Fanholes Comic Books Mutha@#$%! Do You Read 'Em?!? #138: Titans Hunt 35th Anniversary (Part 2 of 4)!
It's the 35th Anniversary of Titans Hunt! Join the Fanholes for a 4 part podcast that covers one of the most epic storyline in the history of the Titans!
Thinking further on it, I now suspect that I got New Titans #71 in Texas, because that first part stuck with me despite being mostly character history recaps. I'm pretty confident that I started backfilling the run in order in Colorado with #72, and that by #74 it was becoming rote. #72 had the brutal murder of Golden Eagle, who I could give a shit about, but brutal murder man! #73 had the "Paradise Lost" massacre, with shades of Morlocks, plus my first major exposure to the notorious Danny Chase. The wheels were spinning by #74, with all that dumb Wildebeest infiltration drama. Once I read "The Judas Contract," it felt way too short for all that build-up, but each issue had punch. It also made sense for a mercenary and a jailbait traitor to have to take the Titans out individually in their personal time. One Wildebeest had already fought the entire team, and they've got dozens of them now. But somehow Noghtwing is going to dispatch one, figure out how to get a suit that was never previously realized to be a suit off, don it, and then play an extended and high competency game of rogue Stormtrooper on the Death Star for multiple issues.
The rest of the issue is the hard sell of Pantha and her refusal to join the team. Except this is a back issue, so I know that she does, and I'm also still on the fence about the character. Cat People on super teams is already a major cliche, and I'm more or less simultaneously reading Talon in Guardians of the Galaxy, Jaguar at !mpact, Wolfsbane in X-Factor, Feral in X-Force, and even Mam'selle Hepzibah in reprints from X-Men Classic. She wasn't quite as abrasive as Feral, and certainly better designed, but I wasn't that excited to see her full introduction. I've heard different versions of the abortive Rob Liefeld "Titans West" project, from Marv Wolfman and maybe Jon Peterson. I've never been clear on the timeline for that. I don't see how it could be in this period, unless he wanted to do it between the end of New Mutants and start of X-Force, like he wasn't blowing deadlines even with the lead time. I wonder if it was perhaps more like post-Hawk and Dove-- maybe early days on New Mutants when he could have potentially been wooed back. I think it's also worth noting that Liefeld was incorporating characters developed for/around the Megaton version of Youngblood into New Mutants (though he clawed back Cougar after he'd already appeared in Marvel Age, and recycled his proposed debut Marvel cover into a shot from Image's Youngblood #1.) The proto-Youngblood had a cat-lady in it, and I wonder if that was proto-Pantha. Obviously though, Pantha was in no way designed by Liefeld, and better for it. The look feels like an evolution on The Vixen from her abortive '70s series and early appearances pre-Justice League Detroit. There was a fan theory that she was a mutated Yolanda Montez, and given her oncoming murder, that would have been preferrable. Pantha still ended up being Latina, which I'm not sure was the case on X-23 comics, but certainly is in the movies.
New Titans #75 was another kinda tedious back issue. Everything of consequence revealed in this issue was firmly established when I started reading. Love it or hate it, I think the unifying consensus was that "Titans Hunt" ran too long and went on too many tangents. With 14 issues and an annual for just the base story, which spun directly into multiple connecting stories, you're bound to build up some inertia. I was lucky in that I came in late enough that some of the late life water treading was a refreshing oasis of new information to me. I agree that single page splash is laid out like a double, but I do wonder of that was intentional to provoke suspicions rather than conceal information. I agree that unmasked Wildebeest Nightwing was supposed to look battered, but explain why Jericho looks like his own Hillbilly Elegy Mam-maw? I like to ask the tough questions: is it Slade of Adeline that uses a hair straightener, or was Joe still getting perms in 1991, or was Adeline just throwing that pussy around? That hair is a bigger cheat then their showing Jericho get gassed out in #71. In retrospect, we should have all known that he was evil from that weird ass Gone With The Wind plantation date that he was on. I'm only scanning the issues for your show, but did they ever explain why the Titans were stripped nude and strapped to rockets? Obviously Jericho is a ffffrrreeeak, but it's just so impractical and seemingly pointless. Like, if Dick had been on the exploding rocket, then you've got Batman and the JLA all the way up your ass. Who needs that shit?
Why is Jericho's Patronus a lion instead of a buck, or literally anything with horns? Again, isn't it an ineffective conceal of the force behind his stealing Raven's soul-self? Getting into #76, aside from blowing up Titans Tower in the end, we're still doing the same loose band of protagonists against the same Wildebeest Society troops who quite unrealistically keep getting taken out by this b-squad. Everything is getting drrraggged out, repeating the same beats (particularly with Pantha.) Sometime around this period, I was also buying back issues of Liefeld New Mutants. By comparison, Grummett and Vey were far more polished, detailed, and conveyed action better with a stronger story sense. New Titans wasn't as sloggy as the last days of Weezie on the mutie kids, but I'm clearly getting off on how good it looks more than how sparkling it read. It also helps that I was making money to pay for these comics, so I was much less precious about the value of each chapter against my overall pleasure of getting to collect this stuff.
The Wildebeest are like an inversion of the cop/soldier myth, where people make it out like these guys are constantly in super tense, life or death circumstances, but really it's usually mundane and they're consistently in a dominant position within society. These Wildebeest are constantly dying (and killing, with the bag lady wage theft and all.) You need cultists for that kind of work, but these guys just seem like blue collar henchmen. How long before they do an Andor (what's with all the Star Wars references tonight?) and figure out that they literally have to live free (of bomb-rigged super-suits) or die? The Wildebeest Society are a bigger violator of supervillain OSHA standards than The Joker. Did they explain where Jericho and/or The Society were getting the resources for all these Bond villain bases? The should have subtitled this arc "Just Teen Titans Go With It."
Thinking further on it, I now suspect that I got New Titans #71 in Texas, because that first part stuck with me despite being mostly character history recaps. I'm pretty confident that I started backfilling the run in order in Colorado with #72, and that by #74 it was becoming rote. #72 had the brutal murder of Golden Eagle, who I could give a shit about, but brutal murder man! #73 had the "Paradise Lost" massacre, with shades of Morlocks, plus my first major exposure to the notorious Danny Chase. The wheels were spinning by #74, with all that dumb Wildebeest infiltration drama. Once I read "The Judas Contract," it felt way too short for all that build-up, but each issue had punch. It also made sense for a mercenary and a jailbait traitor to have to take the Titans out individually in their personal time. One Wildebeest had already fought the entire team, and they've got dozens of them now. But somehow Noghtwing is going to dispatch one, figure out how to get a suit that was never previously realized to be a suit off, don it, and then play an extended and high competency game of rogue Stormtrooper on the Death Star for multiple issues.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of the issue is the hard sell of Pantha and her refusal to join the team. Except this is a back issue, so I know that she does, and I'm also still on the fence about the character. Cat People on super teams is already a major cliche, and I'm more or less simultaneously reading Talon in Guardians of the Galaxy, Jaguar at !mpact, Wolfsbane in X-Factor, Feral in X-Force, and even Mam'selle Hepzibah in reprints from X-Men Classic. She wasn't quite as abrasive as Feral, and certainly better designed, but I wasn't that excited to see her full introduction. I've heard different versions of the abortive Rob Liefeld "Titans West" project, from Marv Wolfman and maybe Jon Peterson. I've never been clear on the timeline for that. I don't see how it could be in this period, unless he wanted to do it between the end of New Mutants and start of X-Force, like he wasn't blowing deadlines even with the lead time. I wonder if it was perhaps more like post-Hawk and Dove-- maybe early days on New Mutants when he could have potentially been wooed back. I think it's also worth noting that Liefeld was incorporating characters developed for/around the Megaton version of Youngblood into New Mutants (though he clawed back Cougar after he'd already appeared in Marvel Age, and recycled his proposed debut Marvel cover into a shot from Image's Youngblood #1.) The proto-Youngblood had a cat-lady in it, and I wonder if that was proto-Pantha. Obviously though, Pantha was in no way designed by Liefeld, and better for it. The look feels like an evolution on The Vixen from her abortive '70s series and early appearances pre-Justice League Detroit. There was a fan theory that she was a mutated Yolanda Montez, and given her oncoming murder, that would have been preferrable. Pantha still ended up being Latina, which I'm not sure was the case on X-23 comics, but certainly is in the movies.
New Titans #75 was another kinda tedious back issue. Everything of consequence revealed in this issue was firmly established when I started reading. Love it or hate it, I think the unifying consensus was that "Titans Hunt" ran too long and went on too many tangents. With 14 issues and an annual for just the base story, which spun directly into multiple connecting stories, you're bound to build up some inertia. I was lucky in that I came in late enough that some of the late life water treading was a refreshing oasis of new information to me. I agree that single page splash is laid out like a double, but I do wonder of that was intentional to provoke suspicions rather than conceal information. I agree that unmasked Wildebeest Nightwing was supposed to look battered, but explain why Jericho looks like his own Hillbilly Elegy Mam-maw? I like to ask the tough questions: is it Slade of Adeline that uses a hair straightener, or was Joe still getting perms in 1991, or was Adeline just throwing that pussy around? That hair is a bigger cheat then their showing Jericho get gassed out in #71. In retrospect, we should have all known that he was evil from that weird ass Gone With The Wind plantation date that he was on. I'm only scanning the issues for your show, but did they ever explain why the Titans were stripped nude and strapped to rockets? Obviously Jericho is a ffffrrreeeak, but it's just so impractical and seemingly pointless. Like, if Dick had been on the exploding rocket, then you've got Batman and the JLA all the way up your ass. Who needs that shit?
ReplyDeleteWhy is Jericho's Patronus a lion instead of a buck, or literally anything with horns? Again, isn't it an ineffective conceal of the force behind his stealing Raven's soul-self? Getting into #76, aside from blowing up Titans Tower in the end, we're still doing the same loose band of protagonists against the same Wildebeest Society troops who quite unrealistically keep getting taken out by this b-squad. Everything is getting drrraggged out, repeating the same beats (particularly with Pantha.) Sometime around this period, I was also buying back issues of Liefeld New Mutants. By comparison, Grummett and Vey were far more polished, detailed, and conveyed action better with a stronger story sense. New Titans wasn't as sloggy as the last days of Weezie on the mutie kids, but I'm clearly getting off on how good it looks more than how sparkling it read. It also helps that I was making money to pay for these comics, so I was much less precious about the value of each chapter against my overall pleasure of getting to collect this stuff.
The Wildebeest are like an inversion of the cop/soldier myth, where people make it out like these guys are constantly in super tense, life or death circumstances, but really it's usually mundane and they're consistently in a dominant position within society. These Wildebeest are constantly dying (and killing, with the bag lady wage theft and all.) You need cultists for that kind of work, but these guys just seem like blue collar henchmen. How long before they do an Andor (what's with all the Star Wars references tonight?) and figure out that they literally have to live free (of bomb-rigged super-suits) or die? The Wildebeest Society are a bigger violator of supervillain OSHA standards than The Joker. Did they explain where Jericho and/or The Society were getting the resources for all these Bond villain bases? The should have subtitled this arc "Just Teen Titans Go With It."