The New Teen Titans Omnibus Volume 1 (1980-1982)

The New Teen Titans Omnibus Volume 1 (Collecting material originally published between 1980 and 1982/This edition 2017): written by Marv Wolfman with George Perez; illustrated by George Perez, Romeo Tanghal, Curt Swan, Carmine Infantino, and others:

The original Teen Titans debuted in the 1960's as a group of DC sidekicks. 1960's members included Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, Speedy [the Green Arrow's sidekick], and Aqualad. The roster changed over the years, with an extremely unliked 1970's revival adding long-forgotten characters that included Lilith, Bumblebee, Mal, and the Geico Caveboy.

That latter-day revival made writer Marv Wolfman's pitch to do a New Teen Titans seem doomed to fail before it had even been approved for a series in 1980. Instead, Wolfman and the terrific but then up-and-coming artist/co-plotter George Perez conjured up a comic book that became DC's chief sales rival (and thematic rival) to Marvel's ascending super-team the X-Men. It helped make George Perez's reputation as the go-to artist for superhero action and melodrama, and did something similar for Wolfman's career.

Wolfman took a core group of Titans -- Robin, Wonder Girl, and Kid Flash. To them he added a pre-existing teen hero (Beast Boy, dubbed 'Changeling' for this revival). Then Wolfman and Perez added three new heroes to the mix: the alien princess Starfire; the haunted half-demon Raven; and the cybernetic Cyborg. And unlike Mal, Bumblebee, and the Geico Caveboy, these new characters DIDN'T SUCK!

The rest was history. The New Teen Titans rapidly became DC's best-selling book. As these were the days when Marvel and DC were still on speaking terms, this even led to an inter-company crossover between  the X-Men and Teen Titans that pitted them against DC uber-villain Darkseid and the X-Men's Dark Phoenix. Ah, those were the days. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Titans is certainly an 'Art Book' because George Perez was great at both bombastic battle and nuanced character descriptions and even body types. Perez's women and men actually look different from one another. This is rarer than one might think in superhero books. 

He's matched by Wolfman's densely written mini-epics. Wolfman was one of the most melodramatic of superhero writers, and I mean that in the best way. It was a time when reading a comic book could actually take more than 5 minutes because there were words in them and no one was ashamed of that fact. Such, such were the joys!

This volume contains the 16-page 'Preview' inserted with another comic book, the first 20 issues of New Teen Titans, a back-up story from one of DC's digests, and the four-issue 'Origins' miniseries that fleshed out the back-stories of the 4 less-familiar characters -- Changeling, Raven, Starfire, and Cyborg. It's all aimed more at teens than children, though Wolfman keeps the more adults problems of the Titans obscure enough to allow children to read the comics.

As all this occurred before the days of 'decompressed storytelling,' these 26 stories cover a lot of ground. The Titans battle Raven's demonic father Trigon on extra-dimensional worlds. They take on super-assassin Deathstroke (here still generally called The Terminator as these issues predate the James Cameron movie), super-villains The H.I.V.E., the Brotherhood of Evil, the original Soviet hero also dubbed Starfire, ancient Hindu gods, and the Greek Titans of myth. All that and several standalone, character-development issues. Whew. 

It all still works beautifully as long as one adjusts for a bit of period nonsense (Changeling still comes across like an ad for sexual harassment at times, or an ad against toxic masculinity, or something; Wonder Girl's civilian job as a fashion photographer never seemed like a good idea, nor Starfire's first human job as a buxom model in jeans ads shot by Wonder Girl). So it goes. Highly recommended.

Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (2017)

Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (2017): adapted by Ernie Altbacker from the graphic novel by Marv Wolfman and George Perez; directed by Sam Liu; starring the voices of Stuart Allan (Damian Wayne), Jake T. Austin (Blue Beetle), Taissa Farmiga (Raven), Sean Maher (Dick Grayson), Christina Ricci (Tara), Brandon Soo Hoo (Beast Boy), Kari Wahlgren (Starfire), Miguel Ferrer (Deathstroke), and Gregg Henry (Brother Blood):

Enjoyable DC Animated film adapts the 1980's Teen Titans story arc The Judas Contract with a few character additions and subtractions mostly centered around the addition of Bruce Wayne's son Damian as Robin (with the original Robin here too as Nightwing) and the baffling newish Blue Beetle. 

Beast Boy's pursuit of new Teen Titan Tara/Terra now plays a lot like sexual harassment and stalking, and really needed to be toned down for a contemporary audience. Kevin Smith (voice) cameos as himself. Lightly recommended.

Action Comics: 80 Years of Superman (2018)

Action Comics: 80 Years of Superman: The Deluxe edition (2018): edited by Paul Levitz: Not Action Comics 1000 but a companion volume. With Action Comics the first mainstream American comic book to reach 1000 issues, DC released both a special anniversary issue and this thick volume of reprints, the latter containing one never-before-published story from the Shuster studio, and a new story by editor Paul Levitz and legendary artist Neal Adams.

Created by Cleveland teenagers Jerry Siegel and Canadian ex-pat Joe Shuster (cousin of Frank Shuster of Wayne and Shuster), Superman came to life in 1932 and was then met by complete indifference from the comic strip syndicates for the next 6 years. 

Finally, what would become DC Comics bought Superman from Siegel and Shuster for less than a thousand dollars in 1938. In Action Comics 1, cover-dated June 1938, Superman ignited the superhero genre. Everything with American superheroes springs from that moment, this creation of Siegel and Shuster.

Neal Adams (him again!) led the battle in the 1970's to get more compensation for Siegel and Shuster beyond that initially paltry sum. Time Warner, DC's corporate overlord, caved to a certain extent, granting the Cleveland duo a pension. More lawsuits and settlements would follow over the years.

Here we are, 80 years later. Action Comics has reached 1000 issues, though recently it wasn't always numbered that way as DC restarted the numbering in 2012 for reasons I won't bother explaining before returning to the original numbering (folding the new numbering in as well). Detective Comics should have gotten here first, but Action Comics was a weekly for a year back in the 1980's. Thanks, Action Comics Weekly!

Paul Levitz has assembled 300+ pages of stories, essays, and covers. It's solid work -- and I don't think this type of anniversary volume is easy to assemble, as Levitz had to serve history as well as artistic achievement. Thus, this isn't The Best of Superman.

For one thing, Levitz was charged with presenting the other recurring DC heroes who first appeared in the pages of Action Comics (Vigilante, Zatara the Magician, Supergirl, Human Target). For another, the book emphasizes Firsts and Anniversaries along with major stories. That still leaves lots of material.

So pretty much all the great writers and artists are here, though some are by necessity omitted. The raw power of the first two Superman adventures by Siegel and Shuster still compels, to the extent that one wishes Superman would return to his left-wing, agit-prop roots, when stopping a domestic abuser and saving a wrongly convicted woman from the electric chair were more common moments for the Man of Steel than punching it out with some angry-ass super-villain or another.

Oddly, the book doesn't present any of the two-page Superman stories from Action Comics Weekly, I assume because they presented a serialized story in emulation of the Sunday full-page comic strips.

In any case, there's a lot here to delight both a Superman aficionado and a casual reader. The reproduction of the art is generally good, not always easy when the originals don't exist (the muddiest looking reprint comes from 1978, which is a shame because the story is a humdinger of a 40th anniversary issue). A Joe Kelly-penned, many-artist-illustrated anniversary story from the oughts is excellent. A never-before-printed story from the Shuster Studio is a rare find, as is Marv Wolfman's tale of how he rescued it from the garbage. Paul Levitz pens an original story to end the volume, illustrated by comic-book-art Titan Neal Adams.

The essays are fine, too -- none match Ray Bradbury's text piece from Superman 400, but that's a pretty high standard to meet. So all in all, a satisfying volume that I'd be happy to read at twice the length. Long may the Reign of the Superman continue! Highly recommended.

Calling All Super-villains

Forever Evil: written by Geoff Johns; illustrated by David Finch and Richard Friend (2013-2014; collected 2015): I guess if you ever wanted to see Bizarro-Superman kill Otis from Superman: The Movie, then this is the Event Series for you. The Crime Syndicate of an Earth parallel to that of the Justice League figures out how to take the Justice League off the board without actually fighting them. And then they invade and conquer the Earth. But they hadn't reckoned on Lex Luthor putting together a team of super-criminals to... save the world? Yep.

David Finch's artwork is suitably gloomy for this crossover event. Writer Geoff Johns does love the ultraviolence from time to time. Moreover, the seven issues collected here seem awfully padded in the middle, a classic case of gear-grinding so as to get the maximum number of crossovers from the entire DC line (there were about 200 Forever Evil issues of other comic books in addition to the core miniseries). Competent series but not all that much fun; the Crime Syndicate was a lot more interesting when introduced in the wacky Silver Age or re-introduced by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely in a late 1990's Justice League graphic novel. Lightly recommended.

In Search of Galactus: written by Marv Wolfman; illustrated by Keith Pollard, John Byrne, Sal Buscema, Joe Sinnott, and others (1979-1980/collected 2010): From the sometimes fun, occasionally broody, and always wordy Marvel of the late 1970's (very late, given that we move into 1980 in the course of this collection) comes this collection of nearly a year's worth of Fantastic Four comics penned by Marv Wolfman.

Wolfman decided to wrap up the major plot-lines of his just-cancelled Nova series in the Fantastic Four comic, thus pairing the team with Nova and craptastic D-List superhero group New Champions for part of this adventure. The main adversary is the Sphinx, a super-powerful, immortal human with a yen to blow up the Earth. Outgunned, Reed Richards decides to find Galactus and get him to beat up the Sphinx. Why would Galactus do this? Because Reed will then waive the promise he received from Galactus to not eat the Earth. OK! This is a cunning plan.

There are also Skrulls, an aging virus that's going to kill all the members of the Fantastic Four not named the Human Torch in about three days, and a brief solo foray for the Human Torch with his buddy Spider-man at an evil college run by a forgotten FF villain from the later issues of the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Fantastic Four. It's all enjoyably wordy, has some nice artwork -- especially from the John Byrne/Joe Sinnott team, who do a mean Galactus -- and goes down smoothly. 

Though why Galactus wants yet another Herald, given the 100% failure rate of the first three (beginning with the Silver Surfer, natch), is a great question. As we learn in this series that Galactus has a zoo on board his spaceship, perhaps his recurring need for a Herald is just an expression of his deep-seated but unacknowledged need for... a friend. Recommended.

Retro-Titans

The New Teen Titans: Games: written by Marv Wolfman and George Perez; illustrated by George Perez, Mike Perkins and Al Vey (2011): Announced in 1988 as an original graphic novel starring the then-current iteration of DC superhero group the Teen Titans, Games soon became one of mainstream comicdom's most famous 'lost' books. New Teen Titans penciller extraordinaire George Perez completed roughly 70 pages of art before the project got shelved. After a few false starts and subsequent stops, Games in its 120-page entirety finally sees the light of day 23 years after its announcement.

DC wisely lets the story take place in the time-lost continuity of 1988, making this almost a tribute to the superhero group Marv Wolfman and Perez made so popular at DC in the 1980's, when the New Teen Titans comic was DC's biggest challenge to the supremacy of Marvel's X-Men.

Perez's almost-obsessively detailed art is a joy throughout -- all the characters are distinctively different, Perez's attention to facial detail being one of his less-heralded strengths. Wolfman and Perez's story maintained my interest throughout, as the Titans face what appears to be a terrorist with a super-powered team, a terrorist who seems to know their most intimate secrets and how to use those secrets against them. The events come, perhaps, a bit too fast and densely -- there are points at which it almost feels like this should have been a story twice its length -- but I'll take compression over decompression in a superhero comic book pretty much any day of the week.

It's nice to visit with old friends -- with Wolfman and Perez on the book they brought to prominence, and with the late 1980's line-up of Titans. I'd have liked more of (Kid) Flash, Speedy, and Aqualad (there are continuity reasons for why these early 1980's Titans weren't a big part of the late 1980's comic), but Games is so packed with characters and situations that I'm not sure how they'd have played a larger role without a lot more pages. Recommended.

Crisis On Infinite Earths

Crisis on Infinite Earths, written by Marv Wolfman, illustrated by George Perez, Mike DeCarlo, Jerry Ordway and Dick Giordano (1985-86; collected 1997): I've never met anyone who was actually confused by DC's pre-Crisis continuity, in which superheroes existed on several different Earths with different "vibrational frequencies." On the other hand, DC was struggling in the mid-1980's to make up market share on Marvel, and the Crisis "maxi-series" did jolt sales and eventually lead to fairly successful reboots of characters that included Superman, the Flash, and Wonder Woman. Along with Marvel's contemporaneous maxi-series Secret Wars, Crisis ushered in the age of megacrossovers that mainstream superhero comic books -- for good and ill -- have existed within ever since.

From a (nominally) adult perspective, the main attraction of a collected edition of Crisis on Infinite Earths resides in the art by George Perez and several different inkers, colour-corrected and restored from the pulp-paper, four-colour original state of the original serialized issues. Perez pulls off one of the loopiest assignments in superhero history, as he basically draws every superhero and supervillain in DC history, making each unique (his Supermen of Earths 1 and 2, for example, have distinctive facial features to go along with their slightly different costumes). It's a Domesday Book of DC's history from 1937 to 1985. Pretty much everyone is here, lovingly rendered, unique, imperilled, shouting a lot.

The story is relatively simple. Entire universes (not an infinite number but apparently around 1000, we're told on several occasions) have already been destroyed by waves of anti-matter when the story begins. Five universes containing pretty much all of DC's major superheroes remain. The superheroes and their allies battle to save the remaining five universes. That's pretty much the plot, though obviously there are various successes, setbacks and subplots in the course of the 300 pages of the narrative.

Writer Marv Wolfman goes slightly bananas here with declamatory speeches, many of them involving heroes talking about themselves in third-person, and many others involving characters telling us what we're already looking at. Judicious editing might have increased the grandeur of certain situations and the poignancy of others, especially the deaths of Supergirl and the Flash. Any editing, maybe -- in one awe-deflating caption, Wolfman uses "zillions" as if it's a real number.

And even as superhero science and logic goes, Crisis is something of a mess -- antimatter somehow destroys positive matter without being destroyed itself, and appears to come in several different flavours. When a character lives in an antimatter universe where everything material is made of antimatter, does his big gun really have to be described as an "antimatter cannon"? Wouldn't it just be a cannon? And how exactly can a being who's fed off the energy of entire universes be hurt by a handful of heroes, no matter how super? I don't really know. The pictures sure are pretty, though.

Because the actual changes to the DC Universe hadn't been entirely decided upon by the end of Crisis, we're also faced with a story which seemingly requires yet another Crisis to make it dovetail with what would come after. People still remember Supergirl at the end of the series even though she never existed in the new DCU. Superman's Fortress of Solitude still has that giant golden key sitting out front. And problems with the history of characters that include Wonder Woman, Hawkman, and Power Girl would persist for decades. In many ways, the series seemed to create more headaches than it cured.

There's a certain nostalgic thrill in the writing -- along with X-men's Chris Claremont, Wolfman was pretty much state-of-the-art circa 1985 when it came to large groups of superheroes doing large things. And there's still some feeling here that superheroes are for kids and, at the oldest, teenagers. Hearts are worn on sleeves, and everyone says the right thing. A lot. If the DC Universe somehow managed to become more confusing fairly soon after the catastrophic events of Crisis -- well, that's not Wolfman's fault. And the art is, as noted previously, completely and utterly bonkers, a high watermark of gigantic-cast mayhem and destruction. Recommended.