#PLEASE stop comparing one of the greatest arcs and relationships (even if it stumbled at the finish line)...

[my-current-obsession]

every time i see bakudeku compared to k/ance (now specifically in terms of them getting shafted in the ending and/or accused of queerbaiting) i take psychic damage

[liathgray]

Anyways, here’s that essay

Please keep in kind this was not written to be consumed by people familiar with the source material, it was for a class. It’s focused on weird stuff and was meant to compare and contrast the Judas Contact storyline and season two of Titans.

Okay, here we go.

In 1984, a four-part story was published as an arc in Tales of the Teen Titans titled as The Judas Contract. Since, it has become one of the most influential and well-known stories to come out of the DC publishing company for its bold story choices and permanently changing characters who had been around for decades, as well as introducing death as something that can occur in the present, not just in the mechanics of a backstory. It garnered four separate adaptations, the most recent of which being the second season of Titans, a loose live-action version of the titular team. Between the two, there are many small plot and character details that do not line up, so for the sake of simplicity, pedantic plot elements will be removed from the comparison, instead focusing on individual motivation, the importance of the setting, and how characters are impacted and changed by the actions in the narrative.

The Judas Contract proper follows a team of pre-established young heroes being unknowingly spied on by their newest superpowered member, Tara Markov. She works alongside Slade Wilson, a mercenary and personal rogue of the Teen Titans, feeding him important information in order to fulfill his contract to kidnap them, hence the title of the arc; there is a Judas among them. The contract is almost completed until Slade’s son, Joey, enters the picture, determined to prevent any more death at hands of his father, emotionally conflicting Slade enough for Tara to feel betrayed and collapse the cavern they had been in, killing herself in the process. In the end, it is her story alongside the former Robin, Dick Grayson, who is inspired to take up a new vigilante identity as a result. Titans, has the same basic idea of there being a mole in the group and the evolution of Dick from Robin to Nightwing, but the surrounding plot and progression are entirely different. The Titans had existed previously, but broke up due to a series of events involving Slade, starting with the murder of a teammate, and ending in the death of Joey. There’s much grief and trauma surrounding this, so when years later Dick decides to reopen the team’s old headquarters to house and train new young heroes he stumbled across, his old friends are a mix of angry, re-traumatized, and reluctant, especially with the re-emergence of their aforementioned enemy. In the place of Tara, there is Rose. Daughter of Slade and, again, the spy on the team who, unlike Tara, has a change of heart and reveals her betrayal in an attempt to warn her newfound friends.

The most striking element of both is the use of character, and in what direction the agents go in, especially in light of the overarching themes that they share; that of redemption, recovery, guilt, and betrayal. In the comic, the focal point for all of this is Tara. She is continually treated well by her teammates whom remain compassionate to her, despite her brashness and tendency to get violent. They know little of her, yet still welcome her into their home and personal lives. It is revealed to the audience early on that Tara is working for Slade, which makes each interaction she has with those she is deceiving all the more upsetting, even distressing to watch. Tara’s particular flavor of trauma deals with abandonment, something she acquired after being forced out of her home country, which later developed into malignant narcissism. She becomes very attached to the idea of being in a position of power and finds comfort in the presence of Slade, as he was the first person to justify her being alive. Tara, in the end, fails to redeem herself, instead the illusion she had built of stability and power came crumbling down after she spends ally after ally until there is no one, and she has no power left. Though it’s somewhat cynical, the idea here is that these cycles of betrayal and neglect cannot always be broken, that’s the point of this character; sometimes people are just too dysfunctional and if they are not willing to put in the work to get better and heal, they just won’t.

Rose, Tara’s counterpart, goes through a very different metamorphosis, despite the setup being similar. Her initial motivation was revenge for the brother she never knew, having been told it was the Titans who killed him when in fact it had been Slade, though it wasn’t intentional. Slade, however, blamed the Titans, specifically Dick, thus Rose believed him and was willing to participate as a double agent. When she encounters them for the first time, she is met with sympathy and understanding, people who didn’t value her as a weapon, creating incongruity with the story she was fed of elite fighters and master manipulators. Upon learning the truth about the circumstances under which her brother died, and who exactly killed him, she backs out. Rose realized she was lied to and manipulated, almost immediately grasping the gravity of the situation and seeing how hard she was pushing people whose greatest crime was daring to care about the very person she thought she was avenging. Later, she tells her newly acquired love interest the truth, following it up by saying, “I’d take it all back if I could. But I can’t.” (Zhang). Where Tara failed, Rose succeeded; she got rid of the poison in her life and recognized that she was the bad guy, alongside seeing the humanity of those she attempted to sabotage.

The theme of redemption and recovery doesn’t stop with Rose. It is furthered by all the other existing characters, young and old. On the basis of new beginnings for the second generation, and moving past the collective trauma and fear associated with teamwork for the first. More so than anyone else, this idea is present in the journey of Dick Grayson. In the original story, he is motivated to save his friends from an ugly fate while in the throes of a very real identity crisis involving the title of Robin, which he had recently discarded, believing that it was time for him to grow past the role and create a legacy entirely his own. Which he does do; he rebrands himself as Nightwing, rising to the occasion and overcoming the difficulties of abandoning a role that represented his culminative childhood and heritage to do save the people he loves. It is very much about the conquering of his external obstacles.

This is not the case in Titans, it is largely about his spectacular fall from grace and the struggle of building himself back up from rock bottom. He had kept a secret from all his closest friends about the death of Joey; he told them Joey was murdered before he found him, when in fact, he wasn’t. Joey died trying to protect Dick from Slade, and Dick felt so much guilt and shame in having been partially responsible that he lied about it for years. When his teammates find out, his worst nightmare comes true: they leave him. He is with next to no support, devoid of the family he fought tooth and nail to keep together, and is left in the tomb of his last chance to remain stable. While Rose and Tara had to redeem themselves to other people, Dick’s story is a redemption to himself, not anyone else. He stops doing things for other people and imagines himself of deserving the loneliness of, in essence, being re-orphaned. In a desperate attempt to find forgiveness, he seeks out Slade who, instead of offering the sought after peace of mind, says, “I sentence you to live alone (…) Forever knowing that your Titans family lives and breathes somewhere out there in the world, but you can never be with them.” (Morales). His lowest point is monumentally more devastating than his comic counterpart; he isolates himself entirely, going as far as to get himself jailed to carry out the self-imposed punishment, expecting to be abused and killed alone in a prison, the prospect of death barely startling him. In moments like this, the tragedy of the character hurts so much more because the audience knows that if he gets knocked down, he may not get back up, he has every reason not to. Which is why it is so earnest and exhilarating when he does. Dick was broken down to his factory parts, every mistake and bad trait not only was put on display, but magnified. He was made to confront those things before being able to piece himself back together, only then could he take on a new identity as Nightwing. Seeing him fall again is tangibly damaging to the character, so seeing him climb his way back up, scratching, clawing, slipping up, and struggling all the way, it’s all the more satisfying when he reaches the top.

A large part of this fall and rise, or in the case of The Judas Contract, the lack off a fall, is to do with the setting. The comic has all their main characters living in relative harmony or with their own spaces. When they are not off stopping cults from destroying political landscapes or battling supervillains, they are at home, going about their daily lives as somewhat normal people with jobs and relationships. It exemplifies that they all have a decent grasp on who they are, and even if they don’t, they have a bed to go back to and a support system to rely on. This is an established team with a running headquarters, lovingly named Titans Tower, the scene is only a part of the narrative as the backdrop, as a story punching bag that ultimately doesn’t matter, and that is all it needs to be. The story is much more interested in the series of events taking place, otherwise known as the act. Everything that goes down becomes a spoiler because there are so many plot points to cover and twists to reveal, thus the scene becomes story fuel, which in turn fuels the act, fueling the actors. There is less of a fall because they all have a home to turn to; it is built around the idea that the primary agents are at least somewhat realized people, with lives of their own. They react to the world around them as it throws obstacles, and the idea is re-enforced by the irrelevance of where the action takes place, wholly opposing the priorities of its live-action adaptation.

Not to say that Titans doesn’t jump from place to place, in fact it shifts its characters around quite a lot, but those moves are reactions to and influenced by the primary setting. The Titans operate out of, again, Titans Tower, but instead of a home and safe place, it is a monument to their old team’s sins. A ghost town that continues to haunt them, bringing back their darkest times and motivating nearly every move they make. When they first arrive, it’s tense, they’re subconsciously expecting the worst and prepare to bail at the first signs of trouble, which they eventually do. It is their return that sparks the entire story moving forward, and the presence of a looming shadow built from mistakes colours their reactions and triggers a sort of trauma response. Conversely, it is a beacon of hope and rebirth for the younger members. It is the first place wherein they have been allowed to be themselves, even at their worst, then collectively learn to get better as a group, a family even. The motif of past and present, trauma and recovery, informs the presentation of Titans Tower, making the growth visible in ways it previously hadn’t been. Using the setting as story plays into how Titans is structured; it drip-feeds the audience information, allowing the plot to meander so each development can happen and be processed before the next major plot point kicks in, and if they lose the setting, their home, there’s nothing else, thus the consequences are much steeper.

Throughout its two seasons run, Titans has been unapologetically divisive; deeply flawed characters with a universe quite different from that of the comics. It was not designed to make audiences comfortable, often forcing them to look at the worst parts of characters they might have previously idolized and showing the amount of hard work that has to be put into self-betterment. It is highly character-driven, mostly following interpersonal relationships and intimate growth. Barely anyone feels self-assured, often scrambling for any sense of identity. Though everyone goes through their fair share of change, this is ultimately Dick’s redemption story to himself. It departs from the source material, which often showed readers the best parts of people, that the downfall of heroes comes from outside sources while overall making a cynical statement about the cycle of abuse regarding Tara. These are heroes who know who they are and have no problem in the actions they make, whereas in the adaptation, almost every conflict is generated internally by lies and secrecy. The adaptation removes the halo from these supposed heroes and allows the emotions to be a bit dirty and muddled, creating an equally satisfying but very different take on a classic comic story.