This post was originally supposed to be simply an introductory piece for a series of posts on the character Raven, similar to the series I did for Terra (here) - the second in a blog series on the Titans' heroines' continuities. But last week's releases made me expand the introductory post on the Raven continuity series, to make a general comment on DC's treatment of the main Titans women.
To see my whole review of Raven's continuity as a study of how a horror character works, please continue reading here.
On 28 September, DC ended the first month of its reboot. Last week's
Red Hood and the Outlaws #1 marked a new low in the company's two-decade devaluation and dismemberment of one of its flagship franchises, the Titans. From one end of comics-related corners of the Internet to the other, fans are debating Starfire's transformation into a low grade, soft porn, amnesiac sex doll for the sexually and cerebrally challenged (for reviews, go
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here and
here; and discussions
here and
here). But like I say, this is just the latest in dozens of outrages inflicted on these characters. The bad treatment of the Titans stems from DC's enforcement of hierarchy associated with
superhero generations, or legacies, which I've blogged about
here.
As far as the Titans are concerned, the record over the past decade especially proves it won't get better until the editors at DC change. The classic Titans are a special barometer for this because they are the original legacy characters, the second tier, who against all odds in the 1980s made it and became something different and better than their elders. If anything is going right or wrong in the DC universe, you'll see it in the Titans first, because DC is about legacies even more than it is about Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. DC is having trouble handling its legacies concept, and it really shows.
Sidekicks were originally introduced to humanize DC's stalwart A-list heroes; Robin debuted as a joke-cracking young doppelgänger of Bruce Wayne, who could lighten Batman up. Over time, the Titans became the echo-A-listers who could do edgy, even Marvelesque, stories the A-listers couldn't. That included being flawed, as with Speedy's drug addiction. But it wasn't always a weakness: Gar Logan was the Doom Patroller who didn't go insane - or whose sanity, at least, was a given - despite his never-ending confrontation with death, typical of all DP characters. The phenomenal success of the
New Teen Titans proved that there was a huge area around the A-listers of potential story-telling that could never be done with the A-listers because the latter were too powerful or too perfect. But the
NTT was successful because it did not follow the Marvel formula all the way. The Titans always reasserted a DC ethic of pure, true-blue heroism in the eleventh hour. They made you want to stand up and cheer for them, because they were troubled, but they stood by each other and always found a way through the nightmare. In a way, that was a greater heroic journey than anything Superman faced when he battled Luthor, or when Batman struggled against the Joker; those threats were externalized. With the Titans, threats were always external and internal. They struggled as much with the dark parts of A-list legacies as they did with external villains.
Tossing the classic Titans under the bus is problematic not just for their fans, but in the long run, for DC. I have to quote Dan from
It's a Dan's World: "
I'd put to the jury the Perez/Wolfman era of that franchise is as key to the compan[y's] success as Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns." He's right. Why? Because that era of the NTT
solved the legacy problem, and removed glass ceilings that the powers that be are now so keen to maintain. The NTT established that characters could move laterally in interesting ways that allowed them to flourish beneath their absent mentors' shadows.
In the
NTT, these characters could be flawed, over-burdened by impossibly huge legacies, and still triumph in different ways, based on their
personalities and their
individual characterizations. It wasn't just 'about family' which has become the cloying cliché that DC's editors (even Wolfman, now) never tire of harping on about. The Titans did and should demonstrate how DC's legacies could be a viable concept. During the 90s, the Titans lost a lot of their drive, given that the writer Wolfman, who still had a fine ear for the characters, was exhausted and facing editorial mandates. He also lost control of Dick Grayson to the Bat editors. This is a critical problem for the Titans, because the Titans are Dick Grayson's gift to the rest of the DC Universe, separate from anything he ever did with Batman. He is the
first and best Titan. In return, the Titans made Grayson, the first Robin, their ultimate leader, an individual and a respected hero.
The Titans, who overcame their derivative origins and became heroes that made it were broken down during the 1990s. They had finally torturously been reset by Devin Grayson into something recognizable by 1998-1999 in the
Technis Imperative. Under the recent editorial régime of Dan Didio at DC, that picture changed. Didio's entrance coincided with Geoff Johns's handling of the Titans in the 2003, which is considered a good run. But in retrospect, Johns planted the seeds for the current mess.
I don't know where and when Johns lost his grasp of the Titans, but I think we have to go back to this period to find it. He supplanted the original Titans with weakened, watered-down, nth-level legacy characters (Young Justice). Johns's vision dove-tailed well with Winick's kill off of the Titans' strongest members in
Graduation Day (2003); these were characters who caused greatest static with the A-listers (Donna Troy) or who gave the Titans their claim to being a separate original and independent franchise in the DCU (Lilith) . The Titans then showcased some really ugly concepts (
Terror Titans, 2008). They became totally disposable (see: the long list of Titans' deaths from the 2000s). They could commit murder and do Fountain-of-Youth drugs derived from the remains dead children (Roy Harper). They could lose all dignity and previous characterizations that once showed why their superficial natures were
never their internal realities (Gar Logan and Starfire). They could lose their identities completely in their legacies (Dick Grayson). Or they could be wordlessly and relentlessly sidelined until there was nothing left of them (Wally West). This treatment of the classic Titans, but also the Young Justice characters (who are incredibly, getting preferential treatment from DC, although looking at them, you'd never know it) reveals that DC's top editors do not understand legacies or how they should function in this fictional universe. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the idiotic DCnU attempt to de-age the A-listers and force Titans' tropes onto them, but without the promise of final victory rooted in characterization, heart and camaraderie. DC is trying to wipe the Titans off the map, and turn the A-listers into Titans. DCnU is the Titansverse writ large, but without the soul that made Titans stories work. Ironic?
Speaking of loss of soul,
Red Hood and the Outlaws #1 continued
DC's treatment of heroes as non-heroes. It's a post 9/11, ramped up Marvel feet-of-clay idea. As far as I can tell from Co-Publisher Dan Didio's work on the
Outsiders, this is his ideal approach: lots of action and sex - low on words and minimal characterization - with heroes so flawed that they're practically villains. The moral vacuum is the new seat of virtue. None of this works well with DC characters, who, once upon a time, offset their godlike status with complex characterization, stories - and yes, complicated legacies.
Once upon a time, DC was not the house of simplistic, wordless, internalized failure. The degradation of Starfire took DC one step closer to that end.
This is mass entertainment that clearly states what kind of audience it thinks is out there: the lowest common denominator. The book and its editors are insulting the readership with this expectation. They are especially insulting fans who like the book. Even the bait and switch typical of Didio-era story-telling is unlikely for DCnU's 52. This is not a set-up for a better story. Don't believe the lie: it's not going to be all right after all. As Shirley MacLaine
said: "Sometimes deep down, there is no deep down."
Todd explains that Kory can't remember her history with the Titans and can't distinguish between men she has sex with. Red Hood and the Outlaws #1 (Nov. 2011).
The problem with
Red Hood and the Outlaws is that it is the title associated with any reassembly of the classic Titans in the DCnU. And there is plenty wrong here - obviously deliberately introduced to build expectations about this new universe: the issue completely destroyed Starfire's character. It also subtly transplanted Dick Grayson's dark, crazy doppelgänger,
Jason Todd, as the new leader of Grayson's Titanic legacy. I have some sympathy for Todd, but he's being used here as an instrument to turn the tables - to turn Nightwing's separate, non-Bat adventures upside down - to finally and completely undermine Grayson's accomplishment with a separate legacy franchise that at its best was stronger and better than the Justice League of America. Before we even get to Kory's new airhead interest in mechanical anonymous sex, the first issue featured three former Titans cavalierly murdering people. They are 'outlaws,' with standards to match.
Kory and her nU personality. Red Hood and the Outlaws #1 (Nov. 2011).
It's ironic that
Red Hood and the Outlaws came out last week. On the same day,
New Teen Titans: Games finally hit shops. The worst thing about the uproar over
Red Hood and the Outlaws #1 is that it has drowned out appreciation of
Games, a graphic novel from the creators (Wolfman and Perez) who made the Titans world-famous;
Games was over twenty years in the making, of the highest quality, and worth the wait. This is typical of the malaise at DC. The quality product goes to the bottom of the pile, while the intentionally worst reimagining possible of the same characters gets pushed to the fore by viral Internet marketing, propelled by bottom-of-the-barrel scandal-hype and cheap sensationalism. Maybe this is supposed to be the nU reality dystopia that would have existed in a world where Jason Todd stepped into Dick Grayson's shoes. DC has also stated that the DCnU is an opportunity to do stories they could never normally have done had regular continuity stayed intact.
Whatever the rationale, the problems started
long before the DCnU reboot. DC's treatment of the Titans heroines has been one red flag after another on has gone wrong and why.
