A serious competition for Terry Long?!

[sun_soraya.insanejournal.com]

As requested I continue posting random 80's Teen Titans stuff.

So... not happy with Terry Long being Donna's lover? Too old? Too annoying? Too creepy? And on top of that a silly haircut? Well, in New Teen Titans #11-12 (1981) he's getting a rival:



See for yourself if the new guy in town can keep up with Terry!

The context: in an intense battle with Deathstroke Gar got shot and is now on the brink of death. To save their friend the Titans fly off to Paradise Island where Gar hopefully can be healed by the Amazon's Purple Ray. While the girls take Gar down to the island the boys leave for a different mission in Africa. And somewhere else...





Meet Hyperion from the Titans of Myth! And before the obvious encounter with Donna, let's take a quick look and compare him with Terry:

Hair: ... well, give Terry a shave and put some flowers in his hair and they could be brothers.
Age: with more than 30.000 years Hyperion wins here - to be fair, Terry might look old but he's actually only 29.
Factor of annoyance: most of us were a bit angry at Terry because he ruined Dick's speech at the campfire scene, but at least you can get a word out in his presence... not so sure here.
Factor of creepiness: ... I always found the Titans of Myth pretty creepy, too.





Hera help me, too, for I cannot bear his enormous ego...





You heard Kory, Dick is the only real man on earth!



And off they fly... to Tartarus once again. After battling a few cyclopses they manage to free the other Titans of Myth:



Together they decide that it's about time to throw Zeus and the other younger gods from the throne. Also: Kory, Raven and the Amazons are on their way to rescue Donna (bringing even Athena herself along), but Donna being Hyperion's new first lady doesn't really care.
Instead in the next issue they head off to Mount Olympus...






Epic battles are fought there and in the end the Titans of Myth win, turning the younger gods into stone.



Momma's here and she doesn't approve of Donna's new boyfriend.
They try to talk things out. Athena being the awesome mod explains that the new peaceful world the Titans of Myth were talking about unfortunately comes without freedom and free will.



And war they get! Kory frees Zeus and before the situation gets even worse, Athena can finally talk sense into everyone. Everyone? Not quite! Hyperion still has something to bitch about.





I know this single page was already included in the Donna&Terry love story post, but it's the epilogue, I can't leave it out...



I'm so bold to say that with Kyle Donna's taste in men changed for the better.

Comments

[sailorlibra.insanejournal.com]

Maybe we should be glad that Diana never really gets into serious relationships. Because, apparently, there are no good matches for super-powered Amazons.

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

Hippolyta: Herc (her rapist, now thankfully retconned out), Ted Grant. That's a 50-100% success rate, depending on continuity, and if you run with Jimenez' implication that Phillipus is in love with her, her suitor pool goes to 66%-100% positive.

Donna: Terry Long (... Terry Long), Roy Harper (a good guy but not a good mate), Angle Man (amusing as a suitor, problematic as an actual prospect), Kyle Rayner (we have a winner). She's running a 25% success rate, down to 20% if you look at the suitor pool and Hyperion pops up. (She does, however, have the highest ratio of decent costumes in the family, which is something.)

Diana: Superman (ultimately not a good match, but excellent taste), Batman (just no), Aquaman, apparently (but only when he's a prick, so that's also a no), Rama (a true winner), Trevor Barnes (a true loser), Tresser (no), Io (again, ultimately not a good match but excellent taste). 42% success rate. Add in suitors, though - Indelicato, Schorr - and we're down to 33%.

Cassie: Kon (good call), Tim (... not a bad idea in theory, but disgusting and wrong in execution, and deeply problematic when combined with the way Diana gets passed between Clark and Bruce). 50% success rate, and no rejected suitors.

Temi: Mike Schorr (loser) and that dude from the mini whose name I forget, he's that dumb (loser). 0% success rate.

So, on average, amazons have about a 36% likelihood of ending up in a decent match. Not exactly awe-inspiring, but at least there's a chance.

[jlbarnett.insanejournal.com]

I want a MarvelDC crossover where she dates the MUs Hercules.

Maybe even do one of those amalgamated universe where the Herc she knew back in the day was Marvel's Herc.

[fredneil.livejournal.com (from insanejournal.com)]

I'd say Golden Age Steve Trevor, but Golden Age Wonder Woman wasn't superpowered, relatively speaking.

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

Well, she was as much as Temi is. But if you include Golden Age Steve Trevor, you also have to include Silver and Bronze Age Steve Trevor, which is a net negative.

[fredneil.livejournal.com (from insanejournal.com)]

I don't know Temi, but I thought Golden Age Wonder Woman got her powers through Amazon Bondage Training.

If I acknowledge that there even was a Silver and Bronze Age Steve Trevor, I'd have to acknowledge a Silver and Bronze Age Wonder Woman, and that's not going to happen. But in those books that didn't happen, wasn't Steve Trevor dead for most of the Bronze age?

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

Artemis, sorry. 90s Replacement Wonder Woman. She doesn't have powers (well, she shouldn't, though periodically that gets ignored), but she got to use the Gauntlet of Atlas and the Sandals of Hermes, and basically got to be flying and punchy through magical tools, which is thematically equivalent to Magic Bondage Training (Marston may have presented it like there was nothing supernatural about it, but if you can lose it just because a man puts his foot on a lump of sand, it's magical).

wasn't Steve Trevor dead for most of the Bronze age?

Well, some. He was his own son for a while in there too, or masquerading as his own son, or as somebody else, or... something. I confess I haven't read the era too vigorously.

[colonel_green.insanejournal.com]

Bronze Age Steve Trevor is the best indicator that if there were large numbers of comics series with female leads, their male love interests would indeed get messed around with as much as female love interests in male-lead comics often are. Because man, dude had it rough. No one had the slightest clue what to do with him; he died, he came back, died again, an AU version turned up at one point, I think...

[colonel_green.insanejournal.com]

I miss Ted. Whenever the big story allows a free moment, I'd love if Simone would give the two of them a couple of pages to meet up; certainly, a lot has changed since the last time they saw each other.

[jelly_ace.insanejournal.com]

I am speechless at this awesome intersection of math and comic books.

LOLling at Kyle Rayner being a good match, though. Isn't he the owner of the penis of death? Or was it being sarcastic?

...the way Diana gets passed between Clark and Bruce... is just so...porn-y.

[colonel_green.insanejournal.com]

Kyle's a great guy, bad writing tendencies aside (though, meta-ly, Donna's death wasn't remotely related to him; Jade was half/half, since she was event fodder and also effecting Alan, but Kyle got a powerup out of it (though they quickly backtracked on Jade's death having been the reason)).

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

Well, not quite sarcastic. More... wry.

Though at least Donna's resilient. Kyle's Black Widower effect didn't kick in on her until a couple years after they'd broken up, and she came back in about the same span of time. Better she dates him than he end up with someone like, I dunno, Gypsy.

[jfurioso.insanejournal.com]

Diana DOES NOT "get passed between Clark And Bruce". She takes up "Clark or Bruce" at her whim, much like for sparring, openly and with full involvement for the moment, even if just as exercise. One for sheer power, the other for depth of skill. Yet like in sparring, she always ends up on top.

Hell, I think Ive already drawn that.

[jelly_ace.insanejournal.com]

Yup, definitely porn-y. :)

[aaron_bourque.insanejournal.com]

Is Ted Grant really a positive? I mean . . . really. Sure, he's better than Rapistules, but I was always really disappointed with Hippolyta and Ted's thing. It felt, I don't know, unseemly somehow.

Phillippus and Hippolyta?

[cardinalx.insanejournal.com]

It´s been ages since I read the Jiménez run, but when and where was it implied that Phillippus is in love with Hippolyta? I´m a Hippolyta/Phillippus (Phippolyta?) shipper, so I´d like to know.

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

Our Worlds at War. Phillipus is explaining Diana's history to a couple of the Bana, including talking about Diana's death and Polly's stint as Wonder Woman, and one of them gets up in her face about Polly being a fucktard during WML's run, and Phil gets all defensive, and the other Bana is like "... you love her!"

Phil gets all flustered and openmouthed and then the news arrives that Polly is dead.

Philly and Polly sitting in a tree...

[cardinalx.insanejournal.com]

I certainly remember Pollys death (one of the few times a deathscene gripped me), but not the Phillippus scene you describe.

.....

> >

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Scan?

[espanolbot.insanejournal.com]

Wait, I thought that the whole "Hippolyta being attacked by Hercules" thing was referenced in the Wonder Woman storyline based on a potential movie about Diana that she was over seeing?

Where they showed it as conscentual which ticked Diana off because it wasn't.

Also, Cassie DOES have a rejected suitor: back in her mini series Hercules made a pass at her (her being his half-sister is referenced*) because he wanted to make a new pantheon due to the Female Furies imprisoning the old ones.

*If I remember correctly he said that Zeus and Hera are brother and sister, so it should be ok or something.

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

Herc, per Perez, raped Polly. Polly, per Perez, forgave Herc and made sexytimes with him on a Themysciran beach three thousand years later. Polly, per Gail as of a year ago, may or may not have forgiven Herc, but apparently at the very least never made consensual sexytimes with him. Diana's complaint about the movie is the first we've ever heard of Polly not having a romance with Herc.

Fair point about Herc hitting on Cassie, though I didn't really get the impression he was actually serious about that the way his romance with Polly was serious or Mike Schorr's crush on Diana was serious. He kind of just bugs her about it a couple times then moves on with a shrug and a "whatever."

[darkknightjrk.insanejournal.com]

"Batman (just no)"

Maybe it's because I've recently watched JLU again (they do do a lot of things better then the comics), but I never really saw what was so bad about them as a couple.

[aaron_bourque.insanejournal.com]

It's fine in JLU because their characterization fits, at least that'd be bluefall's argument. However, in the mainstream comics, just no.

[psychop_rex.insanejournal.com]

I'm not so sure I agree with that. They're far from an obvious match, of course, but they've had some interesting interplay in the past. In Matt Wagner's version of the first teamup between Batman, Wondy, and Supes, Clark and Bruce follow Diana to Themyscira. Bats, of course, lands separately - he's the first to see Diana, and he's so overwhelmed by the island's aura of paradise in general and her beauty in particular that he briefly breaks character, goes all gooey, and gives her a big ol' smooch. Of course, this doesn't go down too well, given the fact that she's bathing at the time, and he backpedals furiously the moment he's himself again, but it is specifically acknowledged at the end of the story that the encounter added a new layer to his battle against crime - he's seen beauty and paradise; now he hopes to be able to recreate it one day.
Also, there's a Bats/Wondy teamup where several of her villains possess several of his villains, giving them mythological powers. Naturally, both heroes get involved in the fight, and in the process, Bats gets briefly possessed by Ares's son Phobos, the demigod of Fear. He very nearly gives into this completely, revelling in the ability to do instantly what he's sought to do through initimidation for years, making every person in the city terrified of him - then Wondy steps in, and reminds him that fear is not, in fact, what his mission is. She helps him overcome Phobos and cast him out - had she not been there, he might well have been lost forever. Afterwards, while it's hardly lovey-dovey, the two share a moment where they're considerably more open with each other than the two normally are, with the implication that they could possibly be closer if they chose.
So while I agree that a Batman/Wondy hookup is unlikely, and that there are better candidates for Diana's love, it's not an impossible thing - it could actually work fairly well, given the right writer.

[aaron_bourque.insanejournal.com]

Oh, there's an attraction, of course. But they're fundamentally opposed, philosophically, than even Superman and Batman. Diana is practically the Goddess of Truth, and Batman is all about deceiving and deception, for survival. And paradoxically, they've got similar senses of honor, so if they hook-up, they'd always be trying to make it last, and they never could because their world-views are just that opposed.

[xdoop.insanejournal.com]

How was Herc retconned out?