Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Teen Titans

You may think Teen Titans is a new superhero group but they are not. They have been around since 1964. Their base is the Titans Tower and it has evolved from black to a teal color. Teen Titans include Raven, Beast Boy, Cyborg, Starfire, Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, and Blue Beetle. There is a movie called Justice League vs Teen Titans. DC Comics relaunched Teen Titans with issue #1 (cover dated November 2011) as part of DC's New 52 event, written by Scott Lobdell with former Justice League artist Brett Booth providing interiors. The relaunch was controversial, due to the fact that it was originally designed as a direct continuation of the previous Teen Titans series before Dan DiDio declared that all previous incarnations of the Titans never existed; this in spite of the fact that early issues of the 2011 series (as well as "Red Hood and the Outlaws" and "Batwoman") made explicit mention of the previous Teen Titans teams.
The new team is formed by Tim Drake, now rebranded as "Red Robin" in order to protect teenage heroes from a villain known as Harvest and his organization "N.O.W.H.E.R.E". A running theme for the 2011-2014 series, was Harvest kidnapping young heroes for experimentation and enslavement, as part of the villainous scheme for world domination.
The 2011-2014 series featured several crossovers, "The Culling", which had the team meet the Legion of the Super-Heroes, as well as "The Death of the Family", which focused upon a meeting of Batgirl, Red Hood and the Outlaws, and the Titans, as the Joker kidnapped Red Hood and Red Robin. The 2012 "Zero Month" issue provided the New 52 origin of Tim Drake, recasting him as a young computer hacker who was adopted by Batman to protect him from retaliation from the Penguin.
The 2011-2014 series and Scott Lodbell's writing drew negative reviews, though the Lodbell created character Bunker was positively received by fans. Criticism included the meandering Harvest/N.O.W.H.E.R.E storyline, an arc that revealed Kid Flash (Bart Allen) as a futuristic Fundamentalist Christian terrorist hiding in the 20th Century, as well as the elimination of the franchise's lore. The character of Raven and Trigon was originally embargoed by Lobdell, but the characters were brought back due to fan demand. The 2011 series also spawned a short-lived spin-off, "The Ravagers", which ran for ten issues and featured Beast Boy, Terra and Caitlyn Fairchild of Gen 13 in major roles.
The series was relaunched in July with a new issue #1 with Will Pfeifer as writer. The series continued with the characteristics of the main characters, but ignored the events of the Ravagers spin-off, presenting Beast Boy both green and in line with his animated series characteristics. The series also added an African American version of the super-heroine Power Girl to the roster.
Due to the backlash against the removal of the previous incarnations of the Titans (and the ripple effect it had upon characters such as Nightwing and Donna Troy), DC launched a new mini-series called "Titans Hunt" which restored the original 1960s version of the Titans to canon. The series states that all memory of the original Titans was erased by Lilith, to protect the team from Mr Twister. It also alludes to further reality alterations to the DC Universe; these are then picked up on in the DC Rebirth initiative, beginning a week after Titans Hunt, which restores Wally West to canon along with various aspects of the pre-Flashpoint continuity.













 





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