Teen Titans #53 (1978) - Speedy and the Original Teen Titans

[perletwo]

OK, now that I've got my breath back from reading Titans #23 - jeez, did Roy drop a bag of flaming dog poop on Didio's front porch or something? - I've remembered I recently came across Teen Titans #53, which is both the origin issue and the breakup issue. (Ironically, it's also the first issue of OTT I ever bought, back in the day.)

It has Guardian and Bumblebee minding the store at OTT HQ, and reading in a big record book of the Titans' first adventure, the one reworked in Year One: the heroes going rogue, the sidekicks joining forces, trading off sidekick/hero matchups, breaking the evil alien influence etc. Roy was a rough fit even then, but the standoffishness was on Roy's side, according to this:



And it was a much-grown Roy who got to do the honors of disbanding the original Titans.





That manly tear just gets me every time.



I just don't even know what to make of Titans #23, after rereading this issue.

suggested tags - char: bumblebee/karen beecher (does not exist), char: herald/vox/mal duncan, char: harlequin/duela dent, char: flash/kid flash/wally west, char: robin/nightwing/dick grayson, char: speedy/red arrow/roy harper, char: wonder girl/troia/donna troy, char: aqualad/tempest/garth, creator: bob rozakis, creator: juan ortiz (does not exist), group: teen titans, publisher: dc comics, title: teen titans

(would theme: retcon hell be appropriate for this post? I dunno.)

Comments

[From: jlroberson]

Wow, look at the Adams swipes, particularly panel 2, which is taken from a famous shot of Batman, I think during the first Ra's Al-Ghul story.

[From: perletwo]

Ahaa, I knew there had to be a reason I always almost liked this art, even when I was a kid. The whole issue, it's soooo close to good art, and yet - something missing I couldn't put my finger on.

[From: jlroberson]

I kept wondering if it was Rich Buckler maybe. Whose career was built on swipeorama.

[From: perletwo]

Not a bad guess; he did the cover for this issue.

[From: jlroberson]

If it looks like Adams or Kirby and it's not, it's usually Buckler.

[From: cuntfucius]

I still love that cover of garth basically being fed up with the Titans and picking a fight with Robin. It's a great cover -- they were all so dramatic.

And Duela! She was so fun, and had such a ...strange friendship with Donna and Dick. And Mal! Oh man this is just bringing back the good stuff.

Titans 23 was just... when I think of it right now I get preemptively exhausted from all of the stuff I have to say about it, both good and bad ...mostly bad. Mostly it just turned a lot of things on its head and twisted certain things and just... i don't know.

[From: levyrasputin]

Oh Roy... your manly tears are such epic stuff, man.

thanks for sharing, this was cute. :D

[From: sweettart1823]

Aw I miss you guys. Come back soon! <3

[From: sistermagpie]

Silly, this is just their "idealized memories" of how it was. Really they all yelled at each other all the time and hated Roy. They were just tricked by the way this was the way it actually played out back then in the comics. *rolls eyes*

Also, they "stiffled" Garth? Do I want to know how one does that?

[From: lamashtar]

Well, it involves a 'stiffy' and 'rifling' or 'sniffling'..

[From: sistermagpie]

You just went totally beyond anything I had in my head already. I bow to you.

[From: kingrockwell]

I've never been sure about the "retcon hell" tag, the persona who created it has really odd tagging habits, but it certainly seems it should apply.

By the way, we really discourage talk of torrents around here, can you edit that part out of your post?

[From: kingrockwell]

Also this totally gets a "manly tears".

[From: perletwo]

Heh, I totally forgot that was a tag - 'manly tears' has just become part of my vocabulary!

[From: perletwo]

Edited!

I wasn't sure about that tag either - it almost seems like it should apply to Titans #23, while this and the other OTT posts in response are more like retcon refutations. *shrugs*

[From: arysteia]

Can I ask a noob-ish question? (As in, I've read all of New TT, but none of original flavour.)

Who was *actually* Robin's best friend back in the day? Because I thought it was Roy, but I freely admit I might have gotten that impression from fan fic. But I was still surprised when I saw him the other day saying Kid Flash and he were BFFs.

[From: icon_uk]

I don't think that any of them had a particular "best friend", they were ALL buddies more than anything else.

[From: perletwo]

Yeah, and Robin especially, being leader, wasn't about to play BFFs with any one Titan above the others. A very evenhanded leader, even when one or the other of them was driving him nuts.

[From: arysteia]

I did wonder. The "we can only have one true love best friend" thing does seem to be going round though. I expect Ollie and Barry to come to blows over Hal too. D:

[From: kenn_el]

Wally makes sense, though. Back then Donna wasn't 'Donna' yet, and spent a lot of time on Paradise Island (which meant he couldn't visit), with Aqualad doing the same in Atlantis (plus, he had a time limit), and Roy was retconned into being an original member.

[From: psychopathicus_rex]

I think that the problem with many modern depictions of these characters is that the writers and editors have started thinking of them simply as CHARACTERS, instead of more specifically what they are, which is heroes. They don't have to be perfect - they're human, after all - but they're HEROES, dammit, and should act heroically and with maturity.