An interview to Judd Winnick of the new titans team
Next week sees the classic “New Teen Titans” return.
Well, kinda.
Next week actually sees the start of the ball rolling which will eventually result in the classic Marv Wolfman/George Perez Teen Titans (Nightwing, Starfire, Beast Boy, Raven, Cyborg, Donna Troy, and (former Kid) Flash) coming back together in a new Titans ongoing series, written by Judd Winick, with art by Ian Churchill. That series will launch in early 2008.
But let’s not put the cart further ahead of the horse than we need to – the Teen Titans East Special hitting next week by Winick and Churchill…it all starts there. We spoke with Winick about the set up, how it all got rolling and the Titans from the Wolfman/Perez days.
Newsarama: First off Judd - the upcoming Titans, as neither you nor DC has made any bones about hiding, follows up from this month’s Teen Titans East Special. Draw the line a little bit connecting the two…given the respective teams in the books, it feels as if there’s a strong possibility that the “Titans East” didn’t work out, and the original members felt it was their place to come back…or something like that…
Judd Winick: Or something like that…[laughs]. I guess the best way to put it is that the Special is the first chapter. The discussion came out of the idea that we originally wanted to bring back the original Teen Titans from the Marv Wolfman/George Perez days. We like the team, it’s a classic combination that works, and all of us were really, really interested in putting them back together. Dan would go from convention to convention and at virtually every panel, someone would ask if him if DC was going to launch a Titans East book, and the fans would go wild.
So in the back of Dan’s mind, that was where it started – if we were going to do “Titans East,” we should do the Wolfman/Perez team. Not some combination of new folks, but the originals. So from there, we came to the idea of making a “Titans East” project a first chapter, something that leads – somehow – to the creation/reunion of the original New Teen Titans characters. And it all gelled. That’s why there was a very brief fake-out where we showed the cover to Titans East, which got us the response of “What the hell is this?” from the fans who were asking for a Titans East team book. We expected that reaction, and we got it. So we had our fun.
The Teen Titans East one shot deals with these characters who are not very well known, which, for me was sort of a nod to some of the real big misfires of the ‘80s and ‘90s, when they would put together some of the worst teams imaginable under the biggest banners. I think everyone who’s been a DC fan for the past 20 years has had a “This is the Justice League?” moment. So that’s where it all began, and that was the idea behind it – this would be the first chapter of a larger story that was going to bring the original team back together.
NRAMA: But when you say bring the team back together – this isn’t back in the day when all the sidekicks could hang out together…
JW: Right – these are people who are living different lives and are in different places – both geographically and emotionally. Some of them have their own titles; some are on the other side of the universe. There had to be a story large enough and dire enough for them to be brought back together.
NRAMA: I’m gathering that you’ve said all you’re going to say about what brings them together…
JW: I have. Pretty much.
NRAMA: But what holds them together? With the original series, the characters didn’t have their own books to appear in, and at the same time, Marv and George made it feel as if these characters were each others’ best friends, that they were a family. Everything’s moved on from that point…
JW: From a macro note on the book, this is about family. I got a piece of advice from Mark Waid a while back, when Outsiders was starting up – he asked Why do we need this team? What is their purpose? Just getting together to fight bad guys is fine, but it’s really not too interesting in the end. This was back when all we had was the germ of the idea, which allowed it to turn into the concept that they really didn’t like each other, but among them, they all shared the common thread of wanting to get their hands dirty and do all the things that everyone else was afraid to do.
With Titans though, they are a family. They’re family and friends first, a team second. The way we’re going about it though is that they’re not actually a team. There’s not going to be anyone on monitor duty, there’s not going to be meeting s and roll calls – they basically are coming together because they are together> They’re one f the few groups in the DCU that can say they grew up together. In growing up, reading these comics, there was a point in time with these characters that they were younger. Taken together, they’re one of the very few sets of characters who actually aged during their fans’ life spans. Batman and Superman have been pretty steady and stable. These characters all came in as children – we have those books we can still look at. Now they’re not kids anymore, they’re grown-ups doing gown up things. But – they have history.
So, the thrust of the book will be that this is a group without being a group. They are a team without associating as a team, because they’re more than that. They have a lot more history. No one is getting in anyone else’s face about who’s the leader, or who will do this or that. The adventures that will occur, and the missions that they will go on will come from one of them needing some kind of help. Somebody will be working on something, and they could use some backup from their friends.
NRAMA: Like getting the gang from high school getting back together because you have to do something to help one of them out…
JW: Yeah. To anyone who knows these characters or has followed them long enough, it makes total sense. The gang is all still alive and intact, and, though they’ve all been through a lot of things, they’re still there and still friends. That, right there, stands as testament to Wolfman and Perez for creating this bedrock of story and character. That’s why creators and fans always go, or want to goo back to it. It’s why people still talk about The Judas Contract. For long time readers, that’s one of the top ten seminal events in comics, and for creators, that’s a benchmark that you’re always striving towards. So why not try and stand on the shoulders of giants and see if we can’t move these characters forward and build on what Marv and George have left?
NRAMA: Yeah – speaking as a long-time fan myself, there are, and have been many times when Nightwing would not want to call in Batman, even though he’s arguably his most powerful resource that’s close at hand…he’d call Wally or Donna, or one of the others…
JW: Right. And on top of that, do we ever think that Dick would call Batman for help, ever? We’re beyond that – Dick doesn’t want to become Batman. That was one of the lessons he learned in Outsiders - he tried to be Batman on a larger scale. With these characters, he’s beyond that. They know who he is, and they know his bullshit They all know each other’s bullshit. It’s easy in that way. As a writer doing this now, the character development and exchanges are so simple, because it’s all laid out very well. Any questions I ever have, I just have to go back to the original issues and it’s like, “Oh yeah – that’s how Dick relates to Donna” or “Yeah – Vic and Raven have this kind of relationship.” Again, it’s just a testament to how well those stories by Marv and George were written. Those stories are as tight as a drum, from the characterization to how they look. I mentioned it back when we talked about the Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special - back when Donna got married in Teen Titans, no one was in costume, and you knew who everyone was, regardless, thanks to how George drew their faces, how they stood, who they were with – it was amazing. Marv created these characters from the inside, and George created them from the outside. It’s still as tight as a drum, which makes carrying on from what they created so easy. It’s all there.
And that’s what I like to do – I know that there’s a hard-core micro minority out there that feels I like to change everything, but I don’t. When you look at it, I really don’t like to change everything, I like to contemporize it. I try to make a story that can be told now. Sometimes characters are horribly antiquated, and if we try to stay faithful and se the stories in the “now” of the DCU, we’re just going to end up telling bad stories. But again, that’s not what we have to worry about here – this will be as faithful as the day is long. Nightwing is in charge – he’s the older brother to the guys who are the same age as he is. Gar’s the funny one, Kory still manages to hang on to a little bit of her naïveté…
NRAMA: Hold up – you talked about being faithful and not changing, but showing Starfire with naïveté? It’s that kind of what you were talking about of being faithful just to be faithful, and winding up with crappy stories?
JW: Yeah – that is one of the harder things to deal with nowadays. Kory’s seen far too much since she came to earth. Hell, she’s kinda seen too much before she came to earth to be that Mary Tyler Moore. Starfire has a bit too much kickass in her to be as naive as she’s sometimes shown. She can still be sweet – and there is a difference in that – there’s a difference between being Pollyanna and being a sweet, sensitive person. But she’s been through war. She’s seen people do horrible, horrible things to one another. She’s not really naive.
NRAMA: Given the structure you mentioned earlier – the “friends-helping-friends” angle, how does that run arc-wise, and in the larger series? “Nightwing’s Story” is issues #1-#5, followed by “Donna’s Story” after that?
JW: No – it’s far more organic than that. It’s not going to be discrete arc featuring the different characters’ stories. They’re going to talk about it, even – if they should be a team. Why they should be a team when, like I said, they all know each other’s stories and crap. These people have history – that’s what drew me to the book.
NRAMA: Let’s wrap this with a tease – what gets the story rolling in Titans East, and then how does that rope Titans in?
JW: Vic brings together a group in Titans East…
NRAMA: Power Boy, Hawk and Dove, and the rest seen on the cover?
JW: Right – and something goes horribly, horribly wrong when we see the return of someone big and bad that we haven’t seen in a while. That serves to bring the gang together in a very organic way – it’s obvious that they have to be the ones to get together to take care of things. By the end of the issue, no one will wonder why the Titans wouldn’t get together on this.
We’re going to be revisiting a classic villain that we haven’t see for a while from the Wolfman/Perez era, and have the gang slug it out. At the same time, I’m enjoying getting these guys back together again, just to get to show them talking and hanging out. It’s a lot of fun.
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