Letters, We’ve Got Letters!
Sunday, October 6
By Marv Wolfman

From: kpierc72@earthlink.net

How did the entire concept of the Teen Titans came about? Was it DC's intention for it to complete with the X-Men or was it a surprise hit? Had you and George Perez always had the idea of Cyborg, Raven and Star fire, back in Marvel? Why did DC not include Firestorm within the Teen Titans. Who had come up with the concept of Nightwing?

DC COMICS PRESENTS #26 NEW TEEN TITANS #1 TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS #43 NEW TEEN TITANS: GAMES ASHCAN #1

I will assume you’re asking about The New Teen Titans and not the original group. I don’t know who created that group – it could have been the editors or the writer, Bob Haney. Maybe someone out there knows? As for my group, I was leaving Marvel and coming over to DC (in those days you could only work for one company and not both) and was getting my assignments. My only request was no team-up books, so, naturally, I was assigned to DC Presents and Brave & Bold, both team-up books. Therefore, my first order of business was to get off those titles.

Len Wein and I had written a story or two for the original Teen Titans way back in the late 60s, and I always had a warm spot for those characters, so I asked Len – who at this point had become an editor at DC – if we could revive the title. I went home and came up with the characters, so, no, there was not always a Starfire, Cyborg or Raven. You can read my introduction for the first Teen Titans Archives to see how they came about. Len and I went into publisher Jenette Kahn’s office and pitched my idea. Jenette said she did not like the previous version of the Titans and therefore wasn’t hot on the idea, but we said we’d do it better. Honestly, that’s all we said. Jenette, who trusted us, said fine.

As I fleshed out the characters I ran into George Perez at the Marvel offices. I mentioned to him that I was working on a new version of the Titans and would he be interested in drawing it. George thought the book would last maybe a half dozen issues, and there was a chance he could also draw the Justice League, which was the book he really wanted to do, so he said yes. George then designed the look of each and every one of the characters.

We showed Jenette what we had done and she liked it so much she decided we should do a 16 page original Titans story that they would put in free in DC Presents #26 to get people interest.

The first Titans ads went out announcing the new group. We immediately got in hate mail from the fans chastising us for creating new characters instead of using only the original Titans. They swore they were not going to buy any book that didn’t feature the ‘real’ Titans. After New Teen Titans #1 came out, we got letters from those very same fans telling us we were the best thing since sliced bread. That taught me then and there to always write what I believed was right and not to buckle under pressure. If we had, then Starfire, Cyborg, Raven and the others would never have been created.

As for Nightwing, I always believed Robin should be more intelligent and ‘real’ than he had been portrayed in Batman. So we morphed Robin into Nightwing and allowed Batman to create a new Robin.

Speaking of Titans…

From Peter Milan, (further@further-adventures.com)

Lemme get this straight...there's 80 pages of a Wolfman & Perez graphic novel just lying around somewhere, and DC isn't interested in publishing it? That sounds like quite the easy sell.

Yeah, Peter, you’d think. It’s called Games, and George had drawn approximately 80 pages of its 120 or so pages. I always felt we could get someone else to finish it up. I still do.