Titans Companion Volume 2 Preview by TwoMorrows Publishing

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TwoMorrows Publishing $26.95 in the US ISBN 978-1-893905-87-0

Following in the footsteps of the critically acclaimed Titans Companion, The Titans Companion Volume 2 picks up where its predecessor left off, covering every incarnation of the Teen Titans from the mid-’90s through their return to the top of the sales charts! Featuring interviews with Geoff Johns, Mike McKone, Phil Jimenez, Peter David, and other Titans alumni, The Titans Companion Volume 2 also showcases art by George Pérez, Mike Wieringo, Neal Adams, Tom Grummett, Todd Nauck and more! Plus: interviews with solo Titans writers Chuck Dixon, Mark Waid, John Byrne, and Karl Kesel! Sections on Young Justice and Outsiders! A comprehensive chapter on the Teen Titans animated series! More with Marv Wolfman and George Pérez! Featuring an all-new cover by Mike McKone, The Titans Companion Volume 2 completes any Titans fan’s collection!

ISBN-13: 978-1-893905-87-0 ISBN-10: 1-893905-87-X

52695

by Glen Cadigan

Raleigh, North Carolina

The Titans Companion Volume 2

CELEBRATING TITANS TEAMS PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE!

Titans2 Cover FInal:TC2_covers_out

by Glen

Cadigan

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Glen Cadigan, Editor • Mike McKone, Front Cover

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreward by Glen Cadigan ..............................................3 Roll Call ................................................................................4 The Pre-Teen Titans 2 ........................................................6 ROBIN Marv Wolfman ................................................................12 Neal Adams ......................................................................13 Chuck Dixon......................................................................15 SUPERBOY Karl Kesel ..........................................................................27 Tom Grummett ................................................................35 IMPULSE Mark Waid ........................................................................38 Mike Wieringo ..................................................................47 WONDER GIRL John Byrne ........................................................................49 TEEN TITANS II Dan Jurgens ......................................................................52 George Pérez ....................................................................60 YOUNG JUSTICE Todd Dezago ....................................................................62 Peter David........................................................................66 Todd Nauck ......................................................................75 THE TITANS Phil Jimenez ......................................................................88 Peter David........................................................................91

Bill Walko, Layout, Logo & Design

John Byrne ........................................................................92 Devin Grayson ..................................................................94 Jay Faerber......................................................................106 Barry Kitson....................................................................117 NIGHTWING Chuck Dixon ..................................................................122 Devin Grayson................................................................130 OUTSIDERS Judd Winick ....................................................................136 Phil Jimenez....................................................................144 TEEN TITANS III Geoff Johns ....................................................................150 Mike McKone..................................................................160 Tom Grummett ..............................................................169 Judd Winick ....................................................................171 Geoff Johns ....................................................................173 Phil Jimenez....................................................................175 ONE YEAR LATER Geoff Johns ....................................................................178 Judd Winick ....................................................................182 TEEN TITANS GO! Sam Register ..................................................................187 Glen Murakami ..............................................................192 Marv Wolfman & George Pérez ..................................210 J. Torres ............................................................................214 Todd Nauck ....................................................................221

Phil Jimenez/Glen Murakami, Back Cover • Marcus Mebes, Cover Colors • John Morrow, Publisher

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roll call

Titans Together! Titans Membership: 1996-2006

Argent: Following her 16th birthday, Toni Monetti developed the ability to manifest plasma energy in solid forms. She is a half-human, half-alien hybrid, and has been a member of two Titans teams.

Robin: The third person to assume the title, Tim Drake became Batman’s partner after he deduced the true identities of Batman and Robin. He was the leader of the first grouping of his peers, Young Justice, and is currently the leader of the Teen Titans.

Risk: A natural risk-taker, Cody Driscoll’s alien heritage manifested itself after his 16th birthday. Following an adventure in outer space, he joined the team of Titans funded by Mr. Jupiter.

Superboy: A teenaged clone of Superman, Conner Kent first appeared following the death of the Man of Steel, and later joined the group Young Justice. He was a member of the Teen Titans when he sacrificed his life to save the universe.

Joto/Hotspot: Hailing from a middle-class background, Isaiah Crockett’s super-powers manifested themselves following his 16th birthday. Although he was later killed in the line of duty, he was revived using alien technology, and served as a member of the team of Titans funded by Mr. Jupiter.

Impulse/Kid Flash: The grandson of the second Flash, Bart Allen was raised in a virtual reality in the 30th Century before he was brought back in time to be cured of a life-threatening illness. He joined both the New Titans and Young Justice before becoming a member of the Teen Titans.

Prysm: Raised in a virtual reality environment on the moon of Titan, Prism is an half-human, half-alien hybrid who is able to refract light and use it as a weapon. Following her 16th birthday, she joined the team of Titans funded by Mr. Jupiter.

Wonder Girl: The second person to assume the title, Cassandra Sandsmark became Wonder Woman’s junior partner after she aided the Amazon in the defeat of various foes. She possesses the teenage equivalent of her mentor’s powers, and was briefly the leader of Young Justice. She is currently a member of the Teen Titans.

Atom: When Ray Palmer discovered a fragment of a white dwarf, he developed the ability to shrink to microscopic heights. Having been de-aged to a teenager during the events of Zero Hour, he later joined the team of Titans funded by Mr. Jupiter.

Secret: When Greta was murdered, her spirit became a warder which shepherds souls to the next world. Unaware of her true purpose, she was captured and detained by the DEO before she was liberated by Young Justice, whom she later joined. She currently has regained her human form.

Captain Marvel, Jr: When Freddie Freeman’s leg was damaged as a result of a battle involving Captain Marvel, the super-hero arranged for a portion of his power to be given to Freeman whenever he said the magic words, “Captain Marvel!” When the Teen Titans held a membership drive, the Junior Captain Marvel appeared and won a place on the team. He was also briefly a member of Titans L.A..

Arrowette: The daughter of a former crimefighter, Cissie King-Jones was raised from an early age to succeed where her mother had failed as a super-hero. Assuming her mother’s former identity of Arrowette, she first fought crime solo, then alongside Young Justice. She left the team following an incident in which she almost killed a murderer.

Fringe: A half-human/half-alien hybrid, Fringe is a being of immense strength and limited intelligence who is possessed by an otherworldly spirit that acts as his protector. He joined the Teen Titans upon being rescued by Prysm from the intergalactic bounty hunter, Jugular.

Empress: The only child of a secret agent, Anita Fite learned the practice of voodoo from her maternal grandmother after her mother’s death. Assuming the super-hero identity of Empress, she later joined Young Justice.

Omen: A former member of the original team of Titans, Lilith Clay developed mystic powers as an adult in addition to the psychic abilities she already possessed. Upon discovering that she was the daughter of Mr. Jupiter, she joined her father in developing a new team of Titans.

Li’l Lobo/Slobo: After he was de-aged to a teenager by Klarion, the Witch Boy, the intergalactic bounty hunter Lobo joined Young Justice as Li’l Lobo. When he later regained his proper age, a second Lobo which grew from a single drop of his blood joined the team as Slobo.

Mr. Jupiter: Formerly the world’s richest man, Loren Jupiter once used his fortune to fund the original Teen Titans. The father of Omen, Jupiter used his wealth to finance a new team of Titans in preparation for an alien invasion by the H’san Ntall. He is also the father of Titans’ villain Haze.

The Ray: Raised in darkness, Ray Terrill later discovered that he was the son of the original Ray, and that he could absorb and redirect light. He briefly joined Young Justice. 4

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pre-teen titans 2

The Pre-Teen Titans 2 Mythical Angels & Crystal Sidekicks Spinners The Story BehindTitans, the Second Generation

It all began with Robin. In 1983, Dick Grayson, the original teen sidekick, retired as Batman’s partner in The New Teen Titans (Vol. 1, #39), and later chose the adult identity of Nightwing. Before long, he was replaced in the role by Jason Todd, a tough, street kid who was caught in the act of stealing tires from the Batmobile. Reader response to the character was mixed, and in 1988, four years after his creation, fans voted, by a difference of 72 votes, to kill the character via a phone-in poll. After the decision, Batman was a solo crimefighter once again. In 1989, the first Tim Burton Batman film debuted, and that same year, Tim Drake made his initial appearance as a character in the pages of Batman #436 (Aug. 1989). In a flashback scene which occurred before the death of Dick Grayson’s parents, Drake was established as having met the future crimefighter and his family on a trip to the circus with his own family. It was revealed in subsequent issues that the Drakes were in attendance the very night that the Graysons were killed, and that the event traumatized the young child. As a result, he developed an unnatural fascination with both Batman and Robin, largely due to the former’s appearance at the crime scene.

Batman deals with the death of Robin in trading card artwork by Phil Jimenez. From the collection of Michael Lovitz. © DC Comics.

As time passed, Drake continued his hobby of studying the Dynamic Duo, and one night while watching television, he saw footage of the pair in battle. In order to defeat the Penguin, Robin used a specific maneuver—a quadruple somersault—which Drake had previously seen Dick Grayson use. Since members of the Flying Graysons were the only acrobats capable of performing such a feat, the young detective concluded that Dick Grayson must be Robin, and thus Bruce Wayne was Batman. Initially, Drake kept this information to himself, but once Jason Todd died and Batman’s behavior became more and more erratic, he concluded that Batman needed a Robin in order to stabilize his own self-destructive behavior. Drake approached Dick Grayson with his evidence and tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the crimefighter to once again become Robin. When Batman and Nightwing were later trapped in an explosion set by Two-Face, Drake realized that he had no other choice than to become Robin himself in order to rescue the two. Although Batman was initially furious at the decision and adamant that Robin should stay dead, he eventually relented and agreed to train Drake as his third Robin.

Tim Drake pleads his case to Nightwing following the death of Robin. From the collection of Michael Lovitz. © DC Comics.

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ROBIN

Chuck Dixon Tim Drake Spreads His Wings as the New Robin

[An industry pro with over twenty years experience, Chuck Dixon rose from the ranks of independent comics to work first for Marvel, then for DC on an impressive eleven-year stretch as the author of such titles as Robin, Nightwing, and Detective Comics. On January 29, 2007, Dixon was interviewed via phone by Glen Cadigan, and he copyedited the following transcript.]

CD: Oh, yeah. Somehow I got involved with a bunch of guys from Chicago, and did work for fanzines like Chronicle and FTP. A guy named George Breo was the first one to publish my work, and through him I met Chuck Fiala and Jim Engel. TTC: So did you learn anything while working in those fanzines? CD: Well, you learn by doing, and they had such low print runs and so little feedback [laughs] you really didn’t get too much constructive, or any kind of, criticism. And in those days, I had to draw all my own stuff, because still, to this day, the hardest thing for a comic writer to accomplish is to find an artist willing to go along with him. But by having to draw my own stuff, at least I learned the plight of the penciler, [and] what they had to put up with from writers. I learned that first hand, which I think is valuable for me.

TTC: Okay, Chuck, this is the “getting-to-know-you” part of the interview. Where are you from originally? CD: [The] Philadelphia area. TTC: How old were you when you first started to read comics? CD: Boy, I can’t even remember. It’s before I could read. [laughs] I basically learned to read from comics, so definitely pre-school. [Maybe] around four. TTC: Can you remember which books you would’ve read first?

TTC: How old were you when you took your first serious run at being a professional writer?

CD: I was really into the presuper-hero Marvels, all the Robin’s solo adventures began in the first of three solo mini-series written by Chuck Dixon. Art by Brian Bolland. © DC Comics. monster books. Y’know, Tales CD: I was probably twentyof Suspense, Strange Tales. two or twenty-three when I “Googam, Son of Goom,” that sort of thing. first started really trying to get interviews at the companies, and that was in the Seventies, when it was a horrible time to try TTC: At what point would you say that you decided you wanted to break into the business. to be a writer when you grew up? TTC: So what were you doing between your fanzine work and then?

CD: I really wanted to be a comic book artist, but I wasn’t talented or disciplined enough. I still wanted to be involved with comics on the creative end, so I got more interested in the writing, and kept taking runs at that.

CD: Everything. I drove an ice cream truck, I was a security guard, I was a janitor, I worked in a 7-11 as a cashier... Anything that would pay the rent.

TTC: Didn’t you have work published in fanzines when you were a kid?

TTC: Did you learn anything from those jobs that benefited you later on as a writer? 15

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CD: I think [for] any writer, if you get into writing too early, it’s not a good thing. In hindsight, I’m glad it took a while to get into writing, ’cause you get some human experiences, [and] you meet people. I don’t know so much that the jobs I worked at informed [me], although the 7-11 job, working graveyard shift, I met a lot of weirdoes, so that always helps in comic writing. But it’s also an impetus to continue writing, so I never have to go back to the everyday world. [laughs] I really wasn’t built for holding a regular job.

time. My full-time comic book writer career really begins there, because I got a fifty-page-a-month feature. TTC: How did you know Tim Truman? CD: I met him at conventions. [It’s] the same thing I tell guys now that want to break in: go to conventions and meet other professionals. I ran into him at conventions, and we got along, and he began to recommend me, mostly to Eclipse, because he was working there at the time. TTC: Was it the same story with Larry Hama?

TTC: What was your first professional sale? CD: The first professional sale I ever had was with an outfit called Countrywide, and it was a really crappy rip-off of Heavy Metal called Gasm. I actually didn’t find out ’till recently that these guys had previously published Witches Tales and the really bottom of the barrel rip-offs of Creepy and Eerie. I worked for them for three issues, and they paid forty dollars a page for completely written and finished artwork—just forty bucks a page—but I was thrilled. I was published; I was on newsstands; I was getting a check at the end of it.

The Teen Wonder trashes bad guys in DC Vs. trading card artwork by Shane Davis. Robin TM and © DC Comics.

TTC: Did you ever show that work to other people in order to line up future work? CD: Oddly enough, it was soft-core pornography, science-fiction stuff, and I was able to use it to show that I had been published to get work in children’s books. And that makes no sense to anybody unless you’ve been in publishing, and you realize that being published is important. It really doesn’t matter what it is; you showed you could meet a deadline. So yeah, from that I went on [and] worked in mass market paperbacks [doing] children’s books. I did some licensed Winnie the Pooh stuff for Disney, and Raggedy Ann and Andy... things like that.

CD: Larry was totally cold. It was a total cold meeting. I heard through Hilary Barta that he was looking for writers to write tough guy, real blood thirsty stuff, and so I contacted him out of the blue. He wasn’t familiar with anything I had done before, [so I] sent him some samples, and he bought a bunch of ’em. Once I proved my reliability

TTC: So when did you get your first big break?

Evangeline, the original killer nun, as drawn by her creator, Judith Hunt. Evangeline © its respective owner.

CD: Well, I was doing some work at Eclipse—Timothy Truman recommended me to them—and I was just starting to get in with them. We were starting up the Airboy book. Simultaneous with that, Larry Hama started buying some stories from me for magazines that he was doing at Marvel, and from there I got the lead feature in Savage Sword [of Conan]. From that point, I pretty much worked full 16

Dixon’s early career included work on Airboy by Eclipse Comics. © Todd McFarlane Productions.

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superboy

Karl Kesel Writing The Reign Of Superboy

[Nicknamed “The Kibitzer” by John Byrne, Karl Kesel has worked professionally in comics since 1984, first as an inker, then as an author. He teamed with his first wife, Barbara, on the Hawk and Dove mini-series in 1988, and then joined forces with her again on the monthly book of the same name one year later. In 1993 he was tapped by Superman family editor Mike Carlin to become the new writer of The Adventures of Superman, and shortly thereafter he co-created the current Superboy with artist Tom Grummett. The two worked together on the Kid of Steel’s adventures for a total of four years, from 1994-96, and again from ’98-2000. Interviewed by Glen Cadigan on January 16, 2007, the following interview was approved by Kesel.] TTC: Okay, Karl. Let’s start with name, rank, and serial number. KK: [laughs] I think I’ve just got a name. TTC: So where did you grow up? KK: I grew up in a little town called Victor, New York, just outside of Rochester, New York. TTC: What was your first exposure to the wonderful world of comics? KK: You know, I’m not sure. I know I picked up some various issues of comics—[maybe] two or three when I was a kid—but I know for sure that when I started really reading them seriously was when I was ten years old. Our family took a cross-country trip, and as a ten-year-old kid, that was pretty boring, so we’d pull into gas stations, and at that point, they had comic books. That’s when I actually started buying comic books, and it was a long enough trip that I would get two or three issues of books in a row. Then I got hooked. TTC: Did your parents support your comic book reading habits? KK: I wouldn’t say they tried to talk me out of it. I think there were times when they probably weren’t really thrilled with it, but they never stood in my way. There was a time when my mom gave away some of my Silver Surfer comics, and I had to go get them back. [laughs] So I guess they didn’t realize how seriously I took it at the time.

The direct market cover to the Adventures of Superman #501, which was originally hidden beneath a die-cut cover showing only the Superman shield. Art again by Tom Grummett and Karl Kesel. Superboy TM and © DC Comics.

to be a little bit of foreshadowing there, because all of my favorite comics kept getting cancelled. TTC: When did you first start following the Superman family of titles?

TTC: What books would have caught your eye first? KK: The very first book I remember really liking was the original Silver Surfer series, the John Buscema/Stan Lee stuff. In fact, that was the summer I started reading them, and I started buying it off the stands with issue number one. I just loved it. And shortly after that, the X-Men of the time, and that would have been just about the time Jim Steranko drew a few issues. Then, of course, Neal Adams came on. I just loved the X-Men at the time. There seemed

KK: I did pick some up at the time. [When] I was a kid, I mostly read Marvels, and when I would pick up DCs, I kept thinking I wasn’t old enough to read them. They seemed like they were for more mature readers, and maybe once I got older, I would understand them better. But oddly enough, the very first DC title I did collect on a regular basis was the Teen Titans. It was the great Nick Cardy stuff, although I started reading them when they gave 27

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and many, many times during the Superman summits, we would mention what we were planning to do in Superboy, and, [it was], “Can we borrow Professor Hamilton?” [or], “We were thinking of doing this...” There was a time we actually wanted to move Project: Cadmus to a Pacific island, and that idea was approved by the Superman people. We never did that, but they were always aware of what we were doing, and we always wanted to coordinate with them because Superboy was part of the Superman family, and there was no Earthly good reason to distance ourselves from that.

couple of those characters; Knockout, in particular, was the villain that you developed the most. Was it always your intention to use her as much as you did? KK: No, not at all. She just had a lot of life to her, let’s face it. I’m thrilled to see that Gail Simone is using her in Secret Six, because I think she’s a really powerful character on many, many levels. So some of these characters, they just have a life of their own, and she was definitely one of them. TTC: You did tease readers with the idea that she would become a legitimate good girl. Were you tempted to take her down that path?

TTC: Why did you set the series in Hawaii? KK: The thinking was this: when Superman was first created, he was very definitely a wishfulfillment character. He was the guy who would throw the evil Senator across town and catch him. He would do the sort of things that you or I, or Siegel and Shuster, wished they could do, and so Superman was very much, especially at the beginning, a wishfulfillment character. So that’s the tact I took with Superboy. I said, “All right; in today’s society, what would every kid wish if they had super-powers?” and I decided they would want to live in Hawaii! [laughs] So that’s where we set it, because it’s this tropical paradise with beautiful gals in bikinis, and it just sounded really exotic. It just sounded very much like a dream come true. Very wish fulfillment. TTC: Hawaii isn’t exactly known for its super-villain problem, though. KK: But you know, you could say that about any city. It’s got super-villain problems when you decide it does. In the very first issue of Superboy, I did set in motion half a dozen different problems that really are because Superboy shows up. [laughs] If he hadn’t shown up, probably three or four of those problems never would’ve raised their heads, so there is a certain cause and effect going on, yeah. TTC: What was your train of thought when you would create a villain for Superboy to fight? Would it start with the villain, or would it start with, “Superboy needs a

KK: No. Knockout could never be good good. She can be kinda good, but she never could really be what you and I would call a hero. She can do the right things at times, but she’s far too selfish and self-involved to really be a hero.

Supergirl and Knockout duke it out on the cover of Superboy #28, courtesy of Miki Annamanthadoo. All characters TM and © DC Comics.

certain problem to solve?” KK: You know, it probably should’ve been Superboy has a certain problem that he needs to solve. I think the best stories come out of that, and I would just say that at that point of the early Superboy comics, I was not experienced enough to do that. I would just have ideas I really wanted to do, as far as villains and stuff. I mean, the villain of Scavenger I had in my head for a very long time. The character of Knockout, not so much, but I did really want a good bad girl in his life, so Knockout filled that role. I was really inexperienced as a writer. I actually think my run on Superboy, starting with issue fifty, is much stronger than my first run, only because I actually had a concept [laughs] I was working with, and I think the first time through, I was just doing the best I could, but I was kinda making it up as I went along. TTC: You did end up giving Superboy a rogue’s gallery of his own. You mentioned a 32

TTC: The Superboy book also had a rich supporting cast. How important do you think those characters were to the series? KK: I think they’re really important. I really enjoyed doing the first run on Dubbilex and Rex and Roxy and Tana. I think all of those were really good characters that I enjoyed a lot, and I think later on the cast of characters we had in Cadmus was just as rich. I always go back to early Spider-Mans that Stan Lee was writing, especially when John Romita was drawing it. Many times, many times I have gone back and pulled out those old comics, and I’ll flip past the fights because I know Spider-Man’s gonna beat the Shocker, but I always stop and read the Coffee Bean scenes because the interplay between the characters is just so great. There’s no way my work ever came close to that, but I’ve always remembered how grounded that makes any character. I’ve always tried to surround characters with interesting supporting characters because of that. TTC: You also brought Tana Moon over from Adventures of Superman. Was that always the plan? KK: Well, once we decided to put him in Hawaii, we realized, “Hey! Maybe she’s

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superboy

Tom Grummett Co-Creating The Kryptonian Kid

[As Karl Kesel’s collaborator on the Adventures of Superman, Tom Grummett fell into the role of Superboy cocreator, which was followed shortly by his regular assignment as the penciler of the new Superboy series. Interviewed by Glen Cadigan on June 10, 2005, Grummett remembered his role in the creation of the character as follows.]

another and said, “Superboy!” and realized we were on to something. [We] threw it out in the middle of group and everybody seemed to respond really well to the idea, so we went off into a corner by ourselves and started working out the details of it, and lo and behold, Superboy was born. It kind of went from there. What I do remember most vividly about it was coming up with his costume on the flight home on an airline napkin. So I had it pretty much by the time I got home, and then worked up a more detailed sketch and sent it in to Carlin. A little tinker here and a tinker there, and we had his look. It happened pretty quick.

TTC: How did you originally become involved with Superboy during the “Death of Superman” storyline? TG: After the death, there was a tremendous amount of attention on the Superman books. The plan was to stop the publication of the regular Superman titles, and for a month or two there were specials released. Then we were going to come back with the next step, which, at the time, we didn’t know what the next step was exactly going to be.

TTC: Did you keep the napkin? TG: I unfortunately did not keep the napkin. [chuckles] But I do have those sketches that I sent to Carlin. They’re framed on the wall. I don’t think the napkin would’ve survived until now, actually.

So we had our usual Super-summit to bring everybody together to Following the “Reign of the Supermen,” Superboy took solo flight in the pages of his very own series. TTC: Was it always the work out the next step Artwork by Tom Grummett and Karl Kesel. Superboy TM and © DC Comics. intention to spin him off of the storyline, and we into his own series? came up with the idea of four new Supermen, one for each of the TG: No. At the time, it was more reactive than proactive. There Superman titles. Karl Kesel and I were sitting beside each other, certainly was a certain amount of proactivity in what we were and some of the other characters were being talked about. I don’t doing—we were working towards a goal—but we had no idea know where it came from, but at one point we turned to one that it was going to turn into what it turned into. Spin-off 35

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Impulse

Mark Waid Running On Impulse

[A writer whose name has appeared on such titles as The Flash, Captain America, and Fantastic Four, Mark Waid entered the super-hero mainstream via the fan press, first as a member of Interlac, then as a contributor (and editor) of the Fantagraphicsproduced Amazing Heroes. He also wrote the Index to the Legion of Super-Heroes for Independent Comics Group (nee Eclipse) before becoming an editor at DC Comics. On May 10, 2007, Waid was interviewed by Glen Cadigan about his role in the creation of Impulse, as well as his tenure on the title of the same name. What follows is a transcript of that conversation, as copyedited by Waid himself.]

MW: The first one I remember would be issue 173 of Flash, which was “The Doomward Flight of the Flashes,” and it was a triple Flash team-up with Jay and Wally and Barry. I may have read a Teen Titans or two before then, but that’s my first real memory of Kid Flash. TTC: Do you remember what you thought of the character? MW: I remember to this day that I knew even then that his is the single best super-hero costume design ever. Ever. It’s perfect. Y’know, the hair is open, so you can see the wind effects as he runs... the sleekness of the rest of the costume, and the color composition... it’s just perfect. TTC: As a kid, did you have any delusions of one day growing up to tell Flash stories yourself?

TTC: When would you say you first started reading The Flash? MW: I started reading Flash in 1966, like most of the school children in the world, because that was shortly after the Batman TV show hit, and then super-heroes just got huge. TTC: Do you remember the first issue you read?

Waid began his super-speed career as the author of the Flash, in which he introduced Impulse. Artwork from the collection of Caesar Alvarez. Flash, Starfire, and Nightwing TM and © DC Comics.

MW: Yeah! The very first one was issue 163, which was the famous cover with Flash holding up his hand saying, “Stop! You must read this issue! My life depends on it!”

MW: I honestly didn’t. It never once occurred to me that I would ever write the Flash. I thought, at some point growing up, that I might someday write Superman or Batman, or something like that, but as much as I really loved the character, I never had any real, burning compulsion

to write the Flash. TTC: So how did you get the job as the Flash writer? MW: What changed me around was Brian Augustyn, who was the editor at the time. I had just left staff to go freelance, and so he’d thrown a story my way in the Flash TV Special that DC did, the one that adapted the continuity of the TV show. I kinda got a taste for writing Flash, and then not too long after, Brian took me out to lunch and sat with me and said, “Listen, Bill Loebs is leaving the Flash and we need a new writer. It’s the perfect position for you because everybody expects this book will be cancelled in a year.” Not that it was

TTC: So would you say you were drawn to the character right away? MW: I was absolutely drawn to the character immediately, because the costume design was brilliant. The artwork that Carmine Infantino did just drew you into the stories, and the power of super-speed is my favorite super-power. TTC: So when do you think you first read a story with Kid Flash in it? 38

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doing terribly poorly under Bill, but the general expectation at DC was that, with the TV show off the air, the ensuing drift in sales would just kill the book. TTC: Did you have a game plan in mind when you began your run?

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[laughs]. I felt the need, just so I could get a clear handle on Wally, to strip away a lot of the supporting characters that Bill had built up. Not out of any disrespect for Bill, or the characters, but just because it was too much information for me to try to digest at

MW: Only in that I knew that we wanted to retell the origin, because it had not been retold in any sort of detail since it first ran in 1960. So thirty years later, [laughs] seemed like a fair amount of time to pass before you tell the origin again. I honestly had no game plan, as you can actually tell as you look at the first dozen issues, because we follow the four-part origin story with a really pedestrian Aquaman crossover [#66—Ed.]. Clearly, I didn’t quite know what I was doing. But once we got up and running, Brian encouraged me to put as much of myself in the character of Wally as I could, and that’s what made the difference. That’s what made it so attractive to me for such a long time.

MW: At that point in the series, it was about the same as it had been for the last six years before that, which was, “Where’s Barry? When’s Barry coming back?” Not a week would go by when we didn’t get letters from fans going, “Yeah, yeah. But where’s Barry?” And so [it was a] constant, constant uphill struggle to try to establish that Wally had the suit, and he’s not going away. TTC: In other words, you saw it as a challenge to turn those naysayers around. MW: Well, it turned into what, arguably, was the best story in our run, which was we embraced the pro-Barry sentiment and turned it into “The Return of Barry Allen.” [#’s 73-79—Ed.] Basically, the whole message of that story, as Brian and I put it, was, “Be careful what you wish for.” TTC: Growing up, do you think you saw Wally more in the pages of the Titans or in The Flash?

TTC: Were you already reading the series at that point? MW: Oh, yeah. I was a huge fan of Bill Loebs’ stuff. I read Mike Baron’s run. I wasn’t huge on it just because it didn’t feel like Wally to me. It felt very cynical and dark, but that’s a matter of personal taste. I thought Bill Loebs had a great take on the characters in general. The biggest difference between our approaches to it is that Bill tends to write everything like it’s a team book, whether it’s a solo character series or not. He’s always populating it with a big cast of characters—which is great, and it works for him as a reflection of his life, because Bill has lots of friends. I, on the other hand, am a very lonely man

reaction was to Wally as the Flash at that point in the series?

The very first cover appearance of Impulse, as seen on Flash #92, by Mike Wieringo and José Marzan, Jr.. Impulse TM and © DC Comics.

once as a writer. It was too hard for me to try to figure out, from my point of view, who all these characters were, so I just figured, “Well, we’ll start with Wally, and then we’ll build to Linda, and then we’ll build back outward toward the rest of the speedsters.” TTC: Do you remember what the reader 39

MW: Growing up, I probably saw him more in the pages of Titans, but that was the Bob Haney days, and they all had the same, identical personality, so it’s not as if he made any particular mark on me there. He made more of a mark on me as a character when Steve Skeates wrote a few [Kid] Flash stories as a backup series in Flash in the early Seventies, because Wally, under Steve Skeates, had a slightly more youthful voice, and just a slightly different personality. TTC: Had you followed Wally’s progression from Kid Flash to Flash during Marv’s run on the Titans? And did that influence your handling of the character in any way?

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WONDER GIRL

John Byrne Cassie Sandsmark: From Normal to Wonderful

[Beginning with his work in the 1970s, John Byrne has been one of the most prolific storytellers in the industry, with long runs on Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Superman to his credit. In 1995, he began a three year stint as the writer and artist on Wonder Woman, during which time he introduced the current version of Wonder Girl, Cassandra Sandsmark, to the DC universe. Conducted via email on January 5, 2007, the following interview was conducted by Glen Cadigan.]

JB: Even though it had been a number of years since his direct association with the character, I still felt as if I was “following” George Pérez. I was very much aware of the long shadow he cast, and principally, my concern was to find some new— and some old—areas to explore without overturning what George had established. TTC: How long did you plan to on stay on the title, originally? JB: I had no set target in mind. I certainly was surprised when I realized I was on Wonder Woman longer than I was on Uncanny X-Men!

TTC: How early in your comic book reading career would you have discovered Wonder Woman?

TTC: That wasn’t the first time that you had handled the character. You drew her in Legends, and she appeared in Action Comics #600. Even then, did you have ideas of what you would do if you became her writer some day?

JB: I would almost certainly have “met” her via the Justice League, whose adventures I began reading with their first independent issue. TTC: What was your initial response to the character? JB: Being that I was about 10 years old, I will confess to not being overly impressed with a “girl” character.

JB: Whenever I write and/or draw a character I find my mind running Wonder Girl in action in the pages of Wonder Woman. From the collection of Joel Thingvall. off along different Wonder Girl TM and © DC Comics. pathways, wondering what I might do with the character as an ongoing assignment. TTC: What were the circumstances around you becoming the writer/artist on Wonder Woman? TTC: In issue 105, you introduced Cassandra Sandsmark, who would go on to become the new Wonder Girl. I’m curious as to JB: Paul Kupperberg, who was editing the title, decided he why you used an entirely new character, as opposed to an wanted to change the creative team, and he realized if he asked already established one, like Vanessa Kapatelis. me to do the book, he got the job done in one fell swoop. JB: Again, it came down to not wanting to mess with what TTC: When you began your run, did you have a set series of goals George had done. He’d not taken Vanessa in that direction in mind that you wanted to achieve? 49

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Teen Titans II

The All-New Teen Titans of Alien Origins!

Teen Titans (Vol. 2) #’s 1-24 Teen Titans Annual #1 Genesis #’s 1-4 Robin/Argent Double-Shot #1 Impulse/Atom Double-Shot #1 Superboy/Risk Double-Shot #1 Supergirl/Prysm Double-Shot #1 Dark Nemesis #1 When the alien race H’San Natall decided to expand its sphere of influence to the Earth, it embarked upon a long-term strategy which involved impregnating various Earth women with alien DNA in order to produce hybrid, super-powered individuals as sleeper agents for future domination. Sixteen years later, when the subjects reached maturity, they were teleported to the moon Titan for further experimentation. When the Atom, who had been de-aged to a teenager in Zero Hour, stumbled upon the operation, he followed one of the teens there and helped to liberate both them and another teenager who was discovered in the scientists’ lab. It was then that the teens discovered the truth of their births, and that it was the original intention of the alien race to use them as sleeper agents in their conquest of Earth. Upon their return home, the teens came under the sponsorship of Mr. Jupiter, who had previously sponsored the original Teen Titans team. They choose the codenames Argent, Risk, Joto, and Prysm, and formed a new Titans group, along with the Atom. Their adventures mostly brought them into conflict with the anti-alien organization known as the Veil and its leader, Pylon, as well as with the mercenary villain group Dark Nemesis. Ultimately, the team split up, but not before resolving to remain good friends.

Dan Jurgens and George Pérez’s tribute to the cover of Giant-Size X-Men #1, as originally published in Diamond’s Previews catalogue. Teen Titans TM © DC Comics. TM DC Comics.

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Teen Titans II

Dan Jurgens Tiny Titan Atom Leads An All-New Teen Titans

[In 1996, after writing and drawing Sensational Spider-Man for Marvel, the man who killed Superman turned his sights on the Teen Titans. The following interview was conducted by Glen Cadigan on February 14, 2005, and was copyedited by Jurgens.]

just got to kicking around some names, and around that time I had run into George somewhere—I believe at one of the cons. I don’t remember where it was for sure—and he had expressed this desire to get back in working with DC again. He had had some issues where he hadn’t been doing real regular work, and what he had explained to me is that he just wanted a platform to get back into the rhythm of a monthly book.

TTC: A lot of people forget this, but your very first Teen Titans job was actually a fill-in issue of the New Teen Titans following the “Terror of Trigon” storyline [NTT v2 #6— Ed.]. Was it intimidating to follow George Pérez on the Titans then?

I think anyone in the business can tell you, working on special projects is so different than working on a monthly book, because you just don’t have that rhythm of everything being due, say, the fifteenth of the month. Once you get off that train, it’s hard to get back on it sometimes because of the discipline it requires. So anyway, George was looking for a way to do that, and I think I said, “Yeah, I have a couple of ideas.” So I went to DC, and we kicked it around, and that’s really how we ended up calling George up to say, “Hey! Would you have any interest in inking Titans?”

DJ: [laughs] Let me put it this way: when DC called me and asked me to do the book, they had found out that George was leaving, and they knew at that time that José Luis García-López was going to step in for a while, but one of the things they said was, “We’re doing a lot of Titans stuff, [and] maybe this’ll all be yours one day,” [that] type of thing. I said, “Yeah, that sounds cool.”

But the plot comes through, and I clearly remember this: Marv had written a plot, and I TTC: Where did the idea for a think his first paragraph was new Teen Titans originate, with something to the effect of, you or with someone at DC? “Ticker tape parade in New Another promotional image from Diamond’s Previews catalogue for the then-new York City. So many characters DJ: I’m not sure you could Teen Titans series. Artwork by Dan Jurgens and George Pérez. Teen Titans TM and © DC Comics. with so much detail and so break it down quite that much going on that it will simply. I think what often make George Pérez jealous.” I just read that and said, “That ain’t happens within the context of assignments is you have eight gonna happen.” [laughs] “There ain’t nobody in this business who discussions that might start out where you’re talking about could do that.” So intimidating? Absolutely. Batman, and then you move on to Mars somehow, and then you’re talking about the Fifth Quadrant of whatever, and TTC: How did George become involved with your Teen Titans? somehow it ends up being Titans. I think that’s sort of how it DJ: DC and I had made the agreement to do Teen Titans, and Eddie happened, where there were a lot of discussions between me and Berganza, who was the book’s editor, and I were kicking around the various people at DC about “What are you gonna do next?” That idea of different inkers. I said, “I really want something here that’s kind of thing. What would my next project be? We had kicked different from what I’ve had recently on a couple of projects.” I’ve around a lot of stuff, and this was primarily at the time where I always been one, whenever I work with inkers generally, who likes was doing most of my stuff at Marvel. I was doing Spider-Man at to, to use a happening phrase, “step outside the box” a little bit. We 52

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Marvel around that time, and one of the things that I knew DC wanted was a Titans book, and what they really wanted was a group of new characters. So as we kicked things around, that’s how the project evolved. It starts with general discussions, and then you keep talking and talking, and pretty soon, you have that project materialize somehow. TTC:What was the appeal to you of doing a Teen Titans book? DJ: I think the appeal was, besides having been a commodity, a group of characters that I liked a lot as a kid, it’s another one of those things that has real good franchise potential; it can stretch a lot of ways. One of the things I’ve always liked are books where you can go a lot of different directions story-wise. When you think about it, not to harp on Batman, but the constraints on that character are tighter than they are on something like Titans or Superman or Fantastic Four, where you can tell a story in a small neighborhood in Metropolis, or you can have them five galaxies away. I think it is that kind of elasticity that appealed to me, in terms of the Titans. TTC: How did you decide on the group’s lineup? DJ: I had wanted to build a little more around existing characters. I have always thought that the absolute

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backbone of the Titans, to me, was Dick Grayson and Donna Troy. I saw them as being their version of, say, Scott Summers and Jean Grey. They, to me, are the constants in the Titans. DC really wanted to go all new with the characters somehow. One of the reasons we ended up adding Mr. Jupiter to the book is, to me, there just needs to be that touchstone with the past of some sort, and that’s why we had him in the book. But as far as the characters themselves, DC really wanted to go new. TTC: When you start to create a new character, how does that work? Do you start with the powers first, or the personality, and how does it differ when creating a group as opposed to a solo character—or does it differ at all? DJ: It actually differs. New characters tend to grow in a more organic fashion. Sometimes you might first think of a power and build around that; other times you might think of a character type and build around that. Still other times, particularly with a villain, you set out to create a specific counterpoint to something that’s already there, and there are those really precious times when all of a sudden it’s all there in your head, top to bottom, as though instantly created without conscious thought. TTC: Let’s go through those new characters one by one. I’ll give you a name, and you give me your thoughts on the character. Let’s start with Risk. DJ: I think Risk was our irreverent personality, probably the character that I had the most fun with, just in terms of being more of that irreverent kid-type spark within the group.

Jurgens’ model sheet for Risk. Risk TM and © DC Comics.

An Argent model sheet by Dan Jurgens. Argent TM and © DC Comics.

my heart for spoiled rich kid brats, [laughs] and that’s certainly what she represents. TTC: She lasted longer than any of the other Titans characters. She was in the Titans series which followed your Titans series. That must have given you some satisfaction as a creator. DJ: It does. I still think there is potential there. I don’t necessarily know what, if anything, they have in mind for any of those guys these days, but she was fun. TTC: Joto. DJ: Joto was my attempt to break out of the mold of [stereotypical black characters]. I have a real problem with the fact that whenever we see an African-American in comics, they seem to have this chip on their shoulder. I mean, it’s been done a hundred thousand times, and what I really wanted to do was take this kid, have him be AfricanAmerican from a very middle-class, suburban African-American environment, where you didn’t have all that baggage that many writers automatically throw onto black characters. In many ways, he is the most well-balanced one in the entire group. I just thought, for some reason, that seemed a little bit fresh in comics.

TTC: Argent.

TTC: Why did you kill him later on?

DJ: I always have a fond spot in

DJ: I believe at that time we really wanted

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young justice

Young Justice

DC’s Next Generation of Heroes Unite

Robin Plus Impulse #1 Superboy/Robin: World’s Finest Three #’s 1-2 Legion of Super-Heroes (Vol. 4) #’s 99-100 Unlimited Access #’s 3-4 Young Justice: The Secret #1 JLA: World Without Grown-Ups #’s 1-2 Young Justice #’s 1-55 Young Justice #1,000,000 Secret Origins 80-Page Giant #1 Young Justice Secret Files #1 Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. #’s 5-6 Supergirl (Vol. 3) #’s 36-37 Young Justice: No Man’s Land #1 Young Justice: Sins of Youth #’s 1-2 Young Justice: Sins of Youth Secret Files #1 Young Justice: Our Worlds at War #1 Spyboy/Young Justice #’s 1-3 Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day #’s 1-3 After a series of preliminary adventures in which the future members of Young Justice met individually, the team was founded as the result of an episode in which all adults were banished from the Earth. When an ancient artifact came into the possession of Matt Stuart, the son of an oft-absent archeologist father, he discovered that it possessed a genie, and used its power to remove all grown-ups from the planet. With only children left behind, chaos ensued and it was up to the junior heroes Robin, Superboy, and Impulse to restore order. The trio then decided to remain together as a group, and were joined in short order by the female members Secret, Wonder Girl, and Arrowette. From their base of operations in the original headquarters of the Justice League of America, Young Justice dealt with teencentric problems, as well as greater threats to the world. They were originally mentored by the Red Tornado, and their roster expanded to include the characters Empress, Li’l Lobo (later Slobo), and the Ray. Young Justice traveled the Earth (and beyond) on the SuperCycle, a vehicle originally from the planet New Genesis, and after an adventure on Apokolips, Robin and Impulse left the team, although they later rejoined. The group was dissolved after the deaths of Donna Troy and Omen in the Graduation Day mini-series, although its core members later reformed as the Teen Titans. The cover art to Young Justice #6, as drawn by Todd Nauck and Lary Stucker, showing the current generation of teen heroes as the Justice League looks on. Young Justice and Justice League of America TM and © DC Comics.

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Young Justice

Peter David On The Follies Of Super-Powered Youth

[Best known for his runs on Marvel characters such as the Hulk and Spider-Man, Peter David has also written his share of stories for DC, and when Todd Dezago passed on the opportunity to write the ongoing Young Justice series, it was David who got the job. Interviewed by Glen Cadigan on February 9, 2007, the following interview was copyedited by the Young Justice author.]

PD: I originally was skittish about taking on the title because since my protagonists were all in other books, I was concerned about my ability to write the book while juggling what was going on in the Batman titles and in Robin, Impulse, and Superboy. I was worried that I would just be pulled in so many directions that I wouldn’t be able to do it, and so I originally only made a commitment for six issues, just to see how it was going. I wound up staying for the run of the series.

TTC: How did you become the writer of Young Justice? PD: I was approached by DC about taking on the series. What they told me was they were looking to have a book that would skew towards younger audiences. The concept was that Young Justice would serve as the title to pull in the younger readers. They would read Young Justice for several years, and then they would graduate, so to speak, to the more adult skewing Teen Titans book. So it was a feeder book.

TTC: Did you have much contact with the writers of those series? PD: We would occasionally [send] e-mails back and forth, but most of it was handled through the editors. TTC: When did you start to feel like you had a handle on the characters? PD: Once I brought in the girls, actually. Maybe it’s because I only have daughters, but I found that I was much better able to get a handle on the guys once I had the girls for them to bounce off.

TTC: Why did writing Young Justice appeal to you?

PD: I love writing books that are aimed at younger readers. One Young Justice deals with conflict in its own manner, from the collection of Brian McKenna. Young Justice TM and © DC Comics. of the biggest problems we TTC: Did the decision to bring in have in this industry is the lack the girls originate with you, or with editorial? of younger readers. There’s a number of reasons for that, but PD: I honest-to-God don’t remember. You will generally find in one of the reasons is that so many comic books are simply not these kind of situations that ideas will crop up, and sometimes appropriate for younger readers. Whenever I’m doing a book it’s really hard to remember who said what, or who came up that is aimed at a younger reader, I feel like I’m doing more than with what. just writing a comic book; I’m providing a service for the industry in that I’m trying to write a book that is going to pull TTC: Did you gravitate toward any of the characters more so in younger readers, because younger readers are the future of than others, initially? the industry. If we don’t have younger readers coming in, then PD: I liked them all, actually. I actually found—I guess because we’re pretty much screwed. of the fact I have daughters—[that] once I introduced them, I TTC: How long did you plan to stay on the book, originally? really found myself gravitating towards Wonder Girl and 66

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Arrowette. I really liked those characters, particularly Wonder Girl. I had a field day with her. TTC: Were there any other characters considered for the team in the early days? PD: No, it was pretty much Robin, Superboy and Impulse from the get-go. TTC: You were technically the second Young Justice writer... PD: Well, I wasn’t the second Young Justice writer. I was the second writer to handle that group of characters. Todd Dezago wrote the one-shots—the “World Without Adults” stuff—but he never wrote the ongoing book. He was offered the opportunity, from my understanding, and passed on it. TTC: How fluid were things in the early days? PD: I had a lot of latitude. TTC: Very early on, you introduced the characters of Fite ’N’ Madd. What dynamic did you see them bringing to the series? PD: I wanted a couple of adult antagonists for them to play

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off. A couple of Feds who would occasionally run into them to represent authority figures connected to the government. TTC: Why bring the Red Tornado into the group? PD: [We] wanted to have an adult presence for the kids to bounce off of. TTC: But why, specifically, the Red Tornado? PD: I don’t remember why. I think that he was part of the package when I came on the book, that they said they wanted to have the Red Tornado there, [as] a mentor thing, which I was completely up for. TTC: How much of Young Justice was planned in advance, and how much did you make up as you went along? PD: Oh, pretty much all of it. Generally speaking, I would have an idea of what I was doing for the next four to six months, but even that was very much subject to change. TTC: To what extend did you feel obligated to keep it a light-hearted book? PD: It really flowed naturally out of the characters and the visuals. Todd Nauck is a brilliant artist; I loved working with him on Young Justice, but his style isn’t what you would want to do if you’re doing heavy-duty sturm und drang, you know? TTC: You did change the tone a bit when you did the “Dark Arrowette” story [Young Justice #15—Ed.]. PD: Yes, absolutely, I did, and I think the reason that it worked as well as it did was because it was relatively short. It would not be a longterm direction that I think would have been beneficial for the series. TTC: So why did you switch gears at that point? PD: I wanted to have some variation. If all you do is humor, then sooner or later the book is just going to float right off the page. You have to have serious issues every so often to ground your book. You just have to.

Todd Nauck’s original character design of Secret, courtesy of the artist. Secret TM and © DC Comics; art © Todd Nauck.

TTC: That story was obviously influenced by “violence in school” stories which were occurring in the real world. Given the age of the 67

David’s stories took a darker turn with the introduction of Harm, as seen here in a design sheet by Todd Nauck. Harm TM and © DC Comics; art © Todd Nauck.

characters in Young Justice, did you feel an obligation to reflect the real world of teenagers at the time? PD: Yes. TTC: When it came to the villains which Young Justice faced, some of them were obviously silly, like Mighty Endowed, but then you’d introduce someone like Harm, who was anything but inconsequential. Even then, were you walking the line between serious drama and horseplay? PD: Yes. I always wanted to mix things up: the humor set up the seriousness and vice versa. TTC: Were you ever concerned that people might have been dismissing the book because they thought of it as just a comedy? PD: Oh, sure. Or that they were dismissing it because they figured it was aimed at younger readers, and it’s very, very strange, because by today’s standards, the original run of Amazing Spider-Man or Fantastic Four would have been considered kid’s books. There was no profanity, there was no sex, there was no really horrific on-panel violence. All the criteria that we have for books that are considered kid’s books, or all-ages books, were met by the original Stan Lee/Steve Ditko/Jack Kirby collaborations, but no modern readers look back at those books

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young justice

Todd Nauck Joining The Youth Movement With DC’s Teens

[When DC Comics first decided to group Robin, Superboy, and Impulse together into their own team, Todd Nauck was the artist who got the call. A former employee of Extreme Studios under Rob Liefeld, Nauck went on to have an impressive run on the title, missing only two of its fifty-five issues. The only artist associated with the series in most reader’s minds, Nauck was interviewed by Glen Cadigan on April 8, 2005.]

it was issue nine where Captain America was leading a charge of heroes up a hill, racing toward Galactus—and half these characters I recognized from cartoons, but the other half, I had no idea who they were, and that totally intrigued me. It was like, “I’ve got to find out who these characters are!” Just all the costumes and the idea of all these heroes taking on this giant I’d never seen before, I had to find out [what it was all about], and that’s what got me hooked. From that I cut out a subscription coupon and started subscribing to Uncanny X-Men there in 1984.

TTC: What part of the country are you from? TN: Originally, I’m from Texas. I was born and raised in Texas, but I’ve been living in California for the last eleven years.

TTC: When you were drawing as a kid, were you drawing superheroes?

TTC: Is drawing something that you started to do at an early age?

TN: As a little kid I was drawing more Looney Tunes type stuff. I was really into funny animals. Even though I loved watching super-hero cartoons, I also loved all the Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes [cartoons]. I was really big into that, and that was what I was into when I was drawing. Then in high school, [it was] more Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mighty Mouse type stuff. It wasn’t until art school that my tastes started to mature into wanting to draw more traditional type superheroes, and once I started focusing on that, I left funny animals far behind, and actually, funny animals have no appeal to me anymore.

TN: Yes, it was. Some of my earliest memories are of drawing, so I’ve always loved to draw. TTC: How old were you when you first started to read comics?

TN: My first comic was a Spidey Super-Stories from the Electric Company, the one with the guy with the bag of measles? That was the first comic book I remember getting, and I was probably about seven. I was into super-heroes prior to that thanks to the Super Friends cartoon and the old SpiderMan cartoon, so I was into super-heroes before I was into TTC: Which artists influenced reading comic books. I didn’t you growing up? The cover of Young Justice #1, which was “homaged” by Nauck multiple times start collecting comic books during the course of the series. Young Justice TM and © DC Comics. regularly until eighth grade, TN: A lot of artists influenced when I was about thirteen years old. me growing up, and a lot of artists influence me now. There are so many great artists out there whose work I enjoy, but I TTC: What comics jumped out and caught your eye again? remember the first one that really influenced me was Arthur TN: I remember the first comic that really grabbed me was a Adams. I know he influenced a lot of guys. His art—then and three-pack of Secret Wars comics that they sold at Target stores. now—is just some of my favorite, but other artists that really I just remember seeing issues seven, eight, and nine—I believe appealed to me at that time were Alan Davis, Rick Leonardi, 75

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to do this for a career.” From then on, that’s all I wanted to do, and I just started doing what it took to achieve that. TTC: Where did you go to art school? TN: The Art Institute of Dallas. I studied commercial art and graphic design back in the early nineties. It was before they had an animation program, so there was no real training along the lines of comic book art or cartoon art at the time, so I just applied everything I learned in advertising towards A JLApe crossover cover by Arthur Adams, who was a major influence comic books. So it on Nauck growing up. Impulse TM and © DC Comics. helped me get more and Walter Simonson. professional skills that made it a lot easier to break into the business. TTC: Right off the bat, those are a lot of Marvel artists. TTC: Did your teachers know about your comic book aspirations? TN: Yeah. As a teenager in junior high, early high school, I was a Marvel zombie. TN: Yes, they did. Well, I kept it hidden for I didn’t care for DC; I thought they were a while because at the time they didn’t boring. I just did not like them at all— offer anything along the lines of that, wouldn’t touch them. I didn’t even want and many instructors were against to bother with it, but when I bought a animation and cartooning. They just friend’s comic book collection, I bought thought it was a nowhere business; in everything he had, and that included fact, one instructor told me I would end tons of DC stuff like Crisis and the first up homeless and penniless and I’d forty issues of the Wolfman/Pérez wasted my years and time and money at Titans. Since I had them, I’d read them, the school pursing that, not knowing and that’s when I really started to that at the time it was the McFarlane, understand and appreciate DC. By Liefeld, Jim Lee record-breaking boom college I was reading half DC, half where comics were selling in the Marvel. I was really plugged into the millions and those guys were becoming DCU and enjoyed it a lot, even more than millionaires off of doing comics. It was Marvel, sometimes. back in ’91, ’92 when I was in school, so I had a little different insight and opinion TTC: At what point did you start to take into that. But there were also some art seriously as a career option? instructors that saw my work, saw the TN: Probably my freshman year of high passion that I had, and took my work to school. After reading comic books for a the head of the department, and she year, a friend said, “Why don’t you make was kind enough to let me graduate a little mini-comic?” [so] I made a little with a comic-themed portfolio. I was mini-comic of my funny animal, superonly the second person for them to have hero characters, and that was so much allowed to do that at the time. fun I thought, “You know what? I want TTC: Did you try and use that portfolio 76

when you were breaking in? TN: I did not use my Art Institute portfolio to break in whatsoever. It has never served a purpose for me, mainly because the stuff I was doing was for graphic art design jobs, so I was sitting there while I was doing my art project, working up my three to four pages of sequential art to show off to editors whenever they’d come through a Dallas convention a couple of times a year. So my portfolio was the same as anyone else’s trying to break into comics. Despite my college education, I had to put together my sequential art. TTC: What would people say when they saw your art at the conventions? TN: I remember the first time I showed off my artwork. I was eighteen years old, I was still in my funny animal stage, and it was really cartoony. Really, really cartoony stuff, and I didn’t know who to show it to. I saw a professional—I didn’t know this person’s name—so I thought, “Well, I’ll see if I can get a critique from this guy,” and he just tore me a new one. He just lit into me, and [used] every foul word you can imagine to describe what I was doing with my art. It was just the most brutal critique I’d ever received. I grew up in a small country town, [and] there were no cartoonists or comic book artists around there, so when I went to Dallas to get a critique from a professional, it was a

Another influence on Nauck was Alan Davis, whose artwork comes from the collection of Robert Jewell. Starfire and Nightwing TM and © DC Comics.

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THE TITANS

The Titans Arsenal Special #1 Batman Plus Arsenal #1 Tempest #’s 1-4 JLA vs. Titans #’s 1-3 Arsenal #’s 1-4 The Titans #’s 1-50 The Titans Secret Files #’s 1-2 Legends of the DC Universe 80-Page Giant #’s 1-2 Beast Boy #’s 1-4 Secret Origins of Super-Villains 80 Page Giant #1 The Titans Annual #1 Titans/Legion of Super-Heroes: Universe Ablaze #’s 1-4 When an alien presence approached the Earth and interfered with electronic communications on the planet, the Justice League of America took action and soon discovered that it was actually the former Titan, Cyborg, in his new identity of Planet Cyberion. Having lost his humanity, Cyborg was engulfed by the Technis entity with which he had merged, and the ex-Titan had returned to the planet of his birth, guided by notions of family and home. Choosing the former site of Titans Tower as a base of operations, Cyberion collected as many former Titans as he could locate, then stored them in pods beneath the surface with their minds plugged into a virtual reality. When the Titans freed themselves from their virtual prison, they found themselves in conflict with the Justice League, who had also gathered on the island and had decided that the only way to save the Earth was to terminate Cyberion. Convinced that their friend’s soul was still intact, the Titans fought the Justice League to save Cyborg. During the battle, Nightwing discovered that the fight was actually a ruse by Batman to distract Cyberion while its CPU could be located, and that a thirty-minute assault had been planned to dismantle both the CPU and the moon-based main body of the threat. The Titans leader then formed his own team, which consisted of the five original Titans

The Fab Five Tackle Twenty-Something Tribulations

and Changeling, to travel to the moon and rekindle Cyberion’s humanity. Their mission was a success, and Cyborg’s soul was downloaded into the Omegadrome battle suit which had been left behind by the former Titan, Minion, when he left Cyberion to find a new home. The reborn Cyborg was now officially no longer considered to be a threat to the Earth, and Planet Cyberion was dismantled. Following their experience with Cyberion, the five original Titans decided to reform as a group, with five additional members to help support the team. Each member selected a second, with Damage, Argent, Cyborg, Starfire, and Jesse Quick joining the roster. The new team battled such adversaries as the newly reformed H.I.V.E., Goth, Tartarus, and the Gargoyle before Cyborg, Starfire, Flash, and Damage left the group due to personal reasons. After an attack by Dark Angel in which she attempted to remove Troia from existence, the Titans found themselves in the position of protecting a group of teenage runaways from the Department of Extranormal Operations (DEO), and the situation was compounded when it was revealed that their new ally, Epsilon, was actually a villain under the mental influence of one of the DEO children. When that connection was terminated, Epsilon returned to true form and wrecked the Titans’ headquarters in battle. The team then investigated the Apex Corporation and its founder, Garrett Donovan, who turned out to be a fugitive from another dimension. Donovan had developed his own super-powered army, known as the Favored, in order to return to his home world and free its people from the chemical dependencies which they had been subjected to by their own government. The Titans followed Donovan to his dimension, where they ultimately were responsible for liberating the citizens from the corrupting influence. Upon their return back home, they then thwarted an alien invasion of Earth by a force known as the Consensus, and were reunited with their former teammate, Starfire. The group then went to San Francisco to meet with a potential corporate sponsor in the form of Optitron, and subsequently became entangled in a sequence of events which resulted in the deaths of two of their members, Omen and Donna Troy. Following their deaths, Nightwing left the team and the group disbanded.

TM DC Comics

The no-longer-Teen Titans spring into action from the pages of Titans Secret Files and Origins #1, from the collection of Michael Lovitz. Titans TM and © DC Comics.

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THE TITANS

Devin Grayson Titans Together! The Fab Five Plus Five

[In 1994, the comic book community and Devin Grayson were both equally unaware of one another. A chance encounter one afternoon with a television program changed all of that. A veteran of the Batman office, Grayson rose through the ranks to first become the author of the Titans, then of their leader’s solo series, Nightwing, a few years later. Interviewed by phone on April 11, 2005, the following interview was conducted by Glen Cadigan.]

called the Bat-office. I actually got Denny O’Neil, and I just started asking him [questions]. DC has a receptionist, and you just say, “I want to speak to the guy in charge of Batman,” and she went, “Okay,” and put me through to Denny O’Neil. We talked for a while, and he was very nice and very interested in writing and the creative process, and what it meant for someone to want to learn how to write in this medium. He passed me on to Scott Peterson, who was an editor working with him, and basically I just started a longdistance tutelage with them where they recommended material for me to read and classes to take. I went and took the story structure class by Robert McKee, and everything from Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics to everything Alan Moore ever wrote, and [started] discussing that with them. I just did that kind of casual email correspondence with them for about a year-and-a-half, and then Darren Vincenzo called one day and said, “Are you ready to write a script?” It was just a little ten-page script for the Batman Chronicles [#7—Ed.], but I did that with more excitement and passion than I’ve ever done anything, and I’ve been working in the industry ever since.

TTC: You have a different background than a lot of people that work in comics—comic books aren’t something that you grew up with. DG: That’s true. TTC: So how did you become interested in them?

DG: Actually, I was studying fiction—I’ve always been interested in fiction writing—and I came across the Batman animated series on TV. I was working my normal nine-to-five job and writing a novel at night, and I was really taken by the complexity of the characters and the richness of their relationship. I think the episode was, “If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?” Robin had his feet up on the dashboard of the Batmobile, and I was just really taken with the idea that Batman had raised a kid. That just seemed totally crazy and interesting, and I wanted to TTC: How soon after you first started write about it. Two things became to research Dick Grayson did you immediately apparent: one was that segue into reading about the Teen they were copyrighted characters that Grayson’s first exposure to the Batman universe was through Titans? were owned by a company, so I would the animated Batman series. need to get in touch with that company, Batman and Robin TM and © DC Comics. DG: Pretty fast. I had a friend who and second, that they actually came worked in a comic book store, and I from a medium I didn’t know anything about, which was comic went down and I asked, “I’m interested in this character Dick books. Boy, once you start exploring that medium, it is so exciting, Grayson. How did I find out about him?” [Actually,] the first store and I think it took a week for me to be completely hooked. I went to was closer to me, and he was not in that one. They were not helpful. They were the typical comic hardcore aficionados TTC: So how did you go about trying to become a writer of those who won’t answer any questions if you don’t already know the characters? answer. They said something to me about Wizard, which I DG: I contacted DC directly. I was living in California at the time, imagined as some owl with large glasses. I was just completely and I just found their number on an Internet web search and coldconfused. I did not know what was going on, so I went to my 94

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about who those characters were as people, and I think it’s impossible not to fall in love with them once you get to know them. So my second gravitation was I became very attached to Roy Harper, and got really interested in his story, and then Donna snuck up on me and became someone I really cared about, and just as you keep reading, you learn more and more about these characters, and you come to care about them more and more. I think my focal point has always been Dick, but they mean so much to him that it’s impossible to care about him without caring about them. TTC: How did you first become aware of Titans fandom?

A page from Grayson’s first published story in Batman Chronicles, from the collection of John Bayer. © DC Comics.

friend, and he [said], “Oh, okay. Well, he appears in this book, and he led this team, the Teen Titans,” so he gave me a bunch of those, and that was great, because that was this character I loved interacting with peers and friends his own age. So that was really fun to read about. I think there were two different Titans series out at that time—I guess they published two simultaneously or something. Anyway, I had them all mixed up. I didn’t have them in the right order, so trying to make sense of that storyline and not realizing that it was two storylines was a lot of fun and very engaging, but also quite confusing. [laughs] TTC: Did your love of Dick Grayson become a love of the Titans, or did they only appeal to you through their association with Dick? DG: No, it did extend through loving that character, and coming to understand what mattered to him and what he loved. I really got to know those characters well. And they were written so beautifully; the Wolfman/Pérez stuff was really soap operatic in a good way. You learned a lot

DG: That is a good question. Probably online; I can’t remember. I ended up joining an APA, and I met a bunch of people through the APA, so it seems like I must have known one of them first and they introduced me to it. There was a group at that time called Titan Talk, and they were writing fan fiction. They were based in Ohio, but you would send in your story and they would put a big book together and send everything out. That was incredibly helpful to me in terms of getting that continuity stuff straightened out, because these people had been following it quite loyally for years and were just a font of information, as the fans often are, and I firmly believe knew more about it than the editors. So they were a great group to be in touch with for a while, and I wrote some fan fiction with them, and even went to a coalition party in Ohio once and met a bunch of them. I’m still really good friends with two of them, one of whom is Jay Faerber, who also ended up writing the Titans professionally.

Batman and a young Boy Wonder on the back of a Nightwing TPB, courtesy of Michael Lovitz. Batman and Robin TM and © DC Comics.

going to end up doing when you’re scripting for a major publishing house. I was actually doing that because I didn’t think I had a shot at working professionally in comics, so this was a wonderful way to stay connected to the characters and keep learning about them, and be with a group of people who were as passionate about them as I was. Actually, when I did start working professionally, one of the first things you’re asked to do is disassociate yourself from APAs and stuff. I’m not exactly sure why. I think the concern being that they don’t want you to pick up material accidentally or on purpose that isn’t really yours and use it and put them in a copyright situation. I was ready to move on by that time, anyway. I had some personal issues with people in the group, but that was just an amazing outlet and a great social activity. It didn’t occur to me that that could lead into

TTC: Were you hoping that your Titans fan fiction would one day translate into writing the Titans professionally? DG: No, I didn’t. That was part of my research. You’re working in such a different format with fan fiction. That’s short story fiction in prose, so it’s obviously very different from what you’re 95

Scott McDaniel draws the New Teen Titans, also from the collection of Michael Lovitz. New Teen Titans TM and © DC Comics.

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THE TITANS

Jay Faerber New Directions for a Downsized Titans Team

[A former card-carrying member of Titans fandom, Jay Faerber graduated from the ranks of his fellow fans to become a Titans author in his own right. With stints at both Marvel and DC on such titles as Generation X, the New Warriors, and the Titans, Faerber developed a fan following which has followed his career to Image Comics where he currently writes the critically acclaimed Noble Causes and Dynamo 5. Interviewed by Glen Cadigan on March 31, 2005, the following transcript explores all aspects of Faerber’s career.]

It was just a bunch of fans that would write fan-fic stories and talk about the issues, and it was all done through the mail. This was before the Internet was really in full swing, and that was fun. It was a good way to get me to think about my stories more, and think about plot, and there were deadlines. You [also got] real audience feedback, so that was really helpful. I started pitching stories to Marvel and DC. Eventually they bit, and I got a couple books under my belt. I met Devin Grayson while I was in Titan Talk—she was leaving as I was joining—and she ended up getting the Titans gig for a while. When she decided she wanted to leave, she helped grease the wheels for me to come on and co-write with her for a little while, and then take over the book from her. That’s how I ended up on Titans for, I guess, about two years. I forget exactly how long my run was.

TTC: Okay, Jay, this is the part of the interview where you get to tell everyone who you are and how you came to be. JF: [laughs] All right. How far back should I go? TTC: As far back as you feel is necessary.

JF: [laughs] Well, since this is a Titans interview, I first discovered the Titans about the second year of the New Teen Titans run. I think issue twentyfive was the first one that I TTC: What was your first remember reading. They were professional work? The Titans take it to the streets in a Secret Files splash page by Paul Pelletier. on Starfire’s planet, and I just Dialogue by Faerber. Titans TM and © DC Comics. JF: Technically it was the remember being blown away last issue of one of Marvel’s that Robin and Kid Flash, who I What If? series. It was What If? #114. That was the first book remembered from the [Super Friends] cartoon, had their own that I was hired to write, but within weeks I got a gig at DC team and were grown up, more or less. That totally captivated retelling the origin of Wonder Girl, the Cassie Sandsmark me, and the writing and the artwork were so far above some of version. [It was] just a little ten-page story in a Secret Origins 80the other comics I’d been reading, I was hooked from there. Page Giant. The Secret Origins book ended up being published I went into college wanting to be an artist: a comic book artist. I before the Marvel book, but the Marvel book was the one I was wrote and drew my own comics all through high school and hired to write first. So they came out right around the same majored as an art major for about a semester, [then] just washed time. out. I just didn’t have it, so I switched over to writing. I ended up TTC: When Devin helped you get the job on the Titans, did any of joining a Titans amateur press association (APA) called Titan Talk. 106

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the titans

Barry Kitson Drawing Titans To A Close

[A name familiar to readers on both sides of the Atlantic, Barry Kitson began his career at Marvel UK before crossing the ocean to work on L.E.G.I.O.N., The Adventures of Superman, and Azrael for DC. An early riser and a proper English gentleman, the following trans-Atlantic interview was conducted by Glen Cadigan in the wee hours of November 29, 2007.]

BK: Definitely. Yes, very much so. I enjoyed them during the Marv Wolfman/George Pérez era. I definitely said [back then] it was my favorite book being published. TTC: How did you become involved with the Titans series? BK: That was pretty much I was asked by the editor at the time if I’d be interested in writing and drawing the Titans. So obviously, I said, “Yes,” without any hesitation whatsoever, although it never quite turned out to be quite what the original offer was.

TTC: What was your first exposure to the Teen Titans? BK: That would have been back in the late Sixties when Nick Cardy was still drawing them. The first issue I can consciously remember would have been the Mad Mod one [#17—Ed.], way back in the very first series. I would have been in primary school—I couldn’t tell you exactly how old I would’ve been—but it was right about the time he did the Christmas Carol episode [#13—Ed.], so a long, long time ago.

TTC: Because you had to work with writers. BK: Yeah, I didn’t mind that so much. At the time, I wasn’t very happy with the way the Titans was going, so the offer to write and draw it seemed like a golden opportunity to get them, as I would have thought, back on track. Unfortunately, the thing that I didn’t like most about the series at the time was that they had a bunch of new characters basically dominating the book, and the first thing I wanted to do was get rid of those and get back to the core of the Titans. I really should have done a little bit more research before going into the job, because the first thing I was told after I said I’d do it was those characters were basically the editor’s decision, and he really wanted them in it. So as Homer would say, “D’oh!”

TTC: What was it about the book that got your attention?

BK: Well, to be honest, probably the artwork, originally, and then the fact that I think at the time it was probably the only teenage team available. It’s all a bit confused for those of us who live in England because comics didn’t come over in any order. They came over as ballast on freighters, so they didn’t come in any order whatsoever. I think comics were just grabbed from warehouses and thrown on ships. They were only available at coastal news agents, because they were Nightwing reflects on happier times in a page TTC: But you did eventually get literally unloaded from the ships and from the collection of Erik Merk. them out of the book. Titans TM and © DC Comics. just sold very cheaply to local news BK: Yes, it just took a little bit agents, so you could literally be picking longer than I would have liked, and not quite in the way that I up issues two or three years apart one week to the next. would have liked. [laughs] As I said, originally I was asked if I would TTC: Did you follow the Titans through their various incarnations? write the book as well, but the closer I actually got to taking over, I BK: Yes, I did, pretty much. I kind of got lost a little bit in the late then found out that Jay [Faerber], who was writing it at the time, Eighties/early Nineties, when the team seemed to be changing didn’t like those characters either, and he was only writing them every other week. But pretty much all the way through, yeah. because he was told to write them. So we found we probably had more in sympathy with each other than I would have guessed TTC: So would you consider yourself a fan of the series? 117

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outsiders

Judd Winick Working Outside The Lines

[Originally from Long Island, Judd Winick became a professional cartoonist at the age of 16 when his strip Nuts and Bolts was published in newspapers in the Tri-State area. After a stint on MTV’s The Real World, Winick became an illustrator for The Complete Idiot’s Guide series of books, as well as a nationally syndicated cartoonist with his strip Frumpy the Clown. On November 27, 2007, the author was interviewed by Glen Cadigan, and what follows is a transcript of that conversation.]

Frumpy the Clown strip in Oni Double Feature, and that’s how I got into comics. After that I did a short feature for Oni Double Feature called “Road Trip,” and then when Schreck left and went to DC, a few months after he got [there], he gave me a call and wanted to know if I wanted to write Green Lantern. So that’s how I broke into super-hero comics. I owe it all to Bob. TTC: How many years were you on Green Lantern? JW: Oh, I want to say three or four?

TTC: How did you get your start in the comics business?

TTC: And that eventually led to Green Arrow.

JW: I began doing comic strips originally. I had a syndicated comic strip called Frumpy the Clown, but I’ve always been a comic reader. I’ve been reading comics all my life, and basically I took a bunch of ashcan comics of my syndicated strip to the San Diego Comic-Con, I guess in ’95 or ’96, and Kevin Smith was there for his first major appearance. He was about to launch the Clerks comics from Oni Press, which was also brand new. I went online to do what I was doing at that point, to see if somebody I admired actually recognized me from television, [laughs] and then that way, I could have a real conversation with him, having slightly more edge than a fan.

JW: Yeah! Left one “Green” title for another. I was working on Green Lantern, and when Kevin Smith was gearing up to finish his run, Bob, who was my editor on Green Lantern, he and I were talking about it. He said, “I’d love for you to write Green Arrow!” and I said, “Great!” He said, “But I think we should have someone in between.” He said, “If you hop on right after Kevin Smith, I think they’re just going to eat us alive. I think we need another outsider from comics to come in,” and that outsider was Brad Meltzer. Brad’s my best friend, and we were college roommates, and Schreck knew that. Bob had read a number of Brad’s The original, unpublished cover to Graduation Day #1 by Ale Garza. I bought Kevin Smith’s novels, and he’d met him a All characters TM and © DC Comics. Clerks/Chasing Amy script couple of times at book book, asked him to sign it for signings, so Bob wanted to know if Brad’d be at all interested in me, and he had absolutely no recollection of who I was. Didn’t writing Green Arrow, and I told Bob that I think Brad’s been connect at all, but sitting five feet away from him was Bob waiting his whole life to write Green Arrow, so absolutely. Then Schreck, who was the editor and publisher of Oni Press at that I was off and running to do Green Arrow in his stead. time, and the moment I hopped offline, Schreck pointed at me TTC: You wrote the Graduation Day mini-series which preceded and said, “Aren’t you...?” I said, “Yeah, I am!” and Schreck and I the Outsiders. How did you get that assignment? talked, and then we grabbed lunch the next day to talk about all things comic books. Bob wanted to publish a single one page JW: That was at the beginning of a whole lot of stuff. Not long 136

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after Dan DiDio signed myself and Geoff Johns to exclusive contracts, our first big project was he was going to relaunch Titans and Outsiders—me taking Outsiders, Geoff taking Teen Titans—and the story that was going to kick it off was Graduation Day. So that was part of the discussions between me and Geoff and Dan right from the jump, many, many years ago. I would say a year prior to the book coming out, we were talking about that, that that book was going to be the catalyst that kicked off the other two new series. TTC: Obviously, the big event in that miniseries was the death of Donna Troy. Is that something that was handed to you? JW: Yeah, sort of. For the story to make sense, what we needed to do was break up the two teams. We needed Titans and Young Justice to end, and for that, we all felt that the story needed someone to die. Someone needed to die in what was not going to be a great cosmic battle. It was going to be a small battle where one of their own died, and that was going to shake everybody to the core, because when someone is a hero in a war, you can accept that, but when someone dies in a skirmish, something that could have been easily avoided, that can shake you up. The point of that book was to break up the teams; not to bring them together, not to solidify anything, but to really give them some bad cards. Really shake them up.

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So yeah, from that standpoint, we felt that someone should die, and when we kept coming around to it, the one that made sense storywise for all of us was Donna Troy. She’s the most well liked of all of them. She’s the one who gets into the least arguments with everyone else; she’s the big sister, she’s the one that many look up to as well as love as a friend, so that’s why she was chosen. But we always gave ourselves an out. None of us felt that it was a true death, which [is why] I always find the reactions of these things odd. There are characters that are killed off, and we get absolutely no sense whatsoever that they’re ever coming back, but Donna Troy, we bookended it with very obvious, spooky stuff going on. So yeah, Donna went away for a while, but she came back. I don’t think any of us had any intention of her staying dead. TTC: How about Lilith? JW: No, Lilith’s dead. [laughs] As far as I’m concerned, she’s Donna Troy fights to the last by Ale Garza. dead. Again, that was one that From the collection of Erik Merk. Donna Troy TM and © DC Comics. I didn’t give a hint or a clue that there was something wishing you luck. I know you’re going to otherworldly going on with her. She died, do a good job. I know you guys are going and that gave us an unbelievably big to work very hard on this, but the book dramatic beat at the end of the second has never worked.” And that’s not the sort arc. It wasn’t without consequences; it of thing that makes me want to get wasn’t something that we took lightly. behind it and say, “This is going to be one TTC: When you were picked for Outsiders, it was already called Outsiders? JW: Yeah. That was the whole idea, that we were going to relaunch Teen Titans and Outsiders. The only thing I dropped was the “The.” It was just going to be called Outsiders from now on, not The Outsiders. TTC: Was there any concern about people saying, “Hey, where’s Black Lighting? Where’s Halo?”

Winick’s creation Frumpy the Clown, the entire run of which has been collected by Oni Press. Frumpy TM and © Judd Winick.

JW: Just minor, to be honest with you. All deference to everybody who worked on it before, this was never a very successful title. This was going to be the third incarnation, and my hand on the Bible, Paul Levitz put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I’m 137

that’s going to be around forever.” He said, “Even if it’s great, it’s an uphill battle. I want it to work, but we shall see.” And after the second or third issue, I got a note from Paul saying, “Yup, it’s working just fine.” [laughs] He said, “I’m happy to see it. I love being wrong.” So as far as folks looking for the older characters, again, in all deference, there’s a micro-minority on the web who were looking for the old characters, but this isn’t the Justice League. This was the Outsiders, a very niche, specific team that had a couple of incarnations of arguably, and being generous, B-list characters. Some of them I wouldn’t even call B-list. I think the majority of mainstream folks, if you drag them off the street and ask them to name any characters from the Outsiders, they’re gonna pull up a goose egg. They’re not our most popular kids, but that’s why we wanted to do it. We actually wanted to keep it as just what

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outsiders

Phil Jimenez A Return For Donna Troy

[In 2000, Phil Jimenez took the reins of Wonder Woman, and as the title’s author/artist, he also handled her supporting cast, most notably the former Wonder Girl, Donna Troy. In 2006, he returned to the character with DC Special: The Return of Donna Troy, and as with other installments appearing in this volume, the following interview was conducted by Glen Cadigan on May 5, 2005, with supplemental questions asked on November 13, 2007.] TTC: When did your interest in Wonder Woman begin? PJ: Oh, I firmly blame Lynda Carter. I was into the cartoon and the t.v. show. Again, it’s sort of difficult to describe. I think a lot of it had to do initially with the Greek mythology angle, which I found fascinating. It also came with the moral position of the character. I like the function of the character, which I find very appealing. Of course, I love the t.v. show. It was pretty great. I like the idea of transforming from Diana Prince to Wonder Woman. I think a lot of people have those transformative fantasies, like if I just spin around, there will be a flash of light and I’ll become super-powerful. But I think it hit me at the right age, when I was sort of open to it, and it’s been a life-long love affair ever since. TTC: Did you have a definite game plan in mind when you approached your run on Wonder Woman?

two issues. My first one got fired, the second one got moved to another department, and then I got the third one. I was having all sorts of trouble with the guest-stars editorially. Her mother was slated to die in this crossover, so a year-long storyline I wanted to do had to be cut into six months. The story on Paradise Island which was supposed to be three issues [Wonder Woman [Vol. 2]#’s 168169—Ed.] got cut into two... I had to handle the two crossovers, 9-11 happened, and then here comes Greg Rucka. The editors kept saying, “Well, will you be ready to leave? Will you be ready to leave?” and then they would change their minds and say, “Do you want to stay another five issues?” “Oh, well, can you do two issues? Greg’s ready.” I don’t blame any of this on Greg at all, but basically, I was really handled quite poorly, and my run on Wonder Woman definitely had its ups and downs because of it. It was not exactly what I would’ve done in comics with my one shot [at the character]. I mean, at the end of the day, I got to write and draw Wonder Woman, and that’s really, really cool, and I look back on it and it’s not nearly as bad probably as I think it was, because I know what could’ve been, but it definitely wasn’t as clean as I wanted it to be. It was not the pure vision that I imagined it to Donna Troy leads the way on the cover of DC Special: The Return of Donna Troy #4. From the collection of Erik Merk. All characters TM and © DC Comics. be.

PJ: Yeah. I’m sure this has been talked about to death on various message boards. I was originally going to do twelve issues of Wonder Woman. It was actually going to be a mini-series, and it was not going to be in the regular pages of the book, because I’d heard that writer Greg Rucka was going to take over the book, only to be told that he was actually not ready yet, and would I mind doing it? So we just shuffled my twelve issues over into the line-up, only to discover that, at that moment, I would have multiple editors on my first

TTC: Where did the Donna Troy back-ups come from? PJ: I needed a break, and they didn’t want me off the book entirely, so they said, “Can you write and draw these Donna Troy stories?” and I was like, “Okay, sure!” So it ended up being these four-page little stories that were meant to fill space so that my name could still be attached to the book as an artist, and it turned out we had no idea where that story was going. We just started writing a story, and I think we figured it out about two 144

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issues in, which was kind of great, too, because it led into our larger Cheetah story later. But it was fun. I like Angle Man; I wanted to reintroduce Angle Man. I think I’d just been to Italy the year before, so I wanted to do a story that was set in Italy, and Donna’s a fashion photographer, so I knew she’d been there a lot, etc., etc., and I think that’s essentially where they came from. TTC: You showed her trying to get back on her feet as a photographer, because her personal life had been let slide. How far off the beaten path do you think she had gone as a character? PJ: Oh, terribly off the beaten path, mostly because everyone has been so focused on her origin for so long that they sort of forget all the very human qualities that make her great. She is a mother, a photographer, she owned her own

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business, etc. I love that stuff. That’s the cool stuff, it’s the humanizing stuff, and everyone kept focusing on the glitches in her history. I felt like, “If I never do another story where I try to repair the glitches in her history, it’ll be too soon.” More than anything, I think people respond to her because of either her Greek mythology roots or the humanity the character shows, not because they need to know why there was a Wonder Girl before there was a Wonder Woman, etc., etc. So I just thought something light and frivolous that didn’t focus on her history would be a fun way to go. TTC: When you take on a book like Wonder Woman, or even a character like Donna Troy which comes with its own share of baggage, how do you decide what to use and what to ignore? PJ: Oh, I think it depends on each character. In an ideal world, you take the good stuff and you leave the bad stuff, or you deal upfront with the bad stuff and then move on. In my case on Wonder Woman, one of my goals was to combine the best parts of all her history and leave behind, or just not talk about, the worst parts. I really wanted to deal with her history in a really good and positive way. Each run had its great parts, but none of the runs seemed to match up with the others, so I wanted to create a run that sort of united all of them. That was my goal. And Donna, as ever, was just to get back to the character that made everyone love her so much. [Note: At this point in the interview, the supplemental questions begin.—Ed.] TTC: The last time we spoke, the Donna Troy mini-series hadn’t come out yet. Overall, what was that whole experience like?

PJ: Let’s see. [pause] How do I even say this? That experience was, shall we say, less than satisfying. The wonderful part about it was that I got to work with José Luis García-López and George Pérez, and they got to work together, which had been a career long dream of George Pérez’s to ink García-López. But the project, as originally pitched, transformed quite a bit to become an Infinite Crisis prequel, which was not its original intent. So the direction of the work changed, and quite a bit of the writing was changed to better fit this event, and so I think some stuff got lost along the way. So overall, as 145

Jimenez handled Donna during his run on Wonder Woman, as seen above. Courtesy of Erik Merk. Nightwing and Donna Troy TM and © DC Comics.

a fan, it was an amazing experience to be able to work with George and José. As a creator, as someone trying to make Donna a little bit neater, it was not a particularly happy experience. TTC: What were your goals heading into that series? PJ: The initial goal was simply to restore Donna—to bring her back to life, as it were. My editor and I initially were going to tell a Vietnam War allegory story using characters that were really only important to Donna and the Titans of Myth. This was before it ever became a Teen Titans/Outsiders crossover, and we were just going to return her to Earth. It was really that simple. We were going to reunite her with her close friends and family, and return her to Earth, hopefully with character and origin intact. I didn’t realize when we started that we would be rebooting her origin again, nor did I realize it was actually going to be a crossover. Although knowing that, [things] changed quickly, if memory serves. Once I knew it was going to be a Titans/Outsiders crossover, I think we began to plot it that way. Further, as you may or may not know, it was originally going to be a weekly event, and it was going to cross over between Teen Titans, Outsiders, Teen Titans, Outsiders.... it was not going to be

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Teen Titans III

Everything Old Is New Again

Teen Titans and Outsiders Secret Files and Origins 2003, 2005 Teen Titans (Vol. 3) #’s 1-33 Teen Titans #1/2 Teen Titans/Legion Special #1 Action Comics #815 Green Arrow #46 DC Special: The Return of Donna Troy #’s 1-4 Infinite Crisis #’s 1-7 Superman/Batman #’s 7, 26 After the events of the Graduation Day mini-series in which Donna Troy and Omen were killed, the teenage sidekicks of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and the Flash were each approached to form a new Teen Titans organization under the tutelage of ex-Titans Cyborg, Starfire, and Beast Boy. Their first adventure as a reformed team involved an attack by Deathstroke the Terminator, and was followed by an episode in which they battled the new Brother Blood, during the course of which former Titan Raven was reborn and rejoined the team. From there, the Titans fought a new Changeling, and then traveled one thousand years into the future to fight alongside the Legion of Super-Heroes. Upon returning home, the team discovered that they had missed their mark by ten years, and encountered their evil future selves. When they finally arrived back in the proper time, they promised to learn from their glimpse of the future, and remain together as both friends and teammates. Shortly after their adventure with their adult versions, the Titans acquired a new teammate in the form of Green Arrow’s sidekick, Speedy, and were lured into battle by Dr. Light. After they defeated Light, the Titans were attacked from within by Superboy, as he was mind-controlled by Lex Luthor during an encounter which involved the Outsiders. This was followed by a trip to the planet Minosyss, where both the Titans and the Outsiders discovered original Titan Donna Troy alive and under the influence of the Titans of Myth. After freeing her from their control, the Titans returned to Earth and teamed with Hawk and Dove to defeat the agent of chaos, Kestrel. Shortly thereafter, Brother Blood returned with a group of reanimated dead Titans, which forced the team to journey to the afterlife

The cover to the 2003 New York International Sci-Fi & Fantasy Creators Convention booklet, courtesy of Mike Negin. Teen Titans TM and © DC Comics.

and close the door between life and death. Once that mission was accomplished, Blood was defeated with the help of Kid Eternity. Following their encounter with Blood, a Superboy from a different continuity appeared and challenged Superboy’s right to the name and title. In a battle which featured everyone who had ever been a Titan, Superboy-Prime killed Pantha and Wildebeest, and maimed the former Titan,

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Risk. He also severely beat Superboy to the point where he had to be hospitalized, and was only stopped by the efforts of Kid Flash and the two senior Flashes, who imprisoned the former hero in the Speed Force. Upon his recovery, Superboy joined Nightwing in an attempt to destroy a tower which had fractured reality, and in a rematch with Superboy-Prime, the tower was destroyed, but at the cost of Superboy’s life.

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teen titans III

Geoff Johns The Next Generation Of Teen Titans

[Geoff Johns’ career as a comic book writer dates back to 1999, when the Hollywood assistant was first approached by DC Comics to write for the company. Following long runs on JSA and the Flash, he was tapped by DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio to relaunch the Teen Titans in 2003. What follows is the transcript of an interview conducted with the author by Glen Cadigan via phone on November 6, 2007.]

reaching out and looking [for others]. I didn’t realize that comics came out all the time. I thought they were just there, and that was it, but they came out all the time. I found a Justice League, and then I found Flash—it was late Flash; #348, I think. Almost when it was cancelled—and then Crisis [on Infinite Earths] came, and that’s kind of what brought me into everything. I read Crisis, and out of that, they launched everything, so it was really an easy time to be a new comic book reader, reading Man of Steel and Justice League and Green Lantern Corps and Power of the Atom, I remember. The new Flash book came out, so ’84 to, I guess, ’87 was when I really got into it.

TTC: Let’s start with some easy questions first. Where were you born? GJ: Detroit. TTC: And I presume you grew up there, too? GJ: Yes. TTC: So at what age did you first discover comics?

TTC: So you would have just missed out on the Wolfman/Pérez Teen Titans.

GJ: I discovered comics in my grandmother’s attic in Detroit... I would say probably eight or nine. I found my uncle’s collection of ’60s comics, and they were mostly DC. [They were] probably about eighty, ninety percent DC, and then [there were] a couple Marvels. I remember a Daredevil and a Fantastic Four in there. I don’t remember much more than those, but I do remember lots of Batman and Flash, and lots of Superman, Jimmy Olsen, Adventure Comics with the Legion [of Super-Heroes], and a couple Green Lanterns.

GJ: Yes, I did. I didn’t get into Titans until much later, until Tom Grummett was on board. I got into that, and then I went back and bought a ton of the old Titans. I used to go back, and there weren’t really trades back then, so I’d go back and buy all the back issues and read up on them. You know, when they cancelled Flash, it didn’t really cross my mind that, “Oh, they cancelled [Flash].” I was a little bummed they cancelled my favorite book three months into collecting comics, but I realized, “Wow! There’s three hundred and fifty...”—I didn’t know there TTC: When did you start reading was a Jay Garrick book—I said, new comics? The Teen Titans are reborn in the above cover by Mike McKone and Marlo Alquiza. “Wow! There’s three hundred From the collection of Wallace Harrington. Teen Titans TM and © DC Comics. GJ: Around ’84, ’85. I had some and fifty issues of these! I’m Batman comics and stuff, but I going to go back, and there’s so much of these books to buy and never really collected or bought ’em with any dedication until I read,” and so I’d buy old comics with the same enthusiasm I bought Batman and the Outsiders #13, and that was the first would with new ones. I didn’t know a difference in the early comic that I really hooked onto, for some reason. I liked all the days. characters in there. I liked Black Lightning, and Geo-Force, TTC: Well, if you haven’t read it, it’s new to you. Metamorpho... and, of course, Batman and Katana and Halo. They were all great. I hooked onto that book, and then I started GJ: Exactly. And so everything was new to me, and the cool 150

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writing in high school, and I think in college is when I really thought about writing comics, but I was more into film, and I didn’t really think about pursing comics until after college. TTC: How did you segue into writing comics? GJ: Well, I moved out to L.A., and I luckily got a job with Richard Donner. I was his assistant on a movie called Conspiracy Theory with Mel Gibson and Julie Roberts and Patrick Stewart. I went to New York for three months to shoot it, and I met a bunch of people at DC Comics, including Eddie Berganza, who’s my editor on Green Lantern now, ironically, and Chuck Kim, who’s a writer on Heroes now. Phil Jimenez I met, too, and got to know him, and so I got friendly with them, and they knew I loved comics, and knew a lot about comics, Johns first wrote the Titans in the pages of Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. #5. From the collection of Greg McKee. © DC Comics. specifically DC, and they asked me to pitch thing was seeing characters I’d seen on something. I pitched S.T.A.R.S and Stripe, cartoons and stuff in the comics, and and Chuck Kim really liked it, and Chuck then learning more about them, and was the one that really pushed it learning all their friends and enemies. through. And that’s how I got into TTC: At what point did you start to think, comics. “Maybe I could write these someday?” TTC: Why did you pick the Star Spangled GJ: I’d say probably in high school. My Kid? best friend, Josh Hammond, and I would GJ: Well, my sister had passed away the draw comics all the time. We’d make up year I came up with the concept, and I our own characters. Even before that, wanted to do a comic book that was when I was a real young kid in sixth, inspired by her. She was an awesome, seventh grade, I still kept in contact with awesome girl, and so I wanted to do a my friend Bob Bisinger in Detroit, and he good comic inspired by her, and I also was really into comics, and drew all the wanted to do a teenage girl super-hero time. He got me into drawing, and into because I didn’t feel there were really creating my own characters, and we’d do any out there that were heroes worth that for hours on end. Then in high school, aspiring to. So I worked on the Star I lived up in Clarkston, Michigan, with my Spangled Kid, and I always liked the friend, Josh, and he and I would draw reverse of the sidekick... you know, the characters, and I would take my old ones I sidekick in the Star Spangled Kid is the drew when I was ten and update them adult, so we just did that again. when I was sixteen. You could actually see a progression, because I’d update them TTC: Now, you set that book in Blue every two years or so and give them new Valley, which was Kid Flash’s hometown. costumes and stuff, because I saw DC do GJ: Yes, specifically because I loved the that, and Marvel do that. Then I got into 151

Flash, and it gave me a connection to Flash and Kid Flash. Again, the Flash was always my favorite character growing up—Barry and Wally—and so that gave me a connection to Flash, and it gave me a chance to eventually bring the Flash in, which, ironically enough, I never really did. TTC: S.T.A.R.S. and Stripe was also the first time you had the opportunity to write the Young Justice characters. Was it your idea to include them in that story? GJ: Yeah, I really liked Young Justice at the time. The Flash book was my favorite book; Superboy was a close second, and Impulse... those were my favorite books when I was in college, and I loved those characters in Young Justice, and so I felt if I had a shot to write them, it would be a lot of fun. TTC: Did writing them then give you ideas for what you might do with them yourself someday? GJ: Well, I had an idea for Superboy, for him being a clone of Superman and Luthor, because I thought it was a really cool concept. I remember explaining Superboy was a clone of [Project: Cadmus Director Paul Westfield and Superman] originally to my brother, and he said, “Well, who’s that?” and I had to explain who it was. I always thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if the bad guy was

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Teen Titans III

Mike McKone Designing Teen Titans for the 21st Century

[With nearly twenty years of experience under his belt, Mike McKone has illustrated titles ranging from Justice League to Fantastic Four, with all points in between. The artist chosen to relaunch the Teen Titans franchise in 2002, McKone was interviewed by Glen Cadigan on July 23, 2006, and what follows is a transcript of that conversation.]

scene, and it looked like a collage of photographs. I was really curious as to who had drawn it. That was the first name I recognized. It’s kind of ironic, because it wasn’t the artwork itself [which I noticed], it was just a bunch of photographs he had cut and pasted. TTC: Once you started to notice creators, did you begin to follow them from title to title?

TTC: Let’s start at the very beginning. When did you first start reading comics?

MM: Well, that was a little later. When we actually found somewhere that sold American comics—there was a railway station, and it had American imports—I remember following John Buscema on Thor, and around that time, I guess, John Byrne was starting to get popular. George Pérez... those kind of guys.

MM: I had a friend called Neil Sterling, and he was into Amazing Spider-Man Weekly, a black-and-white comic in the UK. We were making sand castles, because there was a house being built in our street when we were kids, and he said, “Hey, I’ve got a comic to show you.” So we went and read the comic, and that was pretty much that. He had a small collection, and we collected comics together for ten years. That pretty much kicked that off.

TTC: Would you consider them to be your early influences? MM: Yeah, I guess so. I really loved Jack Kirby’s work. That influenced me directly, as did John Byrne. I was pretty much a John Byrne clone for most of my teenage years. He just had a really easy style to ape. The rendering... no matter what you drew, you put the little John Byrne squiggle [on it], and you had a Terry Austin original.

TTC: Were there any particular books that caught your eye? MM: Well, there were two black-and-white weekly reprints in England. One was Amazing Spider-Man, and the other was the Mighty World of Marvel, which had the Hulk, and I think it had the Mighty Thor, and I’m pretty sure it had the Fantastic Four.

Wonder Girl as she appeared on the cover of Teen Titans #3 by McKone. From the collection of Wallace Harrington. Teen Titans TM and © DC Comics.

TTC: When did you start to seriously consider being a professional yourself?

MM: I didn’t really consider being a professional comic book artist. I thought painting movie posters would be cool. I don’t actually remember when I first thought it would be a cool idea. I never drew strips when I was a kid. I did illustrations of super-heroes— crummy illustrations of super-heroes—[so] I guess it

TTC: So when did you first start to notice the names in the credits—who wrote what and who drew what? MM: I remember the first name I noticed was Jack Kirby’s, because there was a Fantastic Four story with this space 160

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MM: Pretty much. I mean, just reading comics is an education. But yeah, all of the mistakes are mine, and all of the stuff that isn’t mistakes is pretty much ripped off the aforementioned names. TTC: How did you break into the field? Did you have a strategy? MM: A strategy is stretching it. When I left college, I knew that I was gonna draw comics—[call it] cocky or self-confident, whatever—but I knew I wasn’t good enough, so I just did a couple of different jobs, and worked on comics on evenings and weekends for a couple of years. [I] built up some portfolio pieces which I then took to a Early artwork from McKone, done as a tryout for Marvel, courtesy of Art Shotton. convention in London, Sub-Mariner TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc. [and] the first person I happened gradually. I can’t pinpoint showed them to was Dick Giordano, who one moment when it came to me. was Editor-In-Chief at DC at the time, and TTC: At what point did you start to he liked them. For whatever reason, he realize that you could draw better than liked them, and took samples with him. I the other kids? got to draw an issue of Justice League, and I was twenty, so it was cool. [chuckles] MM: The guy I used to collect comics with Neil Sterling—his mother was the secretary of a primary school, and we used to copy covers, or copy pin-ups, and his pin-ups were always fantastic. They were very accurate, very close to the originals, and I was always trying to match him and I never could. But I just tried harder and harder, and eventually I began to get closer to him, and then one day his brother told me that he was using carbon paper to trace the covers, and that’s why his looked so good. Then when I saw what he was doing with carbon paper, I realized it was because I’d been trying so hard to beat him that I was just a little bit better than him. He was kind of the best drawer in the school at the time. [laughs] TTC: So you consider yourself selftaught, basically.

to do a monthly book, or anything resembling a monthly book, so we tended to work on projects that didn’t have such a tight deadline. TTC: When would you say that your profile as an artist rose to the point where you didn’t have to pursue work, that work started coming to you? MM: To be [honest], I’ve never had to pursue work, and it’s not because I’m good, it’s just [because] I entered the industry at a huge boom period in the late 1980s, and by the time the industry bottomed out, I was just a solid, dependable penciler that managed to get work. There was a... I don’t know if you’d call it a fallow period. There was a time when literally the only offers coming in were the offers that I was drawing. I wasn’t turning down different offers every week. But I think I’ve just coursed it through without paying attention to how I’m going to get work, and I’ve lucked out. I’ve been lucky. TTC: When did you do your first work for Marvel? MM: I did Punisher, I think. Yeah, I did a Punisher Summer Special [#2, 1992—Ed.] that was written by Pat Mills. I don’t remember too much about it, but up to that point I exclusively worked for DC,

TTC: Did you see the Justice League as a high-profile assignment at the time? MM: At the time it was a hugely highprofile assignment, because it was right bang in the middle of the Keith Giffen/Kevin Maguire run. It was probably DC’s hottest book, and I was fully expecting just to do an inventory [story] to show people what I could do. Then Andy calls me up and tells me it’s going to be in the issue after Kevin left [#25—Ed.], so it was kind of nervewracking, but they printed it anyway, and Andy actually kept me in work for maybe a year-and-a-half while I was slowly becoming employable to other editors. I think I only did three regular issues, but I did a bunch of Annuals and Quarterlys, stuff like that. I think Andy decided pretty early on that I wasn’t going to be able 161

McKone was first published in the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League. Art courtesy of Art Shotton. Blue Beetle TM and © DC Comics.

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teen titans go!

Teen Titans Go!

The Animated Antics Of TV’s Teen Titans

Teen Titans: The Complete Season One DVD Teen Titans: The Complete Season Two DVD Teen Titans: The Complete Season Three DVD Teen Titans: The Complete Season Four DVD Teen Titans: The Complete Season Five DVD Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo Teen Titans Go! #’s 1-55 On July 19, 2003, the Teen Titans animated series debuted on the Cartoon Network and was an immediate success. The show ran for five seasons, and was the brainchild of the Network’s then VicePresident of Content Development, Sam Register. Developed by Executive Producer Glen Murakami, who was guided by head writers David Slack, Amy Wolfram, and Rob Hogee, Teen Titans was a hit with both boys and girls, as well as with older and younger viewers. The series was accompanied by a plethora of related merchandise, including lunch boxes, coloring books, and toys, in addition to a spin-off comic called Teen Titans Go!. The show was followed by the direct-toDVD release, Trouble in Tokyo, and today viewers can collect the entire series on DVD. Over two decades after its creation, the Titans lineup created by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez continues to thrill a new generation of children, and due to the exposure that television provides, the Teen Titans are now firmly a part of popular culture.

The animated Teen Titans burst into action in promotional artwork from Warner Brothers. Teen Titans TM and © DC Comics. TM DC Comics.

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teen titans go!

Sam Register Bringing The Teen Titans To TV

[After a career in advertising, Sam Register became the first employee of Cartoon Network Online before he was then promoted to the Cartoon Network itself. It was in his capacity as Senior Vice President of Content Development that he brought the Marv Wolfman/ George Pérez version of the Teen Titans to the small screen in the animated Teen Titans series. Register was interviewed by Bill Walko in April, 2004, and what follows was originally published in Pacesetter: The George Pérez Magazine #4 (June, 2004).]

same time. I thought that he, in animation, was never anything more than a sidekick. It was also a good way of introducing new characters like Cyborg, Raven, Beast Boy and Starfire, who I knew through the DC Universe, but many kids seeing the show for the first time would have no idea who they were. Robin was sort of an entry character. Kids know who Robin is, so through Robin we are able to meet these new characters.

TTC: How did you get involved with Teen Titans, the animated series? SR: Well, I was a huge fan of the Wolfman/Pérez Titans, and when my job was moved to development, the first project I wanted to do—before I did anything in my new development role—was to see if the Teen Titans were available. I was still living in New York at the time, so I called Paul Levitz, and I went over to DC Comics. I asked him about Teen Titans, and he said it was available, and that was it. It was the first thing I always wanted to do, and the first thing I did. TTC: Why adapt Teen Titans instead of, say, Legion of SuperHeroes?

TTC: Have you gotten any feedback, or input, from George Pérez or Marv Wolfman? SR: We have. I met with Marv a couple of times, and he’s been very supportive of everything, and thought it was very cool that we were doing it. He also liked the way we were doing it. The Teen Titans comic book was much more of a soap opera—which is a direct quote from Marv—and we were obviously going in a different direction. He supported it all the way, and thought it was a great way to go.

SR: I was a fan, mostly. A lot of the super-hero stuff on Cartoon Network at the time—like Justice League—was a little more adult-oriented. I knew I would have to make a show that was a really good kid’s cartoon, and a good show for what is mostly 6-11 year olds, so I thought teens and a youngerskewing hero group would be good for that.

As for George, I hadn’t talked to George until we had a launch party for Teen Titans at Comic-Con last year in San Diego. It happened that Teen Titans was premiering the same night as the Comic-Con, and George and Marv were both invited to the party. They attended to watch the premiere live at a bar in San Diego, and it was packed with people. I got to meet George for the first time, and it was excellent because I got to watch Marv and George watching the Teen Titans. They were just thrilled, watching their creation on t.v., and I was thrilled to see these guys thrilled. There was a lot of mutual admiration going on that night, because I was thanking them and they were thanking me. I was like, “If it wasn’t for you guys, there would be no show,” and they were like, “Thanks for doing the show.”

Also, I thought that Robin— one of the ‘A’ characters in the DC Universe—was both an ‘A’ character and a sidekick at the

TTC: Was it a relief to learn they were so appreciative and supportive of the series? 187

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characters, we didn’t get too close to origins on anything. Actually, the girls—we sort of get into their background a little bit. So far, with the boys, we haven’t gotten into their past. TTC: There are hints at times. Cyborg, for example, mentions how he used to be an athlete.... SR: Right. But the origin of Cyborg is depressing. TTC: Well, all their origins are depressing. They’re all orphans or have parents that died…

understood it right away. TTC: How did you decide which characters to use on the show? SR: We talked a little about it. When I was first playing around with the idea, I was thinking of changing up the lineup a little bit, but the original lineup was great. Wonder Girl and Superboy were out of the picture because those are different licenses within DC Comics. So with Teen Titans—which is Robin essentially—we had access to the Batman universe, but we’d have to pay a bigger licensing fee to get those other characters in because other creators are connected to those. TTC: And with Justice League, different arrangements were made to include those characters from the onset. SR: Right. And we do have Aqualad. Aqualad we were allowed to use because Aqualad himself was a Teen Titan from the original Teen Titans. So they kind of gave us a little leeway on him. But Wonder Girl and Superboy and Kid Flash were out. But we’re fine; they didn’t really fit the type of characters we were doing, either. Glen refers to the Teen Titans as the Breakfast Club. There’s a jock and there’s a nerd and there’s a goth girl, there’s a princess and there’s a bad boy. That kind of worked out. We didn’t need any more for the show. Anything more than five on any team gets to be too much to deal with. TTC: Let’s touch on some of the characters.

How did Robin evolve? He obviously has many character beats from Dick Grayson’s character in New Teen Titans. With all the different Robins, which one, or ones, serve as inspiration for the series?

SR: Yeah, so we’re not going there. Starfire, we will be going back to her home planet on an episode and get more on her background, but not getting into too much. Starfire… she’s sort of like the Little Mermaid from the Disney movie, and the Little Mermaid didn’t understand the surface world. Our Little Mermaid doesn’t quite understand Earth, and that allows for a lot of comedy. It makes her very sweet and very funny, so she’s worked out pretty good.

SR: My thing with Robin [is] I am so completely bored with the DC universe and continuity and all that crap. To me, he’s just Robin. I know all the fans give a crap, but I don’t. He’s Robin. He wears a mask, and he used to work for Batman, and that’s all I know. I don’t even know who he is behind that mask, and if Glen knows, I don’t want him to tell me. He’s cool because he’s the one guy who has no super-powers on the team. He’s the team leader, and he was also trained by one of the best super-heroes in the world, so he probably has some good experience. TTC: One of the interesting things about Robin is that he is the member that could potentially be the least powerful, yet everyone trusts him and looks up to him, and he’s the unquestioned leader of the team. SR: Right. But he also has brain power. He was trained by a detective, so there’s more to Robin than just the big boots. TTC: Cyborg and Beast Boy are pretty close to their comic book counterparts. Did you change anything when adapting them for the show? SR: No, those characters are pretty straight on. You’ll notice with all the 189

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teen titans go!

Glen Murakami Introducing The Titans To Murakanime

[Following the cancellation of the Teen Titans animated series, Bill Walko conducted the following interview with the show’s producer and guiding force, Glen Murakami, about all five seasons of the program, plus the path which the producer took to lead him to Titans Tower. Originally conducted in 2006, what follows was first published online at www.titanstower.com.]

Timm said that Glen was a crappy storyboard artist.” But I really had absolutely no animation experience, so on Batman, I got all my training in animation. One of the really cool things about working with Bruce is that he didn’t play by the rules. He knew how he wanted Batman, and he knew that he wanted it different, so I think he let me do a lot of cool things—a lot of different things—probably more than I would have done anywhere else.

TTC: Glen, thanks for taking some time to talk about your history with Teen Titans. Can you tell us a bit about your background, and how you started working in animation?

TTC: During Batman: The Animated Series, the writers and producers approached Robin as a much more mature and capable character. Was that something that appealed to you?

GM: I just kind of stumbled into it. I always wanted to be a comic book artist. For years, I heard it was really difficult to get into animation. It was a small group that was hard to get into, so I never really thought about it. I liked anime and cartoons and stuff, but it didn’t seem like something I could get into.

GM: I wasn’t as involved with the stories on the previous Batman series. I was just starting out. I was primarily a character designer. Even on the revamp [The New Superman/Batman Adventures], I was more art director than being involved with the writing on the show. But I did talk with Bruce about Robin being more of a teen sidekick.

I considered myself more of a comic book guy, but then a friend of mine got into animation and started working on Batman: The Animated Series, a guy named Keith Weesner, who was a background designer. I was friends with him through junior high school and high school. He kind of stumbled into it, too. He heard they were hiring artists over at Warner Bros., and he showed Eric Radomski his portfolio.

I think the reason Bruce [put] Robin in college was because that was the current continuity of the comics, and he also gave him that Neal Adams designed costume. I felt that the dynamic between those two characters wasn’t as interesting because Robin was so much older. I just think when you have a younger Robin, the contrast between him and Batman is more interesting. That’s why we had the younger Robin when we did the revamp.

Eventually, I was able to show my portfolio to Kevin Altieri, Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm. At the time After working on the first Batman, we got a chance they said they were looking, and they had me to streamline everything, so when we came back An early design of the Titans by Murakami. take a storyboard test. They took one look at with The Batman Adventures, we varied Robin’s Teen Titans TM and © DC Comics. the storyboard and said, “Well, you’re not a age, Batgirl’s age, Nightwing’s age. We made it very good storyboard artist, but we’re looking for people, so we’ll more of a “Batman Family.” That was interesting and different take a chance, and bring you on and train you.” Bruce did say that from what had been done previously. We still had their I can draw. personalities to play with. TTC: Right. Bruce Timm recalled that story on one of the DVD commentaries of Batman: The Animated Series.

TTC: At one time, Fox was considering a Robin solo series with his adventures at college. You even did some designs for that series. How far along was that developed?

GM: Yeah. [laughs] I like how the story gets retold: “Even Bruce 192

GM: Right, that was back when we were working on the first Batman [: The Animated Series]. It’s so funny; it seems so long ago that I don’t really remember everything. I thought the idea of a younger Robin was cool.

We’re trying to do different things, we’re trying to keep it new and keep it fresh. We say things like, “Well, we already did that in the first Batman, so what can we do for the second Batman?” Or, when we did Superman, “How can we make this different from Batman?” I think sometimes people think we are being told to make these changes, but the reality is, we’re trying to do different things than we’ve done before, so fans don’t say, “Look, they’re doing the same stuff over and over.”

TTC: With Batman Beyond, you began to take more responsibilities as a producer. Was that a big change? GM: I guess so. You never really know what a job is like until you do it. The whole time I was working with Bruce, I became his right-hand man. Still, I didn’t realize what it took to run a show until Teen Titans. TTC: So how did Teen Titans come about? GM: Teen Titans came about because Sam Register came on as Senior Vice President of Development at Cartoon Network. One of the things that he always wanted to see adapted was Teen Titans. He had some other people working on it during the development stage, then they brought it to me to take a pass at it. I think my take on it was close to what Sam wanted to do, so it went from there. TTC: Was it the Japanese-influenced design and storytelling that Sam liked? GM: Well, he said he wanted something different. He needed a show more for 6-11 year olds. [laughs] I think when I tell the story of the show’s development, it seems like a very corporate decision, but, y’know, it’s a very valid decision. It was something different from the kind of shows that Bruce had established, and having worked on all those shows before, it made it easier to do a show that was just different from the previous ones. TTC: Also, at that point, Justice League was happening, and Justice League was maybe the most mature of all the Bruce Timm super-hero shows. GM: Yeah. I also think, going back to the first season of Batman: The Animated Series, that was probably the most mature show we’ve done. No one else was telling those kinds of stories in animation at that time, but when we watch them now, we realize how slow they are. They have a

IF YOU

Even during the course of five seasons of Titans, there’s some growth and change. I think some people just didn’t like it. It’s an evolution, though. There’re things in the first season that we moved away from, but then when we rewatch them, we would say, “Wow, that was really cool,” or there’s some visual things that maybe we stopped doing. You’re always going backLINK and ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, CLICK THE forth and re-evaluating. BELOW TO ORDER THIS BOOK!

TTC: Teen Titans used a more Japanese approach to storytelling, A storyboard from the Titans’ opening sequence, as with the super-deformed reactions and drawn by Murakami. Teen Titans TM and © DC Comics. pictorial reactions. Was there any concern much different pace to them. I watch about doing that approach in a super-hero Featuring interviews with GEOFF MIKE those Justice League shows now, [and] it JOHNS, show? McKONE, is PETER DAVID, PHIL JIMENEZ, and othseems like everything really rapid-fire. plus an in-depth section on the top-rated Car- the thing we tried with Titans There’s a lot of ers, story crammed into them. GM: I think toon Network series! Read what the producers and was an goes” approach. We But by this time, established so adapting the “anything staff ofwe’ve the show have to say about Tiknew going in that it wasn’t going to be a much. Plus, we’ve gotten better at tans to all the small screen! Also CHUCK DIXON, typical super-hero show. We didn’t know WAID, KARL and JOHN BYRNE on storytelling andMARK all that kind of KESEL, stuff, and whether or not it would all work, but we writing the current generation of Titans! More with the animation is better, too. MARV WOLFMAN and GEORGE PÉREZ on their didn’t think there was any reason not to try I know the fansseminal like the old work! Batmans, I onthem. Titans NEAL and ADAMS redesigning I think sometimes people are Withwill rare compare artwork by the ADAMS, BYRNE, know a lot of Robin! the fans dismissive and they say, “Well, you guys are plus an allmodern stuff JIMENEZ, to thoseMcKONE, shows,PÉREZ but and themore,just doing fake I don’t think any people new cover by MIKE McKONE, the TITANS COMPANIONanime.” VOLUME 2 completes Titans thing is, we’refan’s always experimenting. realize how difficult it is to do collection! Written by GLEN CADIGAN. that stuff.

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I think it’s not so much “ripping off anime” as much as it’s a kind of storytelling. We asked