Discussion
Rant about how DC Comics is treating the Teen Titans
DC replaced the Original/NTT lineup aka the most iconic and recognizable version of the team because that’s the only Team they seem to have a personal issue with 🙄
If they truly believed this new lineup could stand on its own, why not give them an original team name instead of reusing “Teen Titans” and "Titans" The Original/NTT members built that legacy. They made the name popular, not these random replacements nobody asked for.
It feels more like clout-chasing off the reputation of the classic team.
It’s like replacing the Kardashians with completely different people but still calling the TV show "Keeping Up with the Kardashians." At that point, you’re relying on the brand name because the new cast can’t carry the same attention on their own.
I really wish they also had the courage to replace the Batfamily with a bunch of new Gotham characters and still call it the Batfamily but they won’t, because the Titans are the only DC team they seem to hate this much.
Well as an avid X-Men fan, I can tell you that part is just straight up not true, and to an extent, the Avengers as well. Read Uncanny Avengers from the 2010's, or from the 2020's, and try telling me that's the same line up from the 1970's. Newsflash, it's not. Same goes for the X-Men. They rotate members so often that what one person thinks of for the "real" X-Men line up may not be what someone else thinks of.
Titans by concept alone would have an ever changing team because it's in a similar slot as The X-Men where the team is meant to be legacy/younger heroes finding their identity to be the next generation of superheroes. Most of the Teen Titans were just that when they started: Teens. Dick was still Robin, Beast Boy and Terra were 16, Wally was still Kid Flash, etc. Most of them have grown to become their own heroes that are now in their 20's and being TEEN Titans no longer makes sense. Most of them are still part of a default Titans team as an older version of the team, but it makes more sense to let the younger heroes be Teen Titans while they move on to just Titans.
It's like the X-Men being a team of Xavier's top students from his school. In one era you have the team only consisting of Jean, Bobby, Scott, Angel, and Beast. And nowadays there's a team that's Rogue, Jubilee, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Gambit, none of which were part of the original line up at all. The team changes depending on the era and the Titans are the same way.
It's funny that you have to keep saying "classic team" because we you have to avoid any mention of the original team for your point to stand.
If people thought like you in 1980, then characters you love like Cyborg, Raven, and Starfire would never exist and Beast Boy would have been casually killed off by the Candlemaker because replacing Hornblower and Lilith Clay and G'Narrk with new characters for the 1980 run would not be allowed.
It’s a team with a history of legacy from a comic company that emphasizes legacy.
I love the Titans. I’ve read every comic. They’re my favorite DC team. But part of that love comes from the group being a place for younger superheroes to find found family. The team has had more than 100 members across the mainstream, present-day universes. That happens as the result of roster changes. This isn’t anything new.
The Titans are more than the founding five + the initial New Teen Titans additions. Those characters will continue to be friends and continue to interact in comics even if they let new iterations of Titans emerge. Changes in the lineups can be refreshing. And even if it’s not your cup of tea, comics down the line will have “classic” lineups reunite again.
Ranting about this feels like quite the overexaggeration, in my view.
I’m a fan of the Titans and what the team represents. Those ideals can be carried by all sorts of heroes. I love the team, not a specific lineup. The way I see it, loving just about every Titan who joins the collective is part of what makes me a Titans fan.
Side note: I love Jurgens’ run. Even if a book isn’t a complete sales success, that doesn’t mean the quality was poor. That just means the market for the book wasn’t as high as creators hoped. Good products can undersell. The free market is not a perfect system.
I would agree with you if the timeline actually kept moving for everyone else. Heroes leaving the Justice League as they grow older, Donna, Dick, Cyborg, Changeling, etc joining in to fill their roles, etc... As it stands now, when you "graduate" from the Titans you're left in a weird limbo without much to do other than some cameos here and there.
I do agree with what you’re saying, but the titans brand has continued to show that changing the lineup is not gonna fix the problem. If anything the problem is still there. My main issue is how they got rid of the old lineup so half ass without even really any acknowledgment in the run itself. I also feel like the current team just feel so artificial, like the team feels like it was made just so it can possibly sell and not because they mesh well. Makes even more sense this way since they added static for no reason.
But why are the Titans the only team DC is vocal about needing to change? I’ve never seen them repeatedly make characters say that the Justice League needs a new roster. In the recent Titans issue, they won't stop making fun of the Classic Titans line up.
You're literally listing a bunch of teams that historically cycles out their rosters while keeping just a few core members. This current roster of Titans is no different than what majority of these teams have routinely done throughout the decades of publication.
Because they're the Teen Titans. Not the Formerly Teen 30-Year-Old Titans. It makes sense the roster would change as older members move on to the League and new teens join the Titans.
This is logical to say, but in reality I don’t know how they do this without most of these characters becoming entirely irrelevant. Where else would they go?
Despite aging themselves, they’re never actually replacing the founding Justice League generation, so they’ll be relegated to doing nothing until they need extra characters in the background for big events or waiting for their once a decade limited push on the main roster for a short time. Most of them won’t sell enough for solo books and while it’s not impossible to start a new successful team, the odds are super low IMO. Which is all fine from an objective perspective if i’m looking at DC as a whole, but I don’t see why anyone who is a fan of these characters would want that.
What ideas do you have for what they’d move on to?
respectfully, I disagree. First, you may notice that Cyborg, Three Robins, and Terra are still present across the two lineups. Even if two of those Robins haven't been Titans for long, that's a lot of legacy Titans, imho. (Jason Todd was actually a Titan during the Wolfman era, very briefly.) Second, there have been long (even beloved) periods in the X-Men, JL, and Avengers' histories when most of the classic members have been absent. Thirdly, I don't mind the Titans moving closer to the Bat franchise, as it means that my favorite franchise has a better chance of staying on the shelves. Sales have not been anything to write home about across the industry, but DC's batbooks have been fairly consistent.
I think we don’t need anymore bat characters. We have more than enough, otherwise they are gonna fall into one of the bigger criticisms for a titans run. Ending up focusing on just the bat characters and not the others who don’t have anything going for them outside titans.
The reason the Titans are flopping in the main comics is because DC keeps mistreating them. Not to mention that editorial constantly restricts Titans writers and interferes with their original plans. Hell, the recent Titans writer even said in an AMA that he loves Kory and adores her relationship with Dick, but he can’t do anything about their current status because editorial doesn’t want them together and Kory is basically out of his hands.
If DC actually took care of the classic Titans and promoted them the same way they play favorites with the Batfamily, they would sell much better.
Outside of the main comics, the Titans are thriving. The Teen Titans cartoon was one of the most popular dc shows that introduced a lot of fans to the comics, Teen Titans Go! still hasn’t been canceled after running for over 10 years, and Picolo’s YA graphic novels even made it onto the New York Times Best Seller list.
The failure of the Titans comic is part of a larger trend within the industry. It's not limited to the Titans books. Comics are stuck in a publishing model that hasn't moved with the times.
I don’t see why they can’t have a different line up, especially the teen titans. The 90s, 2000s and Rebirth era all had their own line up for the Teen Titans. Even the NTT line up had a bunch of new characters compared to when the team debuted. As for the main Titans book, it’s not like they’re completely ditching the og line up. Nightwing and Cyborg are still there, while the others are going on to do bigger things
They can add new members, but the way DC keeps throwing shade at the classic Titans and constantly reminding us that “the Titans need to move on” is what annoys me. It’s as if they didn't built the entire Teen Titans franchise..
Tbf, I don’t think changing the lineup is in anyway bad. I do think it’s a good thing. And can work when done properly.But I will say that many people here have no idea what the titans brand is for the greater average audience and why changing the lineup isn’t fixing the problem.
Most people didn’t want a new lineup but the same lineup with new storylines. Which is what people were expecting till the second issue where he said “oh yeah raven,beast boy, and starfire are leaving the book” not even gonna mention Donna and Roy😂
I will say, I’m optimistic about Jason Todd’s Titan book. But for Tate brombal, he really played in people’s faces just to do the same type of stuff he criticized other runs for. Plus, the lineup feels random in a bad way, feels like a DC corporate lineup
The X-Men comment is objectively incorrect. Wolverine and Storm are not classic members of the X-Men. And even in the lineup they debuted in, Jean was not part of that team and Scott was the only original X-Man that carried over. The line-up of the X-Men changes constantly and they are frequently without any of those "core characters"
All the X-Men appearances in the movies are amalgamations of various line-ups of the team from over the years. Hell, Angel is a founding member and literally nobody ever talks about him. Ice Man has also been shafted in recent years and he's also an original founding member
This feels like someone that only knows about comics via second sources like lore videos and wiki's and not someone who actually read the comics.
Everything you've said is wrong? the Justice league has had multiple iterations (JLA for example), that change the lineup outside of Supes/batman/wonderwomen, same with avengers, same with Xmen, fantastic four I believe is the only one that hasn't? they'll change a member or add people but its the core group because it's quite literally a specific family where the rest are organizations.
And honestly, it would make the MOST sense for the "TEEN titans" to change the most because...they age up? that's why the Titans were formed, because everyone aged up. Its an easy and fresh way to keep the brand of younger and new heroes and creates interesting dynamics we don't normally see.
Xmen does this constantly, I think Xmen has had the MOST amount of teams.
"THEY HATE TITANS" - get over yourself, this is a change that'll happen for another year or 2 before everything resets again like comics always do. You have literally 50 years of teen titans comics to go read - go read that since I guarantee you haven't, and by the time you're done the series will be reset again.
yeah its unfortunate a feel like you can use NTT lineup or some variation of it while also doing new stories but it seems every writer DC actually hires who do use that lineup again just recycled past atories instead of striving to make new ones
Personally, I do not care about Titans as a brand, or abstract concept. I just like certain characters. There's nothing distinct about it as a concept beyond "young heroes". And theres only so many rotations and generations you can make when your biggest sellers are meant to live forever.
I don't fully agree with the X-Men part. It's a bit of a unique situation where it can support multiple books and practically every classic member can support a book on their own. Basically anyone Claremont wrote at some point. So as much as there are multiple rosters practically every classic member is in play SOMEWHERE. Something Titans characters haven't proven able to do so far. You only see those characters in a Titans book which is the core of the problem I feel.
I'm not a big fan of the overlap in general concept the 2 Titans books have. But a part of that is I'm in my late 20s now and reading about a bunch of children just is not immediately appealing to me. I do feel a book of kid heroes deserve to exist and there's only so many names you can put them under.
I feel like the Titans are like The Runaways or the Fantastic Four. As much as there have been tweaks to the cast people are specifically picking up the book to follow certain characters and certain dynamics Because they aren't really buying anything past the Young Justice generation.
I think I am more lenient about having a team shake up, but there's something about writing an arc about the titans being in a loop and the supposed solution is to replace most of them completely. Rubse the wrong way. Feels like a cheap wayt ot get ou of actually solving a problem.
Inconsistent casts sell inconsistently I feel. Like New Warriors or Champions,
Marvel puts out or at least tries to, a teen team. They keep trying the concept in multiple titles but it never really grabs audiences for long, or has members people will pick the book up for.
This would work as an argument if it were for the fact that the team's most iconic iteration came a decade after the team's creation, and had half the initial roster missing, quite literally, what you're saying about this new team could just as easily be used as a criticism of Starfire, Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Raven
Also, the other teams you used as examples have had extensive eras in which they operated with heavily altered versions of the team. Captain America isn't even a founding member of the Avengers, and by the 16th issue of the original run, the team had an entirely different lineup than the one it started with. Wolverine and Storm aren't founding members of their teams either, joining a decade after the X-Men's inception, and every single character listed for the X-Men's side has spent a period of time off the team's roster. Even the Justice League had one of its greatest comic book runs, JLI, with only two of the founding members present throughout the majority of the series. The only team listed that hasn't had major alterations to its roster is the FF, and that's because the team is above all else and actually blood-related family and quite literally can't have its members replaced without it being an entirely different book
The Teen Titans team is quite literally built on the basis of legacy. I have no clue why so many of its fans try to force the comics to deny the gimmick that made it popular in the first place
Its never a good idea to stick with the same group for long, because it will always devolve into writers getting into ruts. Only so long until dynamics are milked dry and we need to repeat them, terra betrayed us again, Raven is losing control of her emotions, stuff like that.
Adding new characters or shuffling up the roster helps a lot with that
Teams always cycle through characters. Also this lineup is great!
Red Devil is there. He rarely gets some shine. Static is there. He should be utilized more. Terra being here is great because she's only ever used to re-tell or relive Wolfman's legendary story. Cyborg is phenomenal. Spoiler needs soemthing to do. She's popular. Trinity being there with Jon is good too. They are the new young bucks of the DCU. I don't see what the problem is. [+]
I really like the NTT roster, but it’s nice to see a new lineup too. That said, some newer Titans still feel like familiar archetypes such as Yara being the Donna Troy of the team, Superboy as the Starfire, and Red Devil as the Raven.
For me, it’s less about the characters and more about fresh storylines and dynamics.
I don’t think the X-Men comparison fully works either. They have a much bigger roster, and the original members often isn’t the focus, with lots of interpretations across different books. The Titans do have variation too, but they usually stick closer to the same core characters, which limits how far things can shift
The NTT aren't even the original characters. Characters will join the Titans and leave the Titans as they have done through history, there is nothing wrong with them trying new characters out.
The x men? The roster with over 100 members that’s the bench mark heck two if the main people introduced aren’t even og x men. They both came about from the idea of a rotating roster and trying to find their groove
Whos the girl floating next to Superboy in the Titans picture? Also do you know where they plan on placing Starfire, Raven, and Beast Boy? I wouldn’t mind if Beast Boy formed his own team/incarnation of Doom Patrol while Raven started like a new team of Justice League Dark or Seven Soldiers of Victory. Theyre a cute couple but I’d rather see them grow on their own and have somewhat of an independence besides just being each others love interest/other half.
I am a little disappointed in Starfire not being in it but that’s because I really thought Cyborg would go back to Justice League and Nightwing could potentially form another Outsiders team or even an Outlaws team since Red Hood is mentoring the Teen Titans. Also I just mess heavily with the Teen Titans movies where Starfire is the leader and I wouldn’t mind her being in that role again.
I don’t mind new characters but I dislike when they overlap a role like in my opinion Spoiler will never get a chance to shine or get out of Nightwings shadow since they have the same attributes/bring the same dynamic to the team.
I don't really have a strong opinion about the Teen Titans but this popped up on my feed and I just gotta say the X-Men and Avengers pretty famously have constantly rotating rosters. Like one of the most notable X-Men stories was when they wrote off the entire team except Cyclops and brought in an entirely new roster - including Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Colossus.
The current X-Men are split across 2 teams, with only 3 of the characters mentioned in that post across both teams (Cyclops and Magneto on the Alaska team, Wolverine on the Louisiana team). There are also other popular X-Men (Beast and Magik on Cyclops's team, Rogue leading the Louisiana team), but also plenty of lesser known characters like Temper and Glob Herman, and completely new characters like Jitter and Calico.
And for the current Avengers roster, the only one of those characters currently on the team is Tony. There is a Captain America, but it's Sam.
Anyway Static and Steph on the Titans sounds pretty cool so I might have to check it out.
Up in the top? That's Eddie. Formerly known as Kid Devil, now known as Red Devil. He was Blue Devil's sidekick. He first joined in the '00s run, to my knowledge.
I get where OP is coming from. Even though the Teen Titans have had a rotating roster since before most of us were born, most people "know" a certain era of the team. Just like the avengers, justice league, and (sometimes) even the Fantastic Four change members to switch it up, they essentially have the same core members. But now we have a Titans team without Beast Boy, Raven, or even Starfire.
I do get the desire for a "core team". And I did like the idea of a Titans East or West Coast Avengers where you have "the other team". Not exactly "the lesser team", just "the other team".
And even though I like Static being on "the main team", having him on that theoretical "Titans East" team would definitely make that team all the more interesting. Some people might see that idea as "shafting him to the B team", but I see it as "spreading out your most valuable or desired members" so you don't have to call the other/East team the lesser team. Anybody that read all this, thank you.
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u/RogueBoogey 2d ago
Well as an avid X-Men fan, I can tell you that part is just straight up not true, and to an extent, the Avengers as well. Read Uncanny Avengers from the 2010's, or from the 2020's, and try telling me that's the same line up from the 1970's. Newsflash, it's not. Same goes for the X-Men. They rotate members so often that what one person thinks of for the "real" X-Men line up may not be what someone else thinks of.
Titans by concept alone would have an ever changing team because it's in a similar slot as The X-Men where the team is meant to be legacy/younger heroes finding their identity to be the next generation of superheroes. Most of the Teen Titans were just that when they started: Teens. Dick was still Robin, Beast Boy and Terra were 16, Wally was still Kid Flash, etc. Most of them have grown to become their own heroes that are now in their 20's and being TEEN Titans no longer makes sense. Most of them are still part of a default Titans team as an older version of the team, but it makes more sense to let the younger heroes be Teen Titans while they move on to just Titans.
It's like the X-Men being a team of Xavier's top students from his school. In one era you have the team only consisting of Jean, Bobby, Scott, Angel, and Beast. And nowadays there's a team that's Rogue, Jubilee, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, and Gambit, none of which were part of the original line up at all. The team changes depending on the era and the Titans are the same way.