Teen Titans Special: "The Lazarus Contract, Finale"

[laughing_tree]

My pitch for this (I’ve been pushing for it for nearly a year) was to revisit “The Judas Contract,” Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s defining story arc of the New Teen Titans. We were going to J.J. Abrams the thing in order to build a firewall around the original story–so it can never be retconned or ignored–while re-telling it with the post-Rebirth continuity.

But the old continuity was just a mess. Cyborg was never a Titan. Starfire, Raven– it was terribly difficult to sort all of that out. My preference was to not bother; just show blocks of the original story with the original cast without explaining why Cyborg is now a founding member of the Justice League and never a Titan.

As I see it, both DC and Marvel (but especially DC) wastes way too much time on process stories. I’m tired of reading process stories– stories that explain why this character is now wearing a red hat instead of a yellow one. Who cares. Entertain me.

Comics fans aren’t idiots and, sadly, they aren’t kids anymore. Rather than go through the whole Rebirth thing, and what seems to be endless process stories being written ever since, I’d simply have had Batman turn to camera, breaking the fourth wall, and be honest with the DC comics fan: “We fucked up.” Now, on with our show.

Comics should be Good Stories Well Told. That’s it. Personally, am not entertained by all of these comics that invest multi-issue story arcs explaining the red hat/yellow hat thing. I don’t care. I’m 56 years old, I understand things have changed.

Somewhere along the way we’ve stopped entertaining and gotten morosely engaged with this continuity stuff. Continuity exists to serve the stories, not the other way around.

Ultimately, because of the varying events both past and upcoming, it proved impossible to do the JJ thing, so editor Antone came up with the next best thing. “Lazarus…” walks right up to the Judas Contract and knocks on the door, but we don’t fully go there because, honestly, we couldn’t.

-- Christopher J. Priest

The main story, scripted by Priest, penciled by Paul Pelletier:











The Titans and Teen Titans follow Deathstroke back in time and run into the past Titans:



























"Aftermath," scripted by Ben Percy, penciled by Khoi Pham:



"Damage Report," scripted by Dan Abnett, penciled by Brett Booth:

Comments

[aeopile]

Continuity exists to serve the stories, not the other way around.

I'm a strong advocate for respecting continuity, and I think Mr. Priest has this a little off.

Continuity serves character development.
Strong character development serves the story.

So really, it becomes a debate of status quo vs. growth. If writers want to treat the DC Universe like an episode of the Simpsons, or Star Trek Voyager, where the status quo is either restored by end of the episode (Voyager), or past stories are more or less ignored (Simpsons) - that's fine, I get that.

Or if they want it to be like serialized television, where characters have arcs, and the status quo does change, that's fine, I get that (and generally that is the type of story telling I prefer).

It is up to the editors to decide what they want the universe to be... and for the writers to respect this. I think the challenge for the publisher is they really want to have their cake and eat it too.

You must buy this story, everything will change!
vs.
To enjoy this story, you don't need to know anything about past stories!

I quit reading comics with the New 52, I looked at it as being a great stopping point. As a DC fanboy, I was slowly becoming more and more unhappy with the general rolling back to the silver age status quo (Hal Jordan I stomached, Barry Allen really bothered me). But I did follow the buzz about it, and check in here weekly. It really felt like DC wanted it both ways, and no one was really happy.

I think the target that comics should be shooting for is stories that lead to an easy to understand status quo change or eventually return to status quo, but can be referenced. For example, the death of superman. I enjoyed the story. It put everything back to status quo when finished... but can affect Superman as a character (dude, you died!). Or Superman post-rebirth, and all the baggage he had with him originally, and how it is slowly going back to status quo.

The original death of Jason Todd, did change the status quo, but a reader could be caught up in a quick expository dialogue (Joker killed Robin, and since then Bruce has had trouble accepting a new partner).

[q99]

-
I'm a strong advocate for respecting continuity, and I think Mr. Priest has this a little off.

Continuity serves character development.
Strong character development serves the story.

So really, it becomes a debate of status quo vs. growth.-

Well said.