About • Archives • Search

Tag: Titans

This page an archive of posts that have been tagged with the Titans topic.

Starfire joining Vril Dox’s LEGION

Share |
By Jason Kirk / 22 February 2010 / Comic Books & Graphic Novels / 1 Comments

Eagle eyes readers of DC’s April Solicitations can’t have helped, but have noticed that Starfire – a recent convert to the JLA – appears to be joining another team already. The blurb for REBELS #15 read:

Straight from the pages of Titans, Starfire joins our merry band just in time for super-genius Vril Dox to pick up the pieces from last issue’s climactic battle with Starro the Conqueror.First on his agenda: rebuild his interplanetary police squad, L.E.G.I.O.N.

Well it appears that at one time there had been a REBELS/JLA crossover planned. During an interview with Tony Bedard, writer of REBELS (the current incarnation of Vril Dox’s LEGION team) and the new writer of Green Lantern Corps, CBR staff writer Jeffrey Renaud asked him about those plans:

Renaud: Any chance Green Lantern Corps will crossover with either of those popular team books because I believe there was a Justice League of America/R.E.B.E.L.S. crossover planned at some point?

Bedard: The Justice League of America/R.E.B.E.L.S. thing has evolved as the “War of the Supermen” event evolved, and James Robinson will end up handling Vril Dox’s role in the fate of New Krypton himself.

The reason that Starfire makes a logical choice for REBELS is that Dox is going to be setting up his new headquarters in the Vega System – the star system that Kory’s people were originally from.

Renaud: Can you give us any updates on what’s coming in R.E.B.E.L.S., like a certain new team member, and The Great Ten? And are you working on anything else these days?

Bedard: The whole Starro saga concludes in R.E.B.E.L.S. #14, and after that we’ll be seeing some exciting changes for Vril Dox and company. There will be a new L.E.G.I.O.N. headquarters in the Vega System — the most lawless sector in the galaxy. Starfire will join the cast, and there will be a lot of intrigue involving the Tamaraneans, planet Rann, and other cosmic locations and races that don’t fall under the Green Lantern umbrella. And we’ll see a showdown between Dox, his villainous son, and his father, Brainiac.

The entire subplot of bouncing between teams makes a certain sense for Kory as a character. It was built up in Titans that she was suffering from the slow dissolution of the team and that she really needed to move on with her life. Accepting Vixen’s offer of a position with the JLA was one way of doing that until it turned out that three other Titans were following her. Moving back to the Vega System may be the amount of distance she needs to escape the Titans.

1 Comment Tagged , , ,
The Graduates

The Graduates – Part V: Cyborg

Share |
By Jason Kirk / 20 February 2010 / Character Profiles / 0 Comments

When the Justice League reformed four Graduates moved up from the Titans. So far we’ve examined the recent history of Dick Grayson, Donna Troy, and Starfire. That last of the four Graduates is Cyborg.

Cyborg

Victor Stone was created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez for The New Teen Titans. He first previewed in DC Comics Present #25 (Oct 1980), before making his first real appearance in The New Teen Titans #1 (Nov 1980). Many times Cyborg’s team-mates have called him “the tin man with a heart” for it is his essential humanity and decency that have defined him and not the cybernetics and metal that cover much of his body. He takes after his scientist parents with an IQ of 170, but he rebelled against their home schooling and sought companionship at a normal high-school student. He became a medal winning athlete and may even have turned professional if it hadn’t been for an accident at his father’s laboratory. Vic lost his arms, legs, half his head, and a significant fraction of his internal organs to the accident.

Vic’s father was a cyberneticist and he used his own prototype technology to save his son by replacing Vic’s damaged organs, limbs, and skin with gleaming metal implants. His new body was faster, stronger, and tougher than his original, but Vic only saw himself as a half-man/half-machine monster. The empath Raven sensed Vic’s despair and recruited him into the reformed Teen Titans. It took Vic years to come to terms with his machine nature, but at least the Titans gave him a place in the world. It was with the Titans that Vic met his best-friend, Garfield Logan (Beast Boy/Changeling), a young man who like Vic had been transformed into a superhuman/freak by scientist-parents who were just trying to save his life (New Teen Titans 1#, Nov 1980, DC Special Cyborg #1, July 2008).

Victor Stone’s life has been a struggle to retain that part of his humanity which still remains intact. He almost totally lost himself to the technology when he bonded with an alien race called the Technis and unwittingly became a threat to the Earth. The Justice League thought that the Technis/Cyborg union was an enemy and the Titans had to fight their mentors to save their friend (JLA/Titans #1-3, Dec-Feb 1998-99). Nightwing and his friends were able to move Victor’s conciousness into a new hybrid biological/living-metal body. This new body allowed his to appear human again, but a fight with the Thinker’s digital intelligence caused the alien metal to spontaneously downgrade into a configuration that exactly matched his original cybernetic body.

The Justice League had insisted Cyborg stay with the Titans as a condition of his freedom after the Technis affair, but he came into conflict with them again after the death of Donna Troy. A new Teen Titans were formed with Cyborg, Starfire, and Beast Boy as mentors to the former-Young Justice. Some of the Leaguers were initially distrustful of their pupils joining the Titans, but Stone managed to allay their fears (Teen Titans #6, Feb 2004). He appeared to find a new purpose as their leader and the heart of the new group. He also seemed to find a peace with his own cybernetic nature. Few saw his workshop beneath Titans Tower where he allowed himself to be completely disassembled each night by machines that preformed a constant cycle of maintenance and upgrades. Vic had inherited his father’s gift for cybernetics and had made himself completely responsible for his own body so that he was not reliant on STAR Labs or other facilities for his routine “health” (Teen Titans #9, May 2004).

During the Infinite Crisis Cyborg accompanied the recently resurrected Donna Troy in her investigation of the spatial rift that had opened in deep space. However, there was an accident when the survivors tried to teleport away from the collapsing rift. Unlike Starfire, Cyborg actually made it to Earth, but his body somehow became fused with Firestorm’s body on a molecular level. Doctor Mid-Nite of the JSA was able to keep them both stable until they could be separated (52 Week #5, 7 June 2006). Firestorm survived their merging relatively unscathed (52 Week #24 18 Oct 2006), but Cyborg wasn’t so lucky. He was heavily damaged and appeared inoperable. Deshaun, the fiancée of Vic’s old girlfriend Sarah Charles, studied Vic’s condition, but he was unable to reassemble him (DC Special Cyborg #1-6, July-Dec 2008).

Without a senior Titan to lead them the Teen Titans floundered amid an ever-expanding roster of neophyte or untested teen heroes. After Deshaun’s failure to repair Cyborg, Beast Boy had recruited the twin geniuses Marvin and Wendy Harris. It took them six months to repair his cybernetics sufficiently for his core systems to reboot. Many of the Titans found it comforting to talk or bound idea off of the unconscious Cyborg in much in the same way that people talk to coma patients. Cyborg wasn’t conscious of this, but enough of his circuitry was online for it to record everything they said to him. When he finally awoke Vic was saddened and shocked at the state of the Teen Titans and he immediately re-recruited former members Wonder Girl and Beast Boy (Teen Titans #34-37, May-Aug 2006).

With the Teen Titans becoming more self-reliant on the West Coast, Vic decided he should try recreating their success with an East Coast team. None of the other senior Titans were available, so he put together his own group including the latest Hawk and Dove, Anima, Little Barda, Son of Vulcan, Lagoon Boy, and Power Boy. The new group appeared to have potential, but they were ambushed during an early training session by three Trigon Seeds (Raven’s siblings) who were looking to kill as many former Titans as possible. Power Boy was killed and Cyborg was left as an immobile torso (Titans East Special #1, Jan 2008). Nevertheless, the attacks did prompt a reformation of the original Titans as a group (Titans #1-4, June-Sept 2008).

An individual matching Cyborg’s description was reported to have attacked several STAR Labs facilities. Upon investigating Vic discovered that a former friend had been turned into a military-grade duplicate of himself. Vic, the Titans, and Teen Titans stopped his rampage, but they discovered a conspiracy coordinated by the intelligence broker “Mr Orr” to turn injured soldiers into cybernetic super -oldiers using technology stolen by Deshaun. Vic wasn’t against helping injured soldiers to walk again, but he was horrified to see his father’s technology perverted into a lethal weapon. Even Orr’s Cyborg Revenge Squad couldn’t stop Cyborg reasserting control of his family’s intellectual property (DC Special Cyborg #1-6, July-Dec 2008).

Joey Wilson, the body hoping son of Slade Wilson (the Terminator), had once been a Titan, but the strain of jumping through so many people’s minds had sent him insane. He had tried to assassinate several presidential candidates and to kill his team-mates, before the JLA and Titans defeated him. However, Joey had hidden himself deep in Vic mind. He used Cyborg’s electronic interfaces with Titans Tower to spy on the new Teen Titans team and then attempted to kill them before he was again defeated (Titans #11, Teen Titans #69, Teen Titans Annual #1). The Titans knew that a psychopathic killer called Vigilante was after Joey, whom they still hoped to save, so they staged a battle with Cyborg making it look like he was still possessed. Vigilante show up and blew the machine part of Vic’s head off. Cyborg remained unconscious while the Titans and Vigilante clashed with Joey’s latest attempt to kill them (“Deathtrap”).

Afterwards Vic undertook an intensive routine of upgrade and maintenance on all the Titans and Teen Titans systems until Beast Boy pulled him away to spend some time in the daylight. He’d been punishing himself for the death of Power Boy and was afraid that the Titans, his family as he saw them, was drifting apart again. Beast Boy and Saran Simms pushed Vic to start dating again and recommended an online dating service. After several anti-technology encounters with a couple of friends and former friends, he finally decided to leave the technology side behind and accepted a blind date with a scientist called Dr Tamara Belson (Titans #14, Aug 09).

Vic had been the one who has pressed for the Titans reformation – something the others resisted until the attack on Vic’s Teen Titans East. However, they had all slowly begun drifting into other lives or roles leaving Vic and Starfire to hold the fort at the Titans Compound in New York. An attack by Phobia forced Vic and Kory to re-evaluate their own insecurities, for Vic it was the fear of loosing his team-mates (Titans #21-22, Mar-April 2010).

Why does Cyborg deserve to be in the Justice League? Because Vic would already be in the Justice League if Superman and co. were in charge. His name was first put forward by the trinity in the “Tornado’s Path” story arc and he was universally agreed upon as a good candidate. Batman noted that Dick Grayson had told him Cyborg was ready to join the League and would definitely say yes if asked. As fate would have it Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman didn’t get to determine the roster of the new League so Cyborg wasn’t asked at that stage.

Cyborg is the standard bearer of the Wolfman/Perez New Titans as an independent group. He was the leader of Geoff Johns’ Teen Titans and was responsible for bringing the New Titans back together. If he is joining the Justice League is a definite signal that the New Titans do not exist as a group any more.

Discuss this Tagged ,
The Graduates

The Graduates – Part IV: Starfire

Share |
By Jason Kirk / 15 February 2010 / Character Profiles / 1 Comments

We continue with this short series of profiles of the new Graduates, the quartet of characters who have joined the Justice League from the Titans. So far we’ve covered Dick Grayson and Donna Troy, Starfire is next.

Starfire

Starfire previewed in DC Comics Present #25 (Oct 1980), before making her first real appearance in The New Teen Titans #1 (Nov 1980), both appearances were by Marv Wolfman and George Perez. Starfire’s name was a hold over from an earlier Teen Titans character, but the concept of a space amazon princess (“Red Sonja in space” as Perez once commented) was new. She was the heir to the throne of an alien planet in the Vega star system called Tamaran. Tamaranians are ruled by their strong emotions. They are open and loving with their friends, but they are also fierce warriors when roused to anger. Princess Koriand’r was the second daughter of Tamaran’s ruling family. She and her elder sister were fostered by the War Lords of Okaara who schooled them in the ways of combat and governance.

Koriand’r elder sister Komand’r (alias Blackfire) had been born without the power of flight and was thus deemed unfit to succeed their father. Komand’r rebelled and betrayed her people to the Citadel. War between Tamaran and the Citadel was only averted when the King reluctantly agreed to give up Koriand’r as a hostage. The Citadel then gave the two sisters over to the reptilian Psions as experimental subjects. The Psions experiments should have killed them, but it instead enhanced their natural Tamaranian ability to metabolize starlight and gave them the power to fire powerful energy blasts called “starbolts”. Koriand’r eventually escaped from the Citadel and made her way to Earth. Raven called a new Teen Titans group together to protect Koriand’r from the pursuing Citadel and she joined the Titans as Starfire.

Koriand’r, or Kory as her friends call her, has found Earth’s conservative customs confusing and has struggled to cope with the ways that human guard and hide their emotions (something antithetical to a Tamaranian). Kory started a long and passionate relationship with the Titan’s leader Dick Grayson (Robin/Nightwing/Batman). However, affairs of state from Tamaran have continued to divide them. She has outlived two Tamaranian husbands (one for politics one for love) and three homeworlds (Tamaran, New Tamaran, and Karma). Grayson once proposed marriage to her, but it never came to pass.

Donna Troy’s death prompted the Titans and Young Justice to reorganise as the Outsiders and as a new incarnation of the Teen Titans. These new Teen Titans were primarily younger heroes (successors to the original Teen Titans), but Cyborg, Beast Boy and Starfire returned to mentor and chaperone the new group. Starfire switched to the Outsiders after the groups new leader Jade asked her to balance the increasingly macho posturing between Roy Harper and Dick Grayson (Outsiders #16, Nov 2004). It was Grayson who convinced Kory to stop holding back and shoot down Brainiac’s ship with a single massively destructive starbolt – a rare example of her full power (Outsiders #25).

When Rann and Thanagar went to war Blackfire brought the Tamaran survivors into the conflict (Rann-Thanagar War #1-6, July-Dec 2005). Starfire was drawn into the same conflict when a resurrected Donna Troy recruited heroes to help her investigate a growing spatial rift situated in the war zone. Blackfire had encouraged the Thanagarian Grand Mor to escalated the war, but she and her sister reluctantly fought on the same side when the true nature of the rift was revealed (Infinite Crisis #1, Rann-Thanagar War Infinite Crisis Special #1, April 2006).

The rift been caused by a villain unsuccessfully trying to recreated an extinct Multiverse. Adam Strange tried to use a Zeta-Beam to teleport Earth’s heroes home as the rift collapsed. However, there was an accident and Starfire, Adam Strange, and Animal Man found themselves stranded amid the devastation of the Stygian Passover – a cult of  undead soldiers created by the Lady Styx. They also found themselves allied with the bounty-hunter Lobo (who was on a pilgrimage as an Archbishop of the Triple Fish God) and the Green Lantern of Vengar (pilot of the Emerald Head of Ekron), but the group split after Styx was defeated (52 Week 36-37, Jan 1007).

Kory formed a deep and lasting friendship with Buddy Baker (Animal Man) during her time in space. She took his death during battle badly and swore to return his signature jacket to his wife on Earth. A power boost from Rann’s three suns gave Kory the ability to fly unaided from Rann to Earth to deliver the jacket, but she almost killed herself and passed out from exhaustion on the Baker’s door step (51 Week 51, 25 April 2007). Unknown to Kory, Buddy had been resurrected and had already returned home. Kory spent weeks in a recuperative sleep in his spare room, but upon waking she found that she had lost almost all of her native Tamaran powers. She tried to adjust to normal life as the Baker’s childminder, but Kory found the experience difficult. Her stay with the Bakers was been complicated when Animal Man almost pushed their deep friendship into infatuation. She corrected him and remains close friends with Buddy, Ellen, and their family (Countdown to Adventure #1-8, Oct 2007-May 2008).

Buddy and Kory were reunited with Adam Strange when a contingency plague left over by the Lady Styx threatened to overwhelm Rann and Earth. Kory’s solar powered abilities eventually proved the key to destroying the virus after they had been jump started in a stunt similar to the one that had boosted her powers for the original flight from Rann to Earth (Countdown to Adventure #1-8, Oct 2007-May 2008). Adam Strange asked Kory and Buddy to aid Rann again when Lady Styx and the Church of the Holy Light ignited another war between Rann and Thanagar (Ran-Thanagar Holy War).

Kory was still staying with the Bakers when the former Titans were attacked by a trio of Raven’s siblings. The adventure proved so natural to the friends that they decided to reform the Titans. While they had been under the emotional influence of Raven’s siblings Dick and Kory had briefly resumed their former passion (Titans #1-4, June-Sept 2008). Kory told Dick that she couldn’t go on the with pain of the “Start. Stop. Lovers. Friends. Then back again.” cycle they were in and made him admit that he didn’t love her in the same way he use to (Titans #5, Nov 2008). Kory later confessed to Donna that she felt “betrayed and wounded” by Dick’s confession (Titans #11, May 2009).

Things were coming to a head for Kory emotionally. She loved her friends, but the Titans were drifting apart again as they each returned to their normal lives. She came from a naturally free and joyous race, but she had been through many cycles of enslaved since her childhood – by her own sister, by the Citadel, by her friend’s siblings, and metaphorically by her own feelings for Dick Grayson. When Darkseid enslaved the world with the Anti-Life equation Kory was one of the first to fall and served as a Justifier under his control (Final Crisis). She was freed, but the feelings of helplessness connected with her wider depression. She accidentally blew a hole in her bedroom wall while sleeping (Titans #14, Aug 2009) and had to be restrained by her friends during an operation against Intergang in Metropolis. At Donna’s insistence Kory began seeing a psychologist in Metropolis called Claire Foster. She helped Kory to begin  reconciling the contradictions in her life (Titans #16, Oct 2009).

When Vixen was looking to rebuild the Justice League she asked Kory if she was interested.  This was at a low point in Kory’s life, before she started seeing Dr Foster,  and she was unsure if she wanted to belong to any team (Titans #16, Justice League of America #36, Oct 2009). One of the few friendships Kory maintained outside of the Titans was with Buddy Baker and his family. Kory and Donna were using his the Baker’s pool when Congorilla and Starman arrived seeking Buddy’s help with their investigation into Prometheus. Kory helped the Justice League fight Prometheus and was with them when they discovered that Roy Harper’s arm had been torn off (Cry For Justice #5-7, Jan-Apr 2010). She discussed the JLA offer with both Dick (now Batman) and Cyborg and they both agreed that it was the best place for her. However, it was an attacks by the villain Phobia and the Black Lantern Omen that showed Kory that most of her fears of abandonment were tied to Titans Tower and facing those attacks gave her the strength to finally move on (Titans #20-21, Feb-March 2010, Blackest Night: Titans).

Why does Starfire deserve to be in the Justice League? Over the last few years Kory has grown as a member of the Titans, and she had, if anything, out grown them. From her appearance in 52 forward she had become a full-blown member of the DC interstellar superhero set with a range and experience that propels her into a different League as a heroine. In terms of raw power she can fly unaided in space (Rann to Earth with a power boost), and can project some of the strongest attacks in the superhuman community (she once shot down Brainiac’s skull ship with a single shot). An interesting coincidence in this group is that Doctor Light and Starfire both have links to the Vega star. Starfire worships X’Hal, the goddess who embodies Vega, while Doctor Light’s powers are fuelled by Vega.

One of the biggest problems for Starfire in this new JLA has to be the association of the other Titans. She was asked to join the JLA by Vixen long before Dick, Donna, and Cyborg joined up, so she has had to undergo something of an emotional journey to leave the Titans behind. Yet, suddenly here they all are again. Kory is back with the same people, albeit friends, that she was trying to move beyond. How that will bear out for her long term prospects with the League remains to be seen.

1 Comment Tagged , ,
The Graduates

The Graduates – Part III: Dick Grayson

Share |
By Jason Kirk / 08 February 2010 / Character Profiles / 0 Comments

This is a series of posts about the Titans’ Graduates – Donna Troy, Dick Grayson, Starfire, and Cyborg – who have moved from the Titans up into the Justice League. We first looked at the Titans as a group and then at the current status of Donna Troy, now we look at the former Boy Wonder and Nightwing Dick Grayson and his inheritance of Bruce Wayne’s Batman alter ego.

Dick Grayson

Dick Grayson is the original Robin, the archetypical sidekick. He first appeared in Detective Comics #38 (April 1940) in a story by Bob Kane, Bill Finger, and Jerry Robinson. Grayson was the orphaned son of murdered trapeze artists. Bruce Wayne identified with Grayson’s plight and offered to become his guardian. Grayson joined Wayne’s crime fighting Batman alter ego as Robin, the Boy Wonder. He possessed a natural acrobatic skill which carried over into his crime-fighting activities. He had a more easy-going and friendly demeanour than his mentor and made friends throughout the superhero community. However, his closest friends were the sidekicks of Batman’s Justice League allies and together they formed their own group, the Teen Titans, with Robin as their leader (The Brave & the Bold vol. 1 #54, July 1964).

Grayson’s relationship with his mentor became strained as he grew to adulthood. He aborted a university education and spent almost all his time with the Titans. A close encounter with the Joker prompted Batman to “announce” Robin’s retirement – Wayne’s attempt to force Grayson into a safer career. However, Dick was unwilling to quit and assumed another identity, the Nightwing (Tales of the Teen Titans #44, July 1984). It is telling that Grayson picked a character from the mythology of Superman’s homeworld and not from the bat/robin iconography of Batman’s world. Nightwing was successful, both as leader of the Titans and as an independent hero. In time the rift between Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson healed and Dick became an older brother to Tim Drake, his successful successor as Robin.

Batman was pivotal in Darkseid’s defeat during the Final Crisis. The New God’s last spiteful action was to throw Bruce Wayne through time with the Omega Effect. All of Wayne’s friends and allies (except for Tim Drake) believed him dead. Dick quit the Titans after Bruce died (Titans #11, May 200), closed down his secret identity as a museum curator in New York (Nightwing #152-153, March-April 2009) and devoted himself to the growing crisis in Gotham City. The power vacuüm created in Gotham City by Batman’s absence almost tore the city apart and Jason Todd – another ex-Robin – sought to fill that vacuum by becoming a new bloodthirsty Batman. Dick clung on to his Nightwing identity, until his confrontation with Todd finally forced him to accept that Batman was too deeply engrained into Gotham City’s psyche to let die (Batman: Battle for the Cowl #1-3, May-July 2009).

Grayson worked to make the world believe that Batman was still alive. He even warned the JLA about trying to honour Batman’s passing. He told them “The criminals [...] need to think he can’t die. They need to still think he’s out there. Batman lives. Always.” (Batman #687, Aug 2009). Not only did the world not know that Batman had died, but they also didn’t know that Bruce Wayne was dead. Just before Batman “died” the villain Hush had himself surgically altered to look like Wayne as part of a foiled scheme. With Wayne gone, Hush now found himself kept on a short leash by Alfred Pennyworth and Grayson. For the time being they have allowed Hush to continue posing as Bruce Wayne as it served their own purposes (Streets of Gotham #1-3, Aug-Oct 2009).

Grayson moved the Batman’s base of operations to the Bunker beneath the Wayne Foundation building and created a new Batmobile with flight capabilities. Grayson’s Batman was more visible that the original and was noted by commentators as being more vocal. He did adopt some of Wayne’s grimness, but that didn’t totally subdue his older persona. He confessed to Alfred,

I’ve always known what I’d do if.. if anything happened to Bruce. I just didn’t want to face it. That was my worst, worst nightmare when I was a kid. This is what kept we awake at 3.30 AM. As long as I was Nightwing I could pretend that I’d never have to take over as Batman. I could act as if he’d always be around.

Dick Grayson (Batman and Robin #1, Aug 2009, written by Grant Morrison).

Grayson’s Batman was going to take on Damian Wayne (Bruce’s son with Ra’s Al Ghul’s daughter) as the new Robin. This left Tim Drake (Bruce Wayne’s Robin) feeling alienated. Drake had refused to accept that Bruce was dead and, knowing that he would have to break some rules, assumed the identity of Red Robin (one of Jason Todd’s multitude of aliases) in order to stop any come back from causing problems for Dick and his allies. Tim then left Gotham City to search for clues to Bruce Wayne’s whereabouts and found that the only other person who believed in his crusade was Ra’s Al Ghul and his League of Assassins (Red Robin #1, Aug 2009). Coincidentally Damian Wayne had been trained by the League of Assassins and he had inherited his father and grandfather’s intensity and demeanour. The new Batman and Robin chaffed against each other’s personalities. Damian disobeyed Grayson’s orders while fighting Professor Pyg’s circus troop and was kidnapped. The experience of being saved only slightly softened Damian’s demeanour, but he at least started to obey Grayson’s orders (Batman and Robin #1-3, Aug-Oct 2009).

Dick had to prove himself during the weeks following “Batman”‘s return. Two-Face, the Penguin, and Black Mask each sought to control crime in Gotham, but Two-Face, who had tangled with Nightwing just before Batman’s death, thought he recognised the new Batman. He even managed to break into the old Batcave, but a ruse by Alfred and Grayson managed to convince him that Grayson was indeed the real Batman (Batman #688-691, Sept-Early Dec 2009). The other claimant to the Batman cowl, Jason Todd, returned as the Red Hood, an even more lethal vigilante with his own sidekick called Scarlet (one of the girls defaced by Pyg). Todd argued that Grayson’s Batman couldn’t replace Bruce, but he ended up having to save Todd from a legendary hitman called the Flamingo (Batman and Robin #4-6, Nov 2009-Jan 2010).

Why does Dick deserve to be in the Justice League? Because he deserves to be Batman. Because he’s been in the League before. Because he’s led the League when Batman has been dead before (Joe Kelly’s “Obsidian Age” storyline). Even before that he was part of one of the UN’s Justice League Task Forces. As Nightwing he has been on the League’s radar of potential members for quite some time, but he has declined at least three offers of membership. The first when the “Big Seven” were enlarging the League (JLA Secret Files #2, 1998) and then when there was an aborted attempt to rebuild the League immediately before the Infinite Crisis (JLA #121, Dec 2005). Most recently when Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were building a list of potential members in “The Tornado Path” they considered offering Nightwing membership. Superman and other League founders were in favour, but Batman noted that he’d already asked Nightwing and that he had declined.

Everything changed with Bruce Wayne’s death. It has taken time for Dick to get use to his new role as Batman and everything attached to that (sidekick, Gotham, team-ups, etc). He’s already had his first team-up with Superman so Batman’s seat with the Justice League is the last part of his inheritance from Bruce Wayne. The unresolved question about Dick Grayson’s attachment to the League is whether he’s going to end up as its leader. He’s led practically every other group he’s been associated with and there isn’t another clear leader in the League’s new line-up.

Discuss this Tagged , , ,
The Graduates

The Graduates – Part II: Donna Troy

Share |
By Jason Kirk / 06 February 2010 / Character Profiles / 0 Comments

In this series of posts I running discussing the Graduate Leaguers, those characters who have upgraded from the Titans to the Justice League as of JLA #41. First I covered the current status of the Titans as a group, but this time we’ll take a more detailed look at recent goings on around Donna Troy, the original Wonder Girl.

Donna Troy

Donna was originally introduced into the Teen Titans as Wonder Girl, Wonder Woman’s sidekick, in Brave and the Bold #60 (June-July 1960). However, Wonder Woman never had a sidekick in her own comic so Donna was a whole invention by the Teen Titans creators Bob Haney and Nick Cardy. Later creators have tried to reconcile Donna’s origin with the Wonder Woman mythology to varying degrees of success.

Donna was the first of the Titans to marry in Tales of the Teen Titans #50 (February 1985) and to have a child in the 1992 “Total Chaos” crossover. She was already estranged from her husband when he and their son were killed in a car crash in Wonder Woman vol 2. #121 (May 1997). Donna had became too old to be called Wonder Girl and had had a couple of different identities. First as Troia (as an avatar of the mythical Titans) and then as a Darkstar (a group set up by the Controllers in order to compete with the Guardian’s Green Lantern Corps). She has since defaulted back to using her own name and does not use a codename.

Donna’s recent history begins with her dead at the hands of a malfunctioning Superman Robot in 2003′s Graduation Day mini-series. This was the series that was the catalyst which saw Young Justice and the Titans reorganise into the Geoff Johns’ Teen Titans and Judd Winick’s Outsiders. It was explained in 2005′s The Return of Donna Troy mini-series that Donna had actually been reborn as one of the Titans of Myth, a group of immortals connected to the Olympian Gods, who were planning on escaping the impending chaos of the Infinite Crisis. The Teen Titans/Outsiders restored Donna’s memory and freed her from the Titans of Myth’s plans. It was explained that Donna had a unique link to the Multiverse because Dark Angel, an evil duplicate of herself from the first Multiverse, had repeatedly interfered in her past. This explains why Donna’s back story so often seems in flux.

Donna played a significant role during the Infinite Crisis when she used the resources of the Titans of Myth to transport a team of heroes to the centre of the Universe and into the heart of the Rann-Thanagar War. This set-up Starfire, Animal Man, and Adam Strange’s journey home in 52 and the discovery of the 52 Multiverse by the Red Tornado. Donna also became the custodian of the Orb of the Monitor with which she bore witness to the “History of the DC Universe” during the backups in 52. Later on, during the year shown in 52, she briefly succeeded her sister as Wonder Woman. The Monitors of the New Multiverse saw her as an anomaly as the believed that she was meant to have died during the Infinite Crisis (a wrinkle in reality mean that Jade died instead). She went on the run from them in Countdown to Final Crisis with Kyle Rayner (Green Lantern and her ex-boyfriend) and Jason Todd (the formerly dead Robin). She eventually met a another corrupted version of herself:

Once she’d returned from space and the Multiverse Donna rejoined the Titans, but she never felt settled. She described the feeling as,

Sometimes I feel like I was never young. I was saving the world before I could drive. We all grew up so fast. Well, most of us, but from the start , I was always  the adult. The big sister. The den mother. Always looking after everybody else. Always there for them. So why do I feel so alone.

Donna Troy, Titans #20 (Feb 2010) by Mike Johnson

When the monster Genocide (a Frankenstein-like aberration created by the Secret Society) attacked Wonder Woman Donna stood by her side. Psychic feedback from Genocide played on Donna’s fears and she began blaming Diana for her family’s deaths. She fought Diana on the shores of Paradise Island until wakened from her hallucinations. Unfortunately that imbroiled them in a complex powerstruggle between the Gods, the Amazons, and the newly created Olympians (Zeus’s male Amazons). She stood by Hippolyta and Diana’s side when they faced Zeus and forced him to confess his failures (Wonder Woman #36-39, Nov 09-Feb 10).

Donna had been trying to restart her private life by accepting new photography commissions (she was a photographer back when she was married), but her first job turned out to be a trap set by the Fearsome Five. Nevertheless, she rented a new apartment in Miami and began dating again (Titans #20). Donna was present at Animal Man’s house in Cry For Justice #5 when Congorilla and Starman recruited his help. And it was Donna who captured Prometheus in Cry For Justice #6.

Her live was unturned again when the corpses of her dead son Robert and ex-husband Terry were reanimated as Black Lanterns. She was bitten by one of them and began to sense Nekron’s power even before he turned her into a living Black Lantern (Blackest Night: Titans #1-3, Blackest Night #5). And for the record, that undead baby was the creepiest, sickest thing in the entire run of Blackest Night – not even undead Black Lantern Doctor Light came close. Donna was at the Hospital to retrieve Robert’s corpse for reburial when we first see her in JLA #41.

Why does Donna deserve to be in the Justice League? In one way or another she has been a principal in almost every major plot line from her return through Blackest Night. Right now she’s A-list DCU. Donna is obviously standing in for Wonder Woman, but there is a prescient for this. When Hippolyta was punished by being made Wonder Woman (following Diana’s death) she took her daughter’s place in the Justice League. Also, when Artimes took over the Wonder Woman mantle she tried to replace Diana in Justice League America. In the modern comics Donna is Diana’s twin sister, not her younger sister. She is as fast, as strong, and as tough as Diana and she may even be a more rounded person. So she’s a natural and deserving JLA candidate if and when her sister isn’t available.

Discuss this Tagged , ,
The Graduates

The Graduates – Part I

Share |
By Jason Kirk / 05 February 2010 / Character Profiles / 0 Comments

The Justice League has just received an infusion of new blood from a band of former teen heroes called the Titans. This is a short series of posts where I’ll go over those character’s recent histories and the developments that have led to them being considered ready for the Justice League. However, first a few quick notes about them as a group.

The Titans

The original Teen Titans team dates from the early 1960s, but it’s really Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s team from The New Teen Titans #1 (November 1980) that most people know of as the Titans (minus the Teen prefix).

This group was composed of the three founding members of the Teen Titans – Dick Grayson (Robin/Nightwing), Donna Troy (Wonder Girl/Troia), Wally West (Kid Flash/Flash) – plus one Doom Patrol graduate – Garfield Logan (Changeling/Beast Boy) – and three new characters Victor Stone (Cyborg), Princess Koriand’r of Tamaran (Starfire), and Raven. The two other founding members of the original Teen Titans were Roy Harper (Speedy/Arsenal) and Garth (Aqualad/Tempest). This is the broadly the same group that has run in the Titans ongoing series.

Of late, the Titans have begun to grow apart. Raven and Beast Boy are the closest in age to the current Teen Titans and have moved to their team to give them more experience. Garth was killed in Blackest Night #1. Roy Harper is still a driving presence in storylines coming out of Cry For Justice, but for the moment he is still laid up in hospital. Wally West was meant to have had a co-feature in the new Flash ongoing series, but that was shelved in order to have a cleaner reintroduction of Barry Allen’s character. So over half of the team have found niches elsewhere. The remaining Titans (Donna Troy, Cyborg, Starfire, Dick Grayson) are among those who are either the most powerful or those that have had the most exposure over the last few years.

I would note that this is not the first time that there has been “graduation” from the Titans into the Justice League. Wally West was the first to graduate to the Justice League in Justice League Europe #1. Roy Harper graduated to become Red Arrow at the start of this current Justice League of America series, but lost his arm to Prometheus in Cry For Justice #5 and remains inactive. Kyle Rayner (Green Lantern/Ion) and Conner Hawke (Green Arrow) are contemporaries (in terms of age) of the original Titans and they were both members of the Justice League. In Kyle’s case he was Green Lantern for all of Grant Morrison and Mark Waid’s runs on JLA.

In many ways they are a generation of lost heroes. The Titans are really a bit to too old to be considered inexperienced or sidekicks any more, but the perpetual DC timeline means that their mentors haven’t retired yet. That has slightly changed during this last year as the big three have been taken off the map by adventures within their own books. That has allowed Donna Troy and Dick Grayson to step forward into Wonder Woman and Batman’s positions with the Justice League.

Dick Grayson has been in the League before,  he was the leader of the Batman’s replacement Justice League in Joe Kelly’s “Obsidian Age” storyline. When Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were building a list of potential members in “The Tornado Path” they even  considered Grayson as a member. Superman and Wonder Woman were in favour, but Batman noted that he’d already asked Nightwing and that he declined at that time. Cyborg’s name was also put forward by the Trinity and he was universally agreed upon – Batman noted that Dick Grayson had told him Cyborg was ready to join the League and he would definitely say yes if asked. As fate would have it Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman didn’t get to decide the roster of that League so Cyborg wasn’t asked.

My argument is that the appearance of these four Titans in the League isn’t some random chance. These characters have been built up over the five years or so to have larger presences in the DC Universe and that has naturally culminated with them joining the Justice League. They are great characters and I look forward to their adventures with the League.

Discuss this Tagged , , , ,

Justice League/Titans to become closer

Share |
By Jason Kirk / 30 August 2009 / Comic Books & Graphic Novels / 0 Comments

Justice League will be crossing over a little more closely with Titans according to Dan Didio at the 2009 Tornoto Fan Expo.

Besides some feedback on the new Batman and Robin, it was noted that with some of the changes in store for the Titans, that Dick Grayson might not fit on that team anymore.

In addition “What we’re going to see in 2010 is how the Titans and Justice League books crossover a little more than they have in the past and probably in a way they never have before” explained DiDio.

Speaking of Titans, with James Robinson bringing Donna Troy onto his upcoming Justice League, will she be getting a codename?

“She’s one of those people a nickname doesn’t stick to, like Jean Grey,” reasoned DiDio. “Troia was tough. She’s not going to be Wonder Girl anymore. Do you want to call her Darkstar? Not really. For us, Donna Troy stands for something, means something, and the name is recognizable so we’re just leaving it as is.”

There is a certain logic to this as Dick Grayson (as Batman) and Donna Troy, both current members of the Titans, are going to be moving over to the Justice League with James Robinson’s post-Blackest Night issues. How with will play out with replacement Trinity (Mon-El, Bat-Grayson, and Donna) versus the, assumed, eventual return of the actual Trinity remains to be seen. Maybe they’ll make an event of it.

Discuss this Tagged , ,