in this case, to Harrison, USA, where statistically average teen David Robinson has dropped out of school and taken to spinning around town in a souped-up jalopy while working for Ding-Dong Daddy, who just happens to be a dead ringer for Ed Roth.

The Titans don't do much to prove me wrong about their intelligence in this issue.  As soon as Robin hears about David's employer, he has the team check out Ding-Dong Daddy's Hot Rod Hive, which is a pretty obvious move.  There Dowd-- a mountain of a man much like his real-world inspiration-- comes on way too strong with hip cat talk and his refusal to show anyone his secret room.  Once again, the barely-sentient Robin senses something amiss-- I mean, secret room!-- and sends Kid Flash vibrating through the steel door to find a group of teen-aged boys doing what teen-aged boys do best.

No, not that.  Are you kidding me?  They'd go blind!  Plus, that's more a hygiene issue and this is about societal ills.  What these out of sight groovesters are doing is equipping an ice cream cart with a machine gun to kill cops.  Robin knows this is all kinds of wrong, so he has the Titans beat a hasty yet nonchalant retreat so they can plan the next step.  After tangling with a trio of Ding-Dong Daddy's hot rods and losing, the Titans disguise themselves as some less-than-convincing motorcycle toughs so they can help Danny and his no-good pals fight an even worse scourge of wholesome American highways-- an honest-to-goodness motorcycle gang called the Scorchers.  The Scorchers wouldn't survive ten seconds in a rumble with the Hell's Angels.  I doubt they'd last much longer against the Black Widows.  Our favorite teens soon subdue the Scorchers and impress David and pals enough they help the heroes infiltrate the Hot Rod Hive where Wonder Girl-- her hair bleached blond-- entertains Ding-Dong Daddy by dancing away in his office and the boys fight some goons and a robotic gas pump.

You sleaze!  You're more than twice her age! (Bob Haney, script/Nick Cardy, art, Teen Titans #3)

There's even a nasty little double-entendre a few moments earlier when Ding-Dong Daddy asks, "But what does the cute chick do?  Is she a wrench jockey, too?"  This sets up a scene where Wonder Girl leads Ding-Dong Daddy by the arm to his office-- both figures largely silhouetted in a sinisterly suggestive way-- to "keep him occupied" (Robin's phrase, not mine).  Once in the office, our bold young Amazon gyrates away while Ding-Dong Daddy, obviously middle-aged, leers at her and declares, "Haw!  I like it, babe!"  But the creep soon gets his as Wonder Girl takes him down herself and everyone agrees to return to school.  Two years later, David Robinson gets his draft notice and it's off to Cu Chi with the 25th Infantry Division.  But that's a Titans tale for another time!

Of course, there are few things less cool than middle-aged men trying desperately to capture the youth zeitgeist, but paradoxically, there are also few things cooler.  Stan Lee somehow managed to do it with ease by using a lot of WW II-era GI slang ("Hang tough!" and "Face front!" come to mind), but DC never quite got with it despite their best efforts.  Bob Haney lays on the teen-talk pretty thick throughout this issue, which dates it (along with its super square, pro-establishment naivete, which no doubt dated it even in 1966), but it's that very product-of-its-time quality that makes these early Teen Titans issues such fun.  Like, baby, I dig Teen Titans the most!  And that includes the pop-art checkerboard design on the cover.

That and the use of a Roth stand-in as the villain.  Which, my friends, is inspired.  The only thing that could have been better would have been a Bob Dylan-esque folk singer pushing pot to Robinson and pals.  Okay, Haney never would have gotten that one past the Comics Code.  Roth and his hot rod culture were pretty popular around this time-- DC comics frequently included ads for toys based on his designs-- and he was such a colorful figure in his own right.  Plus, using a Roth avatar gives Nick Cardy the chance to go absolutely nuts with crazy custom car designs- one has bank-robbing mechanical tentacles, even-- and whacky motorcycle gang outfits.

Come to think of it, if Ding-Dong Daddy hadn't been a villain, he would have made the perfect protagonist for his own title.  That is, if you took away his pervy "barely legal" predilections.  Of course, it would have flopped like a lot of DC's youth-pandering efforts did later in the 60s and early 70s when they got ever more desperate to stem the Marvel tide and capture some of those Baby Boomer bucks, but then we'd have more Ding-Dong Daddy material to talk about and there's nothing wrong with that.

It's just too bad they couldn't have worked in some version of Rat Fink as Dowd's side-kick in place of some unfortunately generic thugs-- so dull I initially mistook one for David, who sports a white tee and jeans throughout.  Yawn!-- who beat up Robin.

These early Titans issues are nothing if not socially conscious, as well.  Which is fitting considering the book's young cast and the tumultuous times in which these books first appeared.  Even though it's handled less subtly than in one of those classroom films we used to watch in PE on rainy days during junior high, Haney and Cardy don't let their preachy anti-drop out message get in the way of a lot of frantic action, with the dread Batman in his Batmobile getting his ass handed to him by Ding-Dong Daddy's technologically superior automotive stylings, Robin handcuffed to a "hot Honda" (a phrase which tickled Haney so much he uses it again later in the book), which nearly speeds him to his death, Kid Flash running in place to save a school bus full of teens and Aqualad falling prey to a car that shoots flying surfboards.  They just awkwardly toss the message into the dialogue and let the story continue on its rambunctious way.

We're having fun, but I can't shake the feeling Haney really hoped he might reach a few at-risk kids with this comic and do some real-world good.  That kind of kind heartedness counts a lot with me, especially looking back from a vantage point where so many of today's books seem simply negative for negativity's sake, crass, the results of lowest-common-denominator thought, or cynical attempts to exploit headlines for controversy.  Haney probably wrote this with an eye on the headlines as well, but his mission wasn't simply to profit from them.  Instead, I get the idea he hoped to find some constructive way for silly superheroes to have a positive impact on their readership, rather than just confirm them in their downbeat pessimism.

Realistically, this comic probably did little if anything to convince readers to stay in school or trust the Johnson administration.  On the other hand, it must have sent more than a few of them in search of CARtoons magazine.

My Ten Favorite Wonder Girl Moments (old school version)!

Bob Haney, script/Nick Cardy, art

Kicks a bulldozer's ass with precious little help from Aqualad ("The Beast God of Xochatan," Teen Titans #1, February 1966)  Superheroes fight.  It’s what they do.  They fight super-villains, they fight each other.  On The Adventures of Pete and Pete, younger Pete Wrigley and his personal superhero Artie (the strongest man… in the world!) do all superheroes much better and fought the Atlantic Ocean.  Here we see Wonder Girl doing her part in similarly unorthodox superheroics by beating up a bulldozer.  Well, she doesn’t exactly beat it up, but she does pit her strength against it and wins.  With little help from Aqualad, whose idea of doing his teammate a solid is sitting atop the bulldozer while she pulls it from the water.  He did tie the rope to it, but you’d think he’d be considerate enough to at least push from behind or else get his ass off the damned thing so Wonder Girl’s job is that much easier.  Little jerk.

Bob Haney, script/Bruno Premiani, art

Indomitable self-esteem, even in the face of her own mother's belittling comments (Brave and the Bold #60, 196-)  Wow.  Even her own mother denigrates her because of her gender.  It’s an all-too-common phenomenon for parents to project their insecurities onto their children, usually with negative behavior-skewing results.  But the wonderful thing about Wonder Girl is she doesn’t let it get her down.  That’s self-confidence.  Where does she get it?  Certainly not from Mom!

Bob Haney, script/Nick Cardy, art

Chooses the Titans' Peace Corps assignment (Teen Titans #1)  Here she is thrusting a small flag into a map at the Peace Corps headquarters.  What’s at stake?  The Titans’ posting, the location of where they’ll carry out their nation-building humanitarian mission.  Choosing just the right spot is a big responsibility, and we see how Wonder Girl makes it fun as well with some casual athleticism.  Never mind that the flag could have just as easily ended up in the ocean or some uninhabited area.

Bob Haney, script/Nick Cardy, art

Dances with her lasso ("The Million-Year-Old Teen-Ager!", Teen Titans #2, April 1966) You have to feel sorry for the boys in the Titans.  They’re so inhibited.  I wonder if it’s because they feel obligated to live up to the stiff-backed manliness of their adult mentors.  Wonder Girl has no such trouble.  She’s at home in her skin, at peace with herself—she might as well be, since we’ve already seen what a bummer of a mom she has—and that allows her to cut loose whenever she feels like it.

Bob Haney, script/Nick Cardy, art

Figures out a simple trick ("The Secret Olympic Heroes," Teen Titans #4, August 1966)  If you’ve read some of my other posts on the Teen Titans, you know I don’t think too highly of their intelligence.  Here we see Wonder Girl engaged in some rudimentary detective work, which would no doubt tax her teammates’ brains.  They’re all convinced someone has painted graffiti on the roof of one of the dorms in the Olympic Village, but Wonder Girl realizes it’s actually a projection and off she goes.  I can see how your ground-based Titan might make this mistake.  Especially since they’re not that bright.  Except Wonder Girl.  She might not spend a lot of time working calculus problems or reading Proust, but she knows the difference between wet paint and a beam of light.  By the way, this story takes place at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics!  I'll have to write more about that later!

Bob Haney, script/Nick Cardy, art

Mocks a fan's stupid request (Teen Titans #2)  The Teen Titans are kind of mean, aren’t they?

Bob Haney, script/Nick Cardy, art

Destroys property in Tokyo (Teen Titans #4)  Wonder Girl brings down the house in the Olympics Village.  I’m not sure her aggressive approach here will win her friends or do much for international relations, but the Olympics have always been less than pure in that regard.  Conceived as an apolitical contest between equals, they’ve long been politicized and commercialized.  So if Wonder Girl has to smash up a few athletic dorms to capture some bad guys, that’s just your tough luck, IOC.  You can deplore it all you want, but Wonder Girl doesn’t care.  LALALA, she’s not even listening!

Bob Haney, script/Nick Cardy, art

Shows up the boys (Teen Titans #1)  Again we see Wonder Girl’s joie de vivre contrasted with the boys’ more constricted approach to matters.  Wonder Girl enjoys being super.  I’m sure she enjoys just about everything about her life.  That’s a rare gift.
 

Bob Haney, script/Nick Cardy, art

Zero inhibitions ("The Mad, Mod Merchant of Menace," Teen Titans #7, February 1967)  See a cardboard cut-out of Holley Hip, dance with a cardboard cut-out of Holley Hip.  Can you imagine Robin doing this?  Or Speedy?

And now for the single greatest moment in Wonder Girl history-- or DC Comics history, for that matter-- 

Bob Haney, script/Nick Cardy, art

Saves the Titans with her ponytail (Teen Titans #2) The Teen Titans have been fighting a caveman and are about to fall into a chasm.  Wonder Girl’s hands are “too small” to hold onto the tree for long, despite her immense strength.  A long ponytail might seem a vain affectation—or else the stuff shampoo commercials are made of—but Wonder Girl brilliantly finds a practical use for hers beyond the aesthetic.  She’s appropriately proud of herself, too.  Yes, Wonder Girl has some spectacular hair!

Teen Titans #1 (February 1966): Nick Cardy makes a splash, Bob Haney makes a point

 

This is the colorful splash page to Teen Titans #1 (February 1966), drawn by Nick Cardy.  Written by the great Bob Haney, this first issue of Titans is essentially a positive, happy-go-lucky propaganda piece about the glories of the Peace Corps, which was a big deal for socially-conscious youngsters back in the early- to mid-1960s.

Officially established by John F. Kennedy with Executive Order 10924  in March 1961, the Peace Corps has been sending young Americans all over the globe to win hearts and minds by doing good works in developing nations ever since.  Back when the Titans made their collective bid for membership, the United States was still basking in the afterglow of having helped defeat fascism in the 1940s and taking leadership in facing down communism ever since.  World War II and the Cold War had frosted isolationism (except for a few backwards people living in mountain shacks and dank caves) in favor of internationalism, engagement on a global scale, and we Americans believed in solving humanity's problems and fostering democracy abroad by providing clean water and education.

In fact, we learn that almost every adult hero in the DC universe is some kind of Kennedy Democrat, a bunch of gaudily costumed but easily recognizable Eastern Establishment types of the kind hated and feared by Tricky Dick Nixon.  Or at least Rockefeller Republicans.  It's not enough that their young wards regularly risk their lives fighting crime.  It's joining their the Peace Corps that makes Batman, Flash, Aquaman and Wonder Woman beam with pride.  Not a single hero expresses anything but almost giddy enthusiasm for this Peace Corps thing.

We miss only Superman's reaction.  Why?  Because Superman is a god who needs no teen sidekick.  He's the father figure to all the other adult heroes, not a bunch of shirt-tail kids.  He's off trying to solve galactic entropy while they're fighting mutated fiddler crabs and giggling morons with chemical burns.  Superman does have his famous cousin, but Supergirl is probably digging canals, inoculating babies against tuberculosis and smallpox and teaching birth control and crop rotation on her own time.

Incredibly, even though he lives with Robin in palatial Wayne Manor, Batman has to learn of his ward's decision from a newspaper headline while he's scaling a drainpipe on a building in downtown Gotham City.  In the "dark of night."  Great night-vision this guy has after years of nocturnal crime-busting, hug?  The Caped Crusader may be on a case-- unless he practices urban mountaineering for fun-- but he still has time to turn, eyeball a handy newsstand through the gloom, make his discovery and loudly proclaim his joy to no one in particular.  I'm guessing he doesn't bother to buy the paper because the fabulously wealthy Bruce Wayne very wisely refuses to carry loose change in his Batman costume in case he gets into combat, kind of like Colonel "Bat" Guano in Stanley Kubrick's Doctor Strangelove.

The teen heroes let Wonder Girl choose their destination by sticking a pin in a map, which she does with an athletic flourish and characteristic joie de vivre.  So it's off to the Andes Mountains after a quick training montage to lend a helping hand to those in need.

And, as you can see from this splash page, the Teen Titans version of Peace Corps work doesn't differ all that much from the organization's directives; it's just a bit more aggressive.  They aid the needy using their personal expertise in punching, hitting and kicking things.  But that's not all they do.  They right historical wrongs, as well.  What else is toppling that giant conquistador but the defeat of  the lingering effects of European imperialism and a refutation of criticism America is merely engaging in a modified, cleaned-up twentieth century version?

In case you miss the point that America isn't like all those other old, abusive world powers, the ultimate villain turns out to be a greedy landowner run out of the village before the story even begins by the hard-working campesinos-- all your rapacious developing-world pirate capitalists out to thwart progress, one ruffle-collared bastard representing the kind of repressive guys who made communist revolutions in places like Cuba and Nicaragua necessary because the U.S. sided with them instead of doing what the Titans and the Peace Corps do here.  Of course, there's even one continuing in Peru to this day, but not for lack of Titans effort.

But this book isn't just politics.  After all, it would be a dull-ass comic with just Sargent Shriver making speeches to the Titans.  We readers demand some kind of giant menace for the kids to clamber all over (plus angry, attacking animals with human faces), and Haney knew how to deliver his patriotic, yet somewhat socialist, message in a colorful, action-packed way (like those sneaky vitamins in our chocolate-coated sugar-frosted rice puff cereals).

Looking back, it's obvious what this prescient story is telling us is the U.S. could have avoided a lot of grief in the coming decades if we'd only modeled ourselves after Wonder Girl, Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad and taken on the real menace instead of merely replacing recalcitrant dictators with more compliant ones.  But there's none of that cynicism in this story.  Haney makes me wish I'd joined the Peace Corps back when I was a teen-aged superhero.

Wonder Girl: Best of all the Teen Titans!

Nick Cardy, Teen Titans #1 (February 1966)

This gorgeous Nick Cardy panel of Wonder Girl showing up the rest of the Teen Titans appeared in Teen Titans #1, way back in February of 1966.  Those were not simpler times.  John F. Kennedy had been assassinated almost three years earlier, the Vietnam War raged in Southeast Asia (the same month this comic came out saw both the Tay Dinh and the Go Dai massacres), John Lennon made his infamous claim that the Beatles were "bigger than Jesus" and a gunshot felled James Meredith during the March Against Fear to encourage African Americans to register to vote.   War, assassinations and riots lay ahead in the next few years as a nation threatened to tear itself apart.  Above it all soared Wonder Girl, held aloft by the hopes of youth in post-war America, amid the fast-fading ghosts of Camelot, the dreams of the Civil Rights Movement, the high-tech hopes of the Space Race, and the attempt at making a Great Society.

How could you not love Wonder Girl?  In fact,* will fist fight at high noon on the corner of 3^rd Avenue and Pine Street any sucker who doesn’t like her.  All right, I’m just kidding.  I never get up that early.  We’ll have to fight sometime later in the afternoon, or perhaps just before dinner time.

No, really, Wonder Girl really is a wonder.  Out of all the Teen Titans, she gets the biggest kick out of having powers, being young, being a girl.  The latter would be difficult for the others as they’re all boys, but all gender considerations aside, the 1960s Wonder Girl is pure joy.  She’s a pleasure seeker who finds pleasure almost everywhere, in the smallest things.  Like simply being able to fly.  That’s the kind of true happiness that doesn’t require a lot of extraneous elements; the rest of us—those who aren’t vivacious young Amazons capable of flight-- can get that a similar feeling from running (if we’re runners) or drawing (if we’re artists).  Or whatever it is we like to do with the least fuss. 

Her self-confidence is refreshing, as well.  Being a Titan means she’s probably not the smartest person you’re likely to meet.  She’s more into dancing than reading, for example.  She probably favors Frankie and Annette beach musicals over French Nouvelle Vague cinema, the British invasion over minimalist composers.  There’s nothing wrong with any of that.  It all just goes to show Wonder Girl is comfortable within herself.  And that makes her a positive role model in my book.  A girl to learn from.  Love who you are, love what you do, love life itself.

In the vintage Teen Titans, which are generally easy, breezy, carefree reads about teens who want to help the world rather than tear it apart, Wonder Girl is by far my favorite character.  If DC should ever bring her back, they need to bring back this version or someone similar.  More light.  That’s what’s needed.  More light, fewer shadows.  

*Not in fact.  But you can treat me to lunch.

Old comics on Comixology

Living in Japan, I don't have easy access to the latest American comics.  Japanese comics, yeah.  I can walk over to Lawson and buy tons of those.  But for American comics, I have to go all the way to Tokyo to visit Blister.  Fortunately, I don't buy a lot of new monthlies.  I do, however, buy lots of hardcovers of things like Nexus, Creepy, Eerie and softcovers of things like Swamp Thing, New Mutants, Uncanny X-Men and the like.  For those, I go through Amazon.jp.  Very fast and it's fun to get boxes even if I know what's in them.  The delivery guy and I have a great relationship, too.

In fact, the last time I ordered something from Amazon.jp, he recognized my name and brought it to the wrong apartment-- my old place, which is right across the street from my new place.  He thought he was doing me a snappy favor.  Poor guy was very apologetic once we got things straightened out.

Anyway, the point is, if you live in Japan, unless you happen to be in a location convenient to Blister, digital comics are your best bet for keeping up with the American sequential world.  Comixology carries almost everything.  I've been feeding my Walking Dead habit there, for example.  It's not perfect.  You don't actually own the comics even though you pay the same amount someone would if he or she went to a physical store and bought a physical copy there.  You're paying $1.99, $2.99, $3.99 or more for simply a license to read the comic on your computer (via Comixology's reader, which has its own positives and negatives), or on your iPhone (which is pretty cool if you're waiting for a doctor or a bus).  I won't kid you and say that concept doesn't suck.  If I pay for something, I want to own it outright, without limitations.

Well, I suppose I could order print copies online from other sources, but then I'd have to wait two weeks or more to read what you can read on the same day it hits the shelves.  Like I said, I live in Japan.  These are just little things I've weighed and my conclusion is Comixology is the way for me to go.  Or Dark Horse Digital, which is similar but exclusive to Dark Horse comics.  These are the ways I buy my comics.

Still, I love to read the old stuff more than the new stuff...  Well, Comixology can help you out there, too.  DC and Marvel are constantly adding their back catalog to Comixology.  It seems they focus a lot on back issues related to events in current titles so they can bundle them all together in special sales events meant to increase interest in their current product, but they're bulking up some of the ancient books I like to talk about here.

Let's see--  just recently I bought a bunch of the universe-spawning Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Fantastic Four, the complete first volume of Swamp Thing (twenty-four issues featuring Len Wein, Bernie Wrightson and Nestor Redondo, among others), the first two years or so of the Alan Moore version, the first seven issues of New Mutants plus the original Marvel Graphic Novel (a bargain at $3.99), some 1960s-vintage Teen Titans, two issues of the first volume of X-Men drawn by Jim Steranko, some Neal Adams Batman, John Byrne's Next Men, plus a lot of random stuff I can't remember right now because I'm at work and not at home where I can read my comics.  Many of these I own in collected editions and the like, but now I have a nice collection of really sweet old comics I can talk about here.

So expect a lot of Swamp Thing, New Mutants and Teen Titans coming your way.  And a lot of Jack Kirby.  Which I will analyze, deconstruct, poke affectionate fun at and generally mess around with.

You know, same crap as I always do here.  Only shinier.

The Real Super Power Couple: Changeling and Terra

Okay, let's take a break from the wholesome goodness of Cindy Lee Crunch-- the new cereal from Post that's part of your complete breakfast-- for a walk on the wild side.

A few weeks ago, in another example of that company's typical deft touch with public relations, the DC Comics website posted an adorable list of their top 10 "Super Power Couples."  As you can see from the comments attached to it comic fans are in nearly complete agreement with the choice for top couple.  Celebrating love and all that.  It's what we do best online.  Unfortunately, what everyone seems to be overlooking in their rush to praise is this list is flawed.  There's a serious omission that calls into question its integrity as an objective document.  Tim Beedle, the lucky cat who compiled it, left out the most important DC love match of them all:  Changeling and Tara "Terra" Markov.

The young ones.  Darling, they're the young ones.  And the young ones shouldn't be afraid to live, love while the flame is strong.  For he's a chronic sexual harasser and she's a manipulative psychopath.  They're not Joanie Cunningham and Chachi Arcola, that's for sure.  More like Benny Hill meets Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme.  Yet all the world loves a lover, or so I'm told by songs and drunks.  So in that spirit, let's take a look back at romance.  Let's take a look back at love.  Let's take a look back at a relationship so perverse Caligula himself looked up from the bowels of Hell and barfed on his toga.

Setting the tone for their relationship earl

Terra-- or, in her civilian guise, Tara Markov-- first pops up in Teen Titans #26 (December 1982).  To foreshadow her villainous ways, artist George Perez puts Galactus ear-horns on her costume.  But to obscure matters, he also slaps her between the eyes with a large orange version of that weird tuning fork thing Black Bolt wears on his head.  Form before function, I suppose.  Changeling greets the visibly distraught Terra with a cheerful, "Hi, honey -- what's your problem?  Lose your boyfriend?  Come to Uncle Changeling -- I can help you if something's wrong!"  Nice.  His first flip reference to incestuous molestation and their relationship is just seconds old.  It just never occurs to him during that endless mental video-loop of the Playboy Mansion grotto that substitutes for his thought process to simply say, "Hey, you look like you're in trouble.  How can I help?"

We find out in Teen Titans #27 (February 1983) Changeling's actually been stalking Terra for several days.  And it's in this issue when unable to contain his animal lusts (literal), he transforms into an octopus and wraps his loving tentacles around her, despite Terra's very loud verbal protests.  This sets the pattern for their interactions for the rest of her very short, very violent life.

Molly Ringwald forever!  If your store don't
got Molly Ringwald, then your store could
use some fixin'!

What exactly is the deal with Terra?  Sure, she looks like a blonde Molly Ringwald circa the first season of Facts of Life, but she's actually a demented chain-smoker in league (and in bed) with the Titans' dread enemy, Deathstroke the Terminator.  Terra not only likes her guys less horny than Changeling, she also prefers them decades older.  Entries later found in her diary by the Titans indicate an unhealthy fixation on George Burns's withered physique and whether or not he was still "capable," as she put it.  Perez calls her insane.  She scores pretty high on Dr. Robert D. Hare's Psychopathology Checklist, Revised.  As a layperson, I would never dream of applying my poor understanding of a diagnostic tool to an actual human being, but in Terra's case, it's a fun exercise and it beats explanations like Deathstroke gave her some of his crazy-juice, or she was mentally affected by some kind of magical substance when she got her earth-moving powers.

Comic books love to deal in simplistic moral dichotomies, good versus evil.  In real life, it's rarely that simple.  Of course we can use "evil" as a catch-all explanation for malevolent actions, but in some cases these are undertaken by people with with what they consider good intentions.  Terra, on the other hand, has nothing but the worst intentions.  She's cunning, manipulative, lies, demonstrates few signs of empathy or remorse and blames others for her shortcomings.  Then there are the infrequent murderous rages.  She's a much more satisfying character if she's allowed simply to be a psychopath from the get-go because it's so diametrically opposed to her looks and comic book archetype-- which, as we'll see, she'll later badmouth in a moment that exists as a satirical comment on all the Kitty Prydes and Jubilees and kid sister tag-alongs so popular in American comics.  Some people are seriously bent for reasons we just cannot fathom, and they sometimes come in the guise of people we love.  That's Terra all over.

Changeling tries his subtle approach for once.

Terra and Deathstroke plan for the gerontophiliac girl to infiltrate the Titans and destroy them from the inside.   For her, it means willfully but never gracefully subjecting herself to Changeling's increasingly desperate sexual ploys.  Playing on his naivete-- to paraphrase Nabokov, Changeling is as naive as only a pervert can be-- she invites him to her shabby tenement apartment, shows him an adorable, wholesome new look and convinces the smitten kid to put her on the roster.  So as of Teen Titans #30 (April 1983), despite Cyborg's and Raven's misgivings and holes in her biography so huge even Changeling can't ignore them-- as much as he'd like to plug them with a certain part of his anatomy-- she's a Titan.

Even though they have a long and honored tradition of bone-headedness, the Titans don't immediately let Terra in on all their secrets.  She's unwilling to share much about herself, and as a result, it takes a while for the group to accept her fully.  And she complains about this.  A lot.  In Teen Titans #34 (September 1983), she and the Deathstroke stage a fake fight to speed up the trust-building process.  At the end of the issue, Terra and Deathstroke  join to gloat their impending success and Terra's whining and moping prove to be merely the theatrics of a consummate grifter.  Kid's got acting chops at 16 that would put Jodie Foster's to shame.

I forget when this happens.  Yes, even his teacher.

For the next few issues, nothing much happens.  Terra doesn't appear in some of them, other menaces occupy the Titans.  We do get to meet Terra's brother, Geo-Force of the Outsiders in Teen Titans #37 (December 1983), but in #39 (February 1984), there's a sequence that finally reveals the true Terra in all her manipulative glory.  It starts in the middle of the issue, after the Titans have defeated some minions of Brother Blood (another guy who frequently has it in for them).  Terra complains again about not being trusted and then Perez starts drawing close-ups of Terra's eyes interspersed with black and white panels shaped like a traditional TV screen.  She's wearing special "contact lens" cameras, and Perez illustrates this in a page of quick jump cuts that transition the story's time and setting to a few days later in Deathstroke's comfy ski lodge in some undisclosed rural setting-- where Terra's lounging around looking alarmingly like Jerri Blank from Strangers With Candy.  Smoking cigaretttes and watching Captain Kangaroo...

Okay, the smoking part is true, not sure about the Captain Kangaroo thing.  Deathstroke is a major Statler Brothers fan, though.  It's true. I can't remember which comic I read that in, but I'm sure I did.  Now maybe I'm wrong about the two of them sleeping together, but from her attire-- a brief silk robe that she casually allows to flap open-- I feel justified in making that assumption.  They're obviously quite comfortable with her near-nudity, and there's a shivery little moment where Terra picks up a photo of Deathstroke's family and asks, "Hey, Honey... who are these people in the pic with you?"

They just allow this.

This leads to an exchange as to whether or not Deathstroke is "going soft" on her, and he has to prove he isn't by holding his own in an outdoor sparring session that is all too obviously a visual metaphor for something else, kind of in the same way those old movies would substitute footage of a train going into a tunnel after the two lovers embrace, or a rocket launch, or two monkeys doing it in the zoo.  Terra opens the earth to consume Deathstroke, he finds hot lava there but escapes by shooting his staff into it, which sets off an explosion.  Both spent, Terra applauds and the pair exchange mutual compliments.  It ends with a little pillow talk about how Terra wants to kill all the Titans and a close up of her heavily made up face, a cigarette between her fingers.

But what about poor little Changeling?  With almost constant access to Terra, there's practically nothing she can say that he won't turn into innuendo or sexual invitation.  And when he's not hitting on her, he's consistently harassing his other female teammates, usually right in front of Terra.

Classy.

He directs one of his classier come-ons at Starfire in Tales of the Teen Titans #42 (May 1984), the beginning of the end for Terra.

Starfire's just finished a photoshoot at Donna Troy's photography studio when Changeling barges in, demands she strip naked in front of him, then asks to marry her because he wants to have 128 and a half kids with her.  You know, "Let's screw each other over one hundred times."  Although if you think about it just a teensy bit, he's a green shape-shifting mutant and she's an alien of unknown biological function; perhaps they could achieve that litter in a single attempt.  But what makes this Changeling moment so magically sweet is how he says this not only in front of Terra, but also Starfire's boyfriend, Robin.

This is also the same issue Terra finally gives in and kisses Changeling.  It's an ambiguous moment because we can't be sure if he's finally melted her heart or if she's just doing this to make it that much sweeter when she finally cuts his out and shows it to him before eating it.  Perhaps even Terra herself doesn't know.  But considering where Changeling's mouth has no doubt been, it's probably the bravest thing this poor sick girl has ever done.

This moment will come back to haunt us later.  Kiss aside, Changeling's preferred method for interacting with women is simply transforming into various animals then just copping a feel.  Why ask permission?  Just jump right on, kid!  Telling your victims how much they're secretly enjoying it makes these moments all the more delightful for everyone involved.  The phallic snake is his favorite guise.  He uses this form twice against Terra (that we're shown), but it's the second time-- post-kiss, when he's completely convinced they're a couple, no less-- that finally makes Terra snap.  It's amusing, really, to think the one thing that could un-do a scheme that's turned and twisted for so many issues would be Changeling's grabby ways, but the surprising thing is no one's tried to kill him before.  This time Terra can't help herself.  Even Changeling admits he might have carried things a bit too far.

Does she look as though she's enjoying this?

As if to prove the Titans to a member are only slightly smarter than Gomer Pyle, they still have no idea what's happening-- oh, Raven occasionally stared a little and talked about evil vibes, but did absolutely nothing to prevent the onrushing tragedy that comes to her as a complete surprise even after Terra attempts to kill Changeling after he humiliates her in the snow-- until Deathstroke himself shows up and takes down almost the entire team in Tales of the New Teen Titans #43 (June 1984).  Dick Grayson, having dumped his Robin identity, narrowly escapes, but can't figure out how Deathstroke could have learned all the Titans' secrets.  No, it couldn't have been that furtive, unpleasant girl they didn't know all that well, the one they invited into the group and kept angrily demanding to know their real names and addresses until they finally caved, just a day or two before Deathstroke's attack, which must have been a complete coincidence.  Grayson's so thick, Deathstroke's supposedly deceased wife has to show up and laboriously spell it all out  to the former kid detective.  Trained by the Batman, he was.  World's greatest detective.  For pacing's sake, Wolfman and Perez edited out the already-drawn three page sequence where she acts it out for ex-Robin's benefit using hand puppets.

The rest of the Titans-- no brain trust-- still can't understand what's happening to them.  Everyone seems convinced Deathstroke recruited Terra and somehow mind-controlled her, but he's like, "Whoa, hold on, folks, she's the one who came to me with this whole crazy idea."  Changeling's so caught up in his fairy tale-slash-porn video romance Terra has to literally tell him to his face-- he's an elephant at the time-- she hates his guts and has always hated his guts.  She then tries kill him for the second time before he comes to understand she might be somewhat less than in love with him.  And even then you get the sense if she just backs off a little on the violence and mayhem, he's just going to morph into a bunny and trying to tickle her nose with his powder-puff tail.

The Titans are such dopes after Terra finally destroys herself in a rage focused solely on them, they dip into their team activity funds and build a monument to her, topped with a marble bust of her Ringwaldian countenance.  Her bust has a kind of stunned look to it, as if even she can't believe what a group of idiots they are.  Changeling becomes moody and violent and takes to brooding over-- and given his inclinations, no doubt doing other things with his hands, lotion and tissues-- a gigantic photographic portrait of Terra, then grousing at his friends.  Which is an improvement over trying to screw them, I suppose, but is no more endearing.  Apparently, you can have either randy, inappropriate Changeling or morose, accusatory, masturbatory Changeling, but nothing in between.  It would be emotionally affecting if Changeling had at any point in this story been remotely sympathetic.  Or simply less dripping with slime.

Terra and Changeling.  Star-crossed lovers or a psycho and a sicko?  I suppose it depends on whether or not you're a romantic at heart.  But they definitely deserve to be on DC's list.

My Teen Titans, your Teen Titans, everyone's Teen Titans!

There is no inappropriate story context for this image!

Special note to anyone who finds this from Comic Vine, before you rip me a new one-- the "Wonder Girl goes to Supergirl's high school" never happened in an actual comic.  It would have happened had I ever written one.  But hey, if enough of you pester Dan DiDidio care of DC Comics, maybe we can make it happen for real!

A while back I came up with the stupidest idea for a Teen Titans series.  I mean stupid in that it's an idea of complete genius, a rare beauty that flowered only once in my mind and then perished from the cold winds of the endless winter season we call modern comics.  Also, who really cares what ideas some dumb comic blogger comes up with way over here in a secret corner of Japan?

But I love the original Titans so much, I wanted to try to capture a bit of the magic and fun of these old comics, updated for today's audience that doesn't exist for such things.  It all started several million years ago when comic fans-- including me-- were complaining about the "Girls Gone Wild" version of Supergirl running around the DC universe and the wanton destruction of Cassandra Cain as a character for seemingly no good reason.  My negative feelings got so out of hand I had to turn my thoughts to creative ventures with a positive vibe.  And that's when my brain broke like the fragile egg it is and out spilled a concept for a Cass Cain/Supergirl team-up book I brilliantly called The Brave and the Bold, after the old DC team-up title.  But my Cass and Supergirl were somewhat altered from the existing versions.  I wanted to turn the angry teen party girl and the "I just want to be normal" cliches on their heads.

My Supergirl is incredibly smart, cheerful, helpful and endlessly idealistic-- her main flaw.  Too much heart.  Instead of being surly and "trying to find her way in the world" or whatever excuse writers gave for the crappy behavior of the official Supergirl, this Supergirl is one of those overworked activist type teens, interested in saving the world from itself to an unrealistic degree.  In her civilian identity, she's class president, on the debate team, the yearbook staff, the art club, the math club, easily winning top honors.  In her heroic guise, she flies around the world doing anything and everything to improve conditions for the downtrodden and oppressed.  Not so much fighting crime as fighting a Quixotic battle for the impossible dream of our world as a love-filled utopia where no one fears for his or her life or goes to bed hungry.  Superman is proud of her, but somewhat worried, too.  What if she ever becomes disillusioned?  What if she burns herself out?  Given her emotional investment in everything she does, these are very real dangers.

It's too much for one person, even one who can fly supersonically around the world and hear a rabbit's heartbeat from a mile away.  When Supergirl discovers a new Batgirl prowling around Gotham City and learns a bit about her past and her solitary ways, of course she's instantly smitten with the idea of befriending her.  After all, Superman and Batman have a history of partnership.  And this silent Batgirl sure could use a friend.  She becomes Supergirl's latest project, but at first things don't go so well.

Batgirl in this story can speak, but English (or any kind of verbalization, for that matter) isn't her first language so she prefers not to use it unless absolutely necessary.  She's kinesthetically fluent and her native tongue the Massive  Beatdown dialect of the language we call Ass-Whuppin'.  She's not very interested in being friends with Supergirl.  She feels she doesn't need friends, especially when there are so many criminal asses out there for the kicking.  In normal conversations, Batgirl's taciturn and totally lacking a sense of humor.

In all other aspects of her heroic life, she's also scarily violent.  Batman likes her that way.  He's taken her amazing abilities and given her a mission to which she's totally dedicated, suicidally so thanks to deep-seated feelings of guilt at having murdered a man for her biological father, David Cain.  But she can't shake Supergirl and deep down, she really does crave human contact and validation of her innate goodness-- a quality she fears she lacks.  So Batgirl eventually accepts the partnership.

At this point I had a huge adventure planned for the two of them that I'm not going into because I'm going to rework it for my own purposes.  But believe me, it's awesome.  Then I decided not to not stop there.  I'd been reading the Showcase Presents The Teen Titans books-- highly recommended because they're full of Nick Cardy artwork-- and doing angry little doodles of Batgirl kicking Robin's ass in retaliation for DC's grotesque depiction of her in Robin #150 and 151.  Inspiration!  Yes!  A team book!  Wowee! That's dumb!  So dumb I had to develop it even further!

I decided my dopey version of Robin needed to join the fun.  He wouldn't let his adopted sister run around with Supergirl without involving himself somehow-- because he harbors unrequited love for Batgirl, who views him with contempt because he's less than half the weapon against crime she is.  He's also conflicted and jealous of her.  It's not that he's a terrible crime-fighter, it's just that both he and Batgirl know she's so much better.  Robin has more deductive skills, but Batgirl is a whirlwind of combat capability.  She may not be able to finish even the simplest crossword puzzle, but one-on-one with Robin she'd cream him in seconds flat.  And that's all that matters to her.

But Robin is persistent if nothing else and they're stuck with him.  Now they're a trio and no longer just The Brave and the Bold.  And other young heroes are starting to notice.

Enter Wonder Girl, fresh from Paradise Island, on her first visit to the modern world.  Bold, strong, fun-loving and almost completely ignorant of "appropriate" behavior, Wonder Girl enrolls at Supergirl's high school and immediately overturns the social order.  She wants to participate in everything, including varsity football.  One subplot has her enthusiastically joining in football practice, breaking the coach's mighty heart with her reckless playing style and open field tackling.  Who is this girl?  How did she learn to do that and why is she so fast and strong?

In one of my more developed sub-plots-- I even scripted several pages of it-- losses at the state level dog the coach's career.  He's known locally as the man who can't win the Big One, and feels the team is perpetually one or two pieces short of that elusive perfect season.  They've come so tantalizingly close so many times, he doesn't know if he can take disappointment anymore.  He lobbies hard to get her onto the team, but Wonder Girl is too busy pursuing her own fun-- while she enjoys the physicality of the sport, to her mind she's already proven her superiority to the sweaty, fragile boys in their armored suits and moved onto to other flights of fancy.  Music, parties and all kinds of all-ages-reader-safe hedonistic pursuits, in a joyful, infectious sort of way that wins the admiration of all who meet her.  Even loner Batgirl can't help but like this crazy chica.

Eventually, I would have had Cyborg from the later Titans join along with Aqualad, Speedy, Kid Flash and the perpetually randy Changeling, who would become everyone's favorite punching bag in place of Robin, who earns some respect along the way.  Other DC teen heroes as well.  While they form a social network of friends and acquaintances-- some liking each other, some disliking-- they wouldn't all share every adventure, just the ones appropriate to their powers.  You might have Cyborg, Speedy and Kid Flash teaming with Robin as their leader in one issue, or Batgirl and Wonder Girl in another.  Sometimes Supergirl would take a number of them with her into space or to Tokyo (being a world traveler, Supergirl is something of a fashionista as well) for some kind of crazy cross-cultural adventure or wherever trouble appears.

My plan was largely to emphasize characterization over plot and fun over angst, but also to deal with serious problems on occasion, too.  Work in different shades and emotional palettes as the plots demand.  While the tone and the positive portrayal of the main characters-- even while poking fun at them-- would have been something of a throwback to a simpler time, the series would have also acknowledged current issues.  For one thing, if I wrote a solo Cassandra Cain series, the tone would be a lot more Lady Snowblood/Battle Royale/Kill Bill than Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I see her storyline as involving her death wish, her guilt, the parental issues-- the dad who raised her to kill, the mother who wants either to kill her or corrupt her-- and all sorts of horrific things.  For another, Supergirl could never ignore things like drugs, depression, bullying and other issues I won't get into here.  The character as I conceive her demands involvement and doesn't shy away from handling things that might be beyond even her capabilities.

Well, we'll have a robot for a king long before I get the chance to develop all these ideas.  That's probably a good thing!

Happy National Comic Book Day!

It's finally here!  National Comic Book Day!  The turkey is roasting in the oven, the cranberries are doing whatever it is cranberries do, Wonder Girl is dancing around with her headphones on while Robin, Speedy and Kid Flash glower unappreciatively from along the far wall.  I didn't get you anything.  Sorry.  I've just been so busy reading old Teen Titans and back issues of Batgirl while pretending the DC reboot doesn't exist.  Also, my hours have been severely cut at work-- I'm a bad employee, I'm rude to everyone and my attitude stinks-- so I don't really have the money to buy new comics for deconstruction/review/mockery/gifts for my reader.  Tightening the belt, loosening the shoes, selling my toupees.

But I do have some great stuff coming up.  There's yet another entry about Cassandra Cain, some Planet of the Apes nonsense, possibly a visit with Mars's top teen and so forth.  More importantly, October will be our 2nd Annual Spookey Month here at When Comic Books Ruled the Earth as well as my Super-Gaijin '76 blog.  We'll be celebrating some gruesome horror comics along with that wonderful punk combo from Hamamatsu, Japan, Spookey.  In the meantime, in honor of Gnarrk, please enjoy this NBC promo featuring Phil Hartman as the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer:

Gnarrk: Smartest of the Teen Titans

We've pretty much established the original Teen Titans are no brain trust. No think tank. Even by the standards of typical teenage behavior, the Titans are a pretty dim-witted bunch. With the addition of Gnarrk, a Cro-Magnon ("Early Modern Human" or "Anatomically Modern Human" in today's terminology) teen from 20,000 years ago, their collective intelligence quotient took a mega-leap upward. Unfortunately, as we see in this page from Teen Titans # 39 (1972), the other male members of the Titans find Gnarrk's vocabulary troubling.  From his pose and facial expression, Robin takes it particularly hard.  See, growing up in a circus family and then becoming the ward and partner of Batman left him with little time for things like education and self-esteem, or developing and expressing ideas that aren't simple re-wordings of things he's just heard.

What Gnarrk should have said in the second panel is, "Donna's hip to my scene, Lilith, baby.  I wasn't making like some crazy Sir Lancelot on a Camelot trip.  My bag is taking it easy with the muscle stuff and using my noggin, dig?"

The International Museum of Obscure Comic Book Characters, Exhibit 2: Johnny Carpetbag

Johnny Carpetbag. Yes, that's his name. No one knows if his parents gave it to him, or if he came by it during his years of riding the rails during the Great Depression. Created by the amazing Bob Haney-- aided and abetted by Art Saaf and Nick Cardy-- Johnny Carpetbag first appeared in Teen Titans #42. If he's ever been in another DC comic in the years since, I'm not aware of it.

I'm surprised some hot-shot writer hasn't revived Johnny and turned into something horrifying. Johnny Carpetbag would make the perfect villain for some 12-issue mega-crossover where he powers up to appropriately bad-assian levels then stalks the grown-up Teen Titans, kills whichever one editorial deems unnecessary to Time-Warner's bottom line yet important enough to have impact on nostalgia hounds and hardcore geeks, then dies himself in some horrifically violent way at the hands of some character usually not known for doing such things, which somehow reboots the entire DC universe and launches a comic starring an "updated" version of said character.  Lots of gore, too.  A comic book is nothing without evisceration depicted in all its scarlet glory.  If there's anything Teen Titans #42 lacks, it's evisceration.

Of course, this completely hypothetical yet oh-so-dreamy narrative would be accompanied by interviews with the creative team where they explain why Johnny Carpetbag was never used up to his full potential and then pat each other on the back for sullying what was once a pleasantly bizarre little comic and, by extension, every comic its characters ever appeared in before or after.

While we're waiting for the return of the new and improved Johnny Carpetbag, we can still enjoy the Teen Titans in "Slaves of the Emperor Bug." It's a simple story, with an insanely random plot.


Ah.  The opening sequence, tranquil and with just a hint of blossoming young romance.  It lulls us into thinking the rest of the book will be sane.  Wonder Girl and Speedy (pre-heroin addiction) bid on a beetle-shaped brooch. What's really cool is how Speedy refers to Wonder Girl's "little Amazonian heart." What a smooth operator. Her heart will play a major role in the story. Her metaphorical one. Don't you imagine it gets pretty old for Wonder Girl to always have the male Titans condescending to her like that?  Especially when her "little Amazonian strength" could have Speedy shaped into a human pretzel if she so desired?

Notice how the auctioneer instantly recognizes Johnny Carpetbag. Not just because he's holding the object he took his name from, but apparently the guy's a sort of local character and held in fairly high regard by the citizens of whatever small town this is.

And why not? They think he's a righteous dude. For a dirty hobo. Who has an unlimited income. Maybe he's Howard Hughes in disguise, Wonder Girl! Give him a ride to Las Vegas and see if he puts you in his will!


The golden beetle brooch soon shows its magical powers-- it tells Wonder Girl and her less gullible friend Lilith it once was a mighty warrior king and needs to return to the Yucatan so it can regain its former glory. This leads to the entire team heading down to Central America where they run into all sorts of trouble in the jungle. Here's where things get ever so slightly... um... far-fetched.

Kid Flash almost loses a leg to a hungry caiman, Wonder Girl fights a jaguar then sees a fish swallow her beloved brooch. When a hungry eagle snatches up the fish, Wonder Girl gives chase only to run afoul of a poisonous snake. The eagle flies directly overhead while the Titans are looking for Wonder Girl, and Speedy shoots the fish out of its talons. Non-powered but quick-thinking Titan Mal cuts open the fish and finds not Wonder Girl but the beetle brooch inside. What luck!

In Lilith's hands it leads the gang to the dying Wonder Girl and Robin injects her with all the anti-venom he can find in his little first aid kit. That first aid kit really comes in handy on this trip, so I recommend when you take a magical golden beetle brooch into some swamp or jungle you take one as well.

Reunited, the bold super-teens enter a skull-shaped island or temple or palace. And here our pal Johnny Carpetbag makes his second appearance.


What's this?  He's not the nice guy he first appeared to be?  And Wonder Girl's golden warrior is actually a giant rhinoceros beetle?  His name is Lord Beetle, and his love for her is still true, even if he plans to devour her friends.  It's at this point Wonder Girl begins to suspect she just may have been had.  Gesturing grandly, still smelling of what we can only assume is the accumulated sweat and urine from dozens of years sleeping on steaming sewer gratings and in abandoned automobiles, Johnny Carpetbag explains everything.


I really like Wonder Girl.  She's endlessly vivacious and physically strong beyond reason, but not the smartest person in the room.  In any room, including rooms filled with circus clowns or even the cadavers of circus clowns.  Ever so slowly, she comes to the realization she may have screwed up.  In fairness, none of the Teen Titans are exactly what you might call "geniuses."  I'm not sure any of them exhibit even merely average intelligence.  That's why it's so entertaining when Wonder Girl and Johnny Carpetbag start to debate the morality of a carnivorous diet.

As if he's spent many a late night contemplating this exact discussion with Wonder Girl, Carpetbag offers the what I consider the most compelling pro-meat argument-- we're all animals and most animals eat other animals.  This includes as apex predator giant talking insects with magic powers eating intellectually-challenged teens with super powers.  Or vice versa.  One devours the other in the great circle of life.  Wonder Girl, on the other hand, employs a kind of moral relativity and draws the line at the consumption of people, but thinks nothing of resorting to violence to drive home her point.

I'm sorry to say vegans and vegetarians are not represented in this debate, but I'm sure they could come up with plenty of reasons why both Wonder Girl and Johnny Carpetbag should embrace cruelty-free alternatives.


Bondage fetishists no doubt also enjoyed this issue, or at least two panels from it.  And here's where the icky "other plans" line of dialogue falls.  Care exercise your imaginations and come up with a few ideas of what these "other plans" might be?  Unless they involve sending Wonder Girl back to the United States rather than long white gowns with veils of lace, I don't.

After tying up Wonder Girl with "royal filament" (from his royal butt spinneret... mercifully not shown), Lord Beetle lets her go to wander his temple alone.  But soon enough Wonder Girl plays to her strengths-- not thinking or debating.  No, she doesn't care for those.  Dancing and general hedonism are more her bag.  Okay, while in other stories, Wonder Girl often gives into her more fun-loving impulses, doing the frug, the mashed potato, the monkey, the Watusi or the Madison won't help her in this situation, so instead-- egged on by a talking skeletal salamander lying in pit-- she grabs a golden double-bladed sword and pulls with all her Amazonian might.


And so ends the life of Johnny Carpetbag.  Not with a bang or a whimper, but an "I-- I tripped!" and an "AIEEEEEEE!"  Because when push comes to shove, or trip, if you're dumb enough to work for a giant insect, you're probably dumb enough to destroy yourself accidentally.  Even poor, dim-witted Wonder Girl knows better!