The New Titans #79 (September 1991)

New editor Jonathan Peterson came on board The New Titans around the seventieth issue and was all, “Hey guys! I have this great new direction we can take the Titans!” As he said this, he kicked his copy of X-men with Cable on the cover under the couch. “Get this: time traveling Teen Titans from the future! It’s going to . . . ooooggglllerrrruuuggh.” That’s the sound of somebody coming in their pants. You might not be familiar with it because the sound effect isn’t used often in comic books. “Oh!” he exclaimed while squirming uncomfortably in his now sticky pants, “And the team leader’s name will be Jon! Get it! Like me! Plus we’ll bring back Phoenix from the dead!” After a long argument in which Jonathan kept insisting that he did not say “Phoenix”, everybody realized he meant Terra.

This makes about nine or ten issues without the Teen Titans in it. Okay, Nightwing has been in it a little bit. And Donna Troy just returned to be kidnapped by an unknown person immediately. And Cyborg is back but he’s lost all trace of his humanity and is just a remote controlled robot. It’s all fairly typical of the Slash and Burn tactics of a new editor brought in to revitalize sales.

The Officious Little Toad isn’t wrong.

But the thing is . . . I want him to be wrong. I want Officer Hall to be correct in his assessment that the Titans are heroes and they’re good for the city. It’s just that . . . they’re not. Marv Wolfman fucked up by writing story after story of the Titans being attacked by angry family members or butthurt villains during which large parts of New York were destroyed. I wouldn’t even blame the occasional attack on Titans Tower by a disgruntled second cousin of a member if the Titans occasionally helped the city. But they haven’t. They may have stopped one or two muggers and perhaps a bank robbery. That’s it.

According to Rebirth, Geoff Johns has decided that Watchmen’s grimness ruined the DC Universe because it was a critical success. That’s not Watchmen’s fault. Watchmen was a critical success because it was so fucking well written. Is Alan Moore to blame for DC Comics getting the wrong message and deciding that grimdark was where it was at, no matter how shitty the writing? Was Frank Miller’s Dark Knight to blame for DC deciding to make Batman dour and mostly unlikeable on a personal level? I don’t think so. I think this kind of shit by Marv Wolfman and others is what fucked DC Comics.

I wouldn’t mind a story about a vindictive Councilwoman trying to get the Titans out of the city if the previous stories were about the Titans being heroes. Then I could root for the Titans and high five myself as the Councilwoman got her comeuppance. But I have to agree with the Officious Little Toad and Councilwoman Alderman. The Titans are bad for New York City. If Marv Wolfman wanted to bring real life consequences into the DC Universe of heroes, at least do it in a way where the heroes aren’t so obviously dangerous and destructive. At least when Adrian Veidt destroyed New York City, he was doing it to save the world. The Titans just destroy it every time they have a spat with a relative.

I think this is the first appearance of the Trinity of Sin in a stained glass window in a church in Hollywood!


Captain Hall, proving that he's not smarter than the Officious Little Toad, makes the worst analogy ever.

If I started to tabulate the amount of times Councilwoman Alderman acted heroically to save the city from the Titans, I'm pretty sure she'd rack up a higher Hero Score than the Titans in just a few issues.