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goatpaste · 4 years ago

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Absolutely hate the ‘early’ characters such as Oakstar and co and were straights bitches. Like forcing this poor woman to leave during a flood, and then forgiving a man who cheated on his wife BUT not allowing this woman into the clan like she hadn’t lost everything already. And despite all of that, i absolutely love those books? Bc they created so much more interesting conflict than “hell is going to come back to the real word??”. Even so, every person in MV needed to go to the DF

yeah no like hhg the clan cats of mapleshades era were all stupid assholes in the worst ways

like oakstar is a shit head, darkstar was a shit head, appledusk was a shit head

and like!! they were so fucking upset with mapleshade for having half clan kits, but they totally??? forgave appledusk because he said sorry???? like BITCH YOU DID THE SAME SHIT

like! god if your gonna throw a fit over a lady having half clan babies kick her out! not her and her like??? ONE MONTH OLD KITTENS??? like!

its stupid they ONLY do it because they were appledusk’s kits and they were upset because appledusk ‘killed’ oakstars son birchface. but like! man idk! not to give appledusk like any slack

but it sounds like it was a terrible accident and appledusk wasnt tRYING to get birchface and his apprentice killed in the river. like! hello how many times have cats literally accidentally drowned each other in these books, or straight up killed someone innocent because they were in a camp raid, or an border war or whaTEVER and everyone is sore about it for a few days then over it and that ‘killer’ is still hailed as a saint or still just like fine. like guess what! they live in a shitty society where they are trained to fight and like GET each other sometimes a bitch dies man.

anyways like, all in all you right everyone in MV shoulda gone to the dark forest is mapleshade also had to go.

Oakstar, and frecklewish and all of the clan advocated to force mapleshade and three innocent kits out into the dangers of the forest alone despite the codes saying that cats should protect kits from anywhere always.

ravenwing, WHILE i have sympathy for him i knoW it only is formed from my own headcanon au ideas of him and his personality and life. the reality is that man! he’s a lil snitch! like! shut up dude! who cares if she had half clan kits (apparently everyone and their mothers but like oguh still)

everyone was such a ding dong

like! i think that/those books defiantly bring depth to how the clans have developed and changed and have/need to learn to change their laws and forgive and shit. (i dont understand why they still have codes about diff clan romances i think thats stupid that its still law for so many reasons)

but i also hate those books because their dumb and jksdhg because despite how much i like the idea of them being interesting and developing characters and world building and shit, the erin hunter team doesnt know how to right for shit and comes off to meh. they wrote mapleshade so bad, man.

you ever think about how far apart of all mapleshades major appearances are and how dIFFerent she is to each because she just has this like vague outline of a character handed around

like mapleshade in the main series being like ‘oughghf im so eeeeviiil i kick puppies for fun and decided we should kill ALL kits’ and then turn around and made mapleshade someone who literally went on a murder rampage to avenge her dead kits.

like main series mapleshade is JUST evil evil evil

crookedstars promise mapleshade is evil evil but oohhhh i have vague lore and im a fun ghost who haunts a family linage because its evil and sick as hell

and MV mapleshade is big mom who wants to go crazy go stupid and kill a fucker. shes a grieving mother who decided she wanted to go nuclear and respect her

#Anonymous

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tessatechaitea · 5 years ago

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New Titans #114

This is it! The last regular issue of this comic that I own!

I guess the changing of the guard leaving Arsenal in charge was the last straw for me. Or maybe the last straw was that Pantha's tail hole on her shorts never ripped so that I could see her butthole. One of those two reasons is definitely why I stopped buying this comic though. This issue is called "24 Hours" which makes me think of Gaiman's The Sandman which makes me think, "Why the fuck am I rereading this shit when I could be rereading that shit?!" Oh wait! I actually know the reason for this! It's because these Titans comic books were stored in a big old regular sized moving box that I wanted to get out of the way! Also I've reread The Sandman and I've never reread this. And since I'll be fifty in a little over two years, I should probably get all of the stupid time-wasting bullshit ideas out of my head now. Any writing projects I can't finish by the time I'm fifty, I'm abandoning. At that time, I'll just make up new ones that will only entertain me and a few other people. So if I've ever said anything in passing about something I was going to do, like finishing the Goggles Futures End story or my Fantastickal Fuck-Fighting Books, you'd better get your vote in now! The issue begins at midnight with Changeling getting his ass beat by a dark silhouette who claims Changeling promised to "end her living days." I don't know who that might be or why this is happening. With Zero Hour beginning right around this time, my comic books might become complete nonsense. I just have to hope the comic books involved in that non-crisis-labeled crisis will have "Zero Hour Tie-in" labels on the front. I probably don't understand what's going on in this one because Marv Wolfman is being artsy. And fuck if I know anything about art! I read comic books for a reason, people! At 1:10 AM, Starfire flies around wondering if Earth is really her home. Yes, it takes six panels for her to ask that question. But she's also being artsy in a poetic way! She uses phrases like "scarlet sea" and "delicious nectar" and "golden skies." It's almost as if somebody scoffed at Marv Wolfman when he mentioned he wrote comic books earlier in the week and he thought, "I'll show them!" Then he was all, "Hey! That issue by that new kid Gaiman was kind of artsy! It had those clocks that showed what time it is and the whole thing took place in only 24 hours and it was all filmed in real time although with all the cuts from one character to another, why did it even fucking matter? Oh wait, it's only 1994! I don't know who Jack Bauer is yet!" At 3:36 AM, Pantha breaks into somebody's apartment. Supposedly it's the person who changed her from a person into a cat or from a cat into a person. But it isn't so Pantha gets to scream in existential angst which is the only cathartic release available to those of us who know nothing has any meaning and all of our clothes need to be tailored so the tail can stick out of them. At 4:10 AM, Dick Grayson proves he's a master of disguise by first being unrecognizable and then being unrecognizable in a different way.

A true master of disguise! He's already showing hints of his ability to be Agent 37 of Spyral.

Notice how the panels are all wonky in the previous scan? I'm sure Marv Wolfman put a note in the script to the artist: "We're being artsy this issue! Art it up!" At 5:20 AM, we finally learn what happened to Deathwing. I don't mean we get an explanation of what Mirage did to him and why he doesn't have testicles anymore. We just see that he's making an appearance so that the audience can go, "Oh, that fuckbunny isn't dead? Great." The silhouette from earlier has dragged Changeling into Deathwing's bachelor pad. She's still just a dark profile but she mentions that Changeling is probably strong enough to accept her seed so it must be Raven. I guess being a demon from a dimension of empaths means you don't learn about the birds and the bugs. Unless this answers a question I'm sure I asked much earlier! Changeling can turn into a female version of any species! And Raven squirts semen because, well, she's Trigon's daughter. At 6:05 AM, Arsenal goes jogging with Bill Clinton. Clinton messes up Sergeant Steel's plans to manipulate the Titans into working for the government by telling Roy that he wants the Titans to be completely independent but he hopes that they'll work with the government. This plot point feels like Marv worked himself into a story arc that he didn't want to pursue any more. It's not like the DC Universe needed another team working on behalf of the U.S. government. At 6:15 AM, Garfield Logan finally gets laid.

Okay, maybe he doesn't get laid. But he definitely comes in his pants.

Do you think Marv Wolfman was in the shower when he thought, "Comic books have 24 pages. There are 24 hours in a day. Hey! I should steal an idea from Neal Gaiman!" At 7:43 AM, Nightwing crashes through a skylight. Just like Batman taught him! I can hear Bruce now: "Good job, Dick! Now they'll have to call Wayne Skylight and Window Repair! Another payday for the Batman!" At 9:00 AM (Eastern Time, Planet Earth, Sol System), Jarras Minion of some planet in the Alpha Centauri system watches his entire race disintegrate before his eyes. Probably a symptom of Zero Hour! At 10:05 AM, Nightwing declares, "I'm not a doctor! I just feel like a doctor!" It's his philosophical explanation for why he doesn't use lethal force. It totally makes sense because Nightwing still punches the shit out of people just like how doctor's love to give shots and cut people open. At 11:20 AM, Changeling begs to remain a virgin. He escapes but he has some missing time so he might also be pregnant. I guess I'll never know unless he starts showing in 24 hours! Or I'm curious enough to go buy some back issues. Ha ha! That was a joke! I have no curiosity. Page 12 is noon, of course! Nightwing has lunch with a detective because Dick Grayson had the fear of Alfred beaten into him about sitting down promptly at noon for the midday meal. Twenty-four hours for Dick Grayson went like this: 9 PM - 4 AM: Risk life with grown ass adult man in bat costume. 4 AM - 8 AM: Sleep. 8 AM - 9 AM: Waffles. 9 AM - 12 PM: Training. 12 PM - 1 PM: Cucumber sandwiches. 1 PM - 5 PM: Study time. 5 PM - 6 PM: Tea. 6 PM - 9 PM: Try to evade Bruce and Alfred as Dick finds a quiet spot to masturbate. At 1:30 PM, Roy has coffee with Steel. The government's final offer to the Titans: the government gives the Titans the Terraist's satellite, an Earthbound base, and money to pay off any lawsuits against the Titans and in return, the Titans promise to consider missions for the United States. What a terrible deal for the government! The Titans can just turn down every mission and the United States gets nothing for their investment. There must be a loophole. Steel reminds Roy, "You gotta decide fast!" As if it wasn't the easiest deal in the world to say yes to! At 2:25 PM (Eastern Time, Planet Earth, Sol System), Jarras roleplays Kal-el's early days. As his world is destroyed (along with some visiting Darkstars), Jarras escapes in a pod called the Omegadrone. It's both an escape pod and a weapon! I don't remember the character Minion at all. Probably because this was the last Titans comic I read for decades. At 3:55 PM, Wolfman reveals that Red Star has taken a job as a mall security cop. And I guess a babysitter as well since Baby Wildebeest is hanging out with him. At 4:10 PM, Roy Harper signs the contract with the government even though he knows it's going to blow up in his face. Fucking leftist comic book writers, portraying the United States government as underhanded, manipulative bastards who don't give a shit who they hurt to get what they want! At 5:20 PM, a bunch of Darkstars are killed by the rainbow spiral that destroyed Jarras's planet. The populace of the planet had been bred to be passive. So I guess the moral of this story is that hippie beatnik pacifists are only asking for trouble. Fucking right wing comic book writers! Well, at least Jarras has learned the lesson that peace is for dead people. The Omegadrone will teach him how to get revenge. At 6:03 PM, Roy thinks he's going to get Wally West to join his government Titans team but he's really going to get Impulse. I know that because I looked at the future roster of this team: Arsenal, Damage, Impulse, Mirage, and Terra. No wonder I stopped reading it! At 7:32 PM, Nightwing takes a shower. Naked! I know that's how most people take showers and I probably didn't need to emphasize it but he also jerks off so maybe I should have started with that.

DC canon: Dick Grayson jerks off thinking about puns.

And after he finishes.

At 8:54 PM, Dick Grayson turns in his resignation to Roy Harper. He's officially off the Titans! Good riddance, ya dumb jerk! If that even is you. Try looking more like Dick Grayson next issue, Dick Grayson! At 9:20 PM, Red Star, Pantha, and Baby quit the Titans as well. Then they go on a romantic road trip which DC apparently didn't publish. There's an advert in this issue for a Green Arrow story arc called "Cross Roads" that the copy compares to Knightfall and which nobody fucking remembers (probably!) but DC never published a Red Star/Pantha team-up?! No, they were right. Just as I was typing that, I was thinking, "Fuck, I would never have purchased that shit." At 10:10 PM, Changeling agrees to stick with the Titans. But he's full of Raven's disgusting seed, so he'll probably just turn on them immediately. At 11:05 PM, Dick and Kory break-up. But not in person! Dick waits for her to arrive to a dinner where he can dump her but Kory knows better and just flies into outer space. I don't remember what happens with her but it's probably super boring. I'm sure she goes home, fights with Blackfire, fights some Gordanians or whatever dumb race always enslaved the Tamaraneans, and then remembers why she moved to Earth in the first place. At midnight, Phantasm arrives to lead Harper and Logan into Damage #6. And then into Titans Zero Hour! Oh. So I guess I do have one more issue of this story arc to read: New Titans #0. I also have a Titans Elseworld Annual in the stack. Plus a Team Titans Elseworld Annual and one more Team Titans issue. And finally, before I can totally move on, Deathstork #0! New Titans #114 Rating: C. The one hour per page gimmick really helps Marv Wolfman clean up a bunch of loose ends to get the Titans ready for a big group change in Zero Hour. Plus he was able to shove in the Minion origin story (which was really just Superman's origin). And I usually give the art a pass even when it's not very good (and I often ignore it when it's great!) but holy Lobo's bulging crotch, it was fucking terrible this issue. It was so bad that I'm not even going to remember who the artist was so that I don't have to feel embarrassed for them.

#New Titans #Teen Titans #DC Comics #DC #Comic Book Reviews

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studentsofshield · 7 years ago

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A Hypothetical Mapping of Marv Wolfman’s Teen Titans Run Into Omnibuses

I tried to figure out what would be decent cutoff points for New Teen Titans omnibuses based on the size of the three new editions released/solicited. This also doubles as an abridged chronicle of the run.

New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol 1 - already released DC Comics Presents 26, New Teen Titans Vol 1 1-20, Tales of the New Teen Titans 1-4 The big kickoff to one of the best superhero runs of all time. All Marv Wolfman and George Perez. Introduction of Cyborg, Starfire, Raven, Deathstroke, and more.

New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol 2 - coming in February New Teen Titans Vol 1 21-40, Tales of the Teen Titans 41, Annual 1-2, Batman and the Outsiders 5 The main developments here are Brother Blood and Starfire's Tamaran connections. Terra and the Vigilante get introduced.

New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol 3 - coming in July Tales of the Teen Titans 42-58, New Teen Titans Vol 2 1-9 The Judas Contract, shit goes to 11 for the Teen Titans, Terra, Deathstroke. Dick Grayson becomes Nightwing. Jericho is introduced as a new core member. The series gets so popular that it gets the Baxter treatment. Which means getting printed on nicer paper with less ads. Which came with a renumbering I guess. The opening of that volume seems to resolve Raven's plotline (which was also the genesis for the team in the first place). The Titans defeat her father and she disappears.

George Perez also ends his continuous run as penciler for the series with Vol 2 #5. Most of the major plots up to this point are resolved. These are the only solicited volumes right now. So this is actually a good jumping off point.

So what might come next?

New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol 4 New Teen Titans Vol 2 10-25, Annual 1-2, Teen Titans Spotlight 1-6, Omega Men 34-35 Classic DC artist Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez follows up Perez for a short stint. Kole is introduced. But then quickly killed alongside Aquagirl and Dove in the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Which will impact some Titans history for a while. Starfire is forced into a political wedding, which pushes away Dick. Roy Harper discovers he has a daughter with the villain Cheshire. Among all this chaos, Donna Troy tries to assemble mismatched pieces like Jason Todd to lead the Titans.

New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol 5 New Teen Titans Vol 2 26-49, Annual 3-4, Infinity Inc 45 Eduardo Barreto is now the consistent artist on the book. The team finds Raven again and defeats Brother Blood again. They encounter the Wildebeest Society, which will factor heavily into the book as time goes on. An annoying kid named Danny Chase joins the team. They help out Dial H for Hero and Red Star.

Besides those JLGL issues and a few major plot points for characters, this chunk is a valley rather than a peak, but it’s not really bad. Wolfman has claimed in interviews that he was suffering from writer’s block for a few years. So there are some repetitive plots.

New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol 6 New Titans 50-69, Annual 5-6, Batman 440-441, Secret Origins Annual 3 Eduardo Barreto is gone. But who better to replace him than the return of George Perez? The side effects of the Crisis are really starting to be felt across the DCU. First on the docket is to fix Donna Troy's continuity for the second time in the Who is Wonder Girl story. She becomes Troia. The next issue addresses some Titans West stuff. Then the Secret Origins Annual recaps and fixes the entire Titans continuity post-Crisis. Perez drops off from drawing the book and then from co-plotting. He's still writing Wonder Woman and gearing up for the War of the Gods crossover, so maybe he was too busy. Bat fans should recognize those issues as half of A Lonely Place of Dying, which handed the Robin mantle to Tim Drake.

Again, another stopping point. Perez is now 100% done with the Titans besides drawing the cover for the final issue of the series. The stability of the book is about to be all over the place too.

New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol 7 New Titans 70-92, Annual 8, Team Titans 1-3, Deathstroke 14-16 Two huge controversial storylines here. Tom Grummett (Superboy, Robin) is now the artist, with a more cartoony but also 90s style. The original Titans Hunt featured the Wildbeest Society hunting the Titans. Spoilers for a 30 year old story, but Jericho is revealed to be leading them. His father (Deathstroke for the clueless) kills him and helps the Titans in the finale. Some D-listers like Red Star, Pantha, Phantasm, and Baby Wildebeest join the team. Raven and Cyborg are constantly changing. Titans Tower is destroyed. Then right after that insanity, a team of weird Titans from a future timeline appear. One of them seems to be the long dead Terra. They want to kill Donna Troy because allegedly her baby is basically the Anti-Christ. Turns out that's not true and these alternate future peeps just stick around for a while.

Depending on who you ask, Titans Hunt and Total Chaos are 90s trash or an exciting uptick in the history of the Titans with a blockbuster story and lots of status quo changes. However, past this point the book officially devolves into standard 1990s fare and loses a ton of focus.

New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol 8 New Titans 93-114, Annual 9-10, Sell-Out Special, Showcase 94 11 The book is kind of shit now, but not absolute shit for some of this. A major editor left and Wolfman is running out of ideas. Roy Harper comes back and becomes Arsenal. Nightwing and Starfire get engaged, only for their wedding to be absolutely ruined by Raven. Tom Grummett leaves and is replaced by a very 90s nobody. Everyone you care about leaves the team at the end of this.

New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol 9 New Titans 0, 115-130, Annual 11, Deathstroke 48-49, Green Lantern Vol 3 65, Darkstars 32, 34, Damage 16 And we reach the end of the journey with the final volume. With a broken team and Zero Hour allowing for soft reboots, Arsenal assembles a new one. Featuring characters you like such as Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner, Impulse, Damage, and Terra (the fake one). Or at least you liked them if you were still reading comics in 1995 for some reason. That shitty 90s artist is even gone and replaced by someone tolerable. But it's totally lost the flavor that made the book so genius 10-15 years before. Fans were completely burned out from the direction and the industry at large, so the book was canceled.

My divisions are based mostly on natural cutoff points and also shooting for similar sized volumes. The three existing volumes all sit around that 24-27 issue mark.

So depending on what kind of Titans fan one is, the options would be 1-3, 1-6, 1-7, 1-8, or 1-9. It seems like each omnibus is about 3 trades, with some wiggle room.

Addendums:

Teen Titans Spotlight is a 21 issue spinoff series created so that Titans related characters could have solo stories that wouldn't work in the context of a team book. Wolfman only wrote 1-6, an arc about Starfire dealing with South African apartheid and a Jericho arc. No other issues are really integral to the main plots. So these are the only ones that make sense in these collections, if at all.

Other semi-significant Spotlight stories though: -7-8 - Hawk in the period after his brother's death but before Dawn Granger pops up -9 - Changeling (Beast Boy) doing some more reconnecting with his Doom Patrol past -10 - Aqualad, technically does continue from a main series plot, but who cares -13 - JMS' first comics work on a Cyborg vs Two-Face story -15 - picks up on some Tamaranian plots, but effectively a minor epilogue to the 80s Omega Men series -21 - a Silver Age throwback issue from Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle

Team Titans is the book starring the alternate future characters that no one cares about besides Terra. First three issues are part of Total Chaos. The damn book somehow lasted 24 issues though. Wolfman was involved in the writing of the first half. There is really no reason to include those other 9 issues. And the series is totally pointless and bad.

New Titans ends in 1996. Also when Wolfman's other ongoing Titans work ends. That being Deathstroke Vol 1, which lasted 60 issues. Giving the Terminator his own book was majorly inspired by the success Marvel was having with the Punisher. The first 34 issues are all drawn by the same artist, Steve Erwin. Past issue 40, Slade is framed for murder and all kinds of DCU characters try and take him down. His daughter Rose is introduced here.

Just like the main Titans book, sales were lagging hard near the end. So they did some stupid thing where Slade literally walked out of an explosion a changed man. He was de-aged, had amnesia, a dumb new color scheme, and a new artist. It was stupid and didn't help sales.

DC has been reprinting this Deathstroke series alongside New Teen Titans. They're up to four volumes, getting to #25. The early half of this run is actually good and a decent companion piece to Titans. And obviously people are digging Rebirth Deathstroke now. Wolfman did a major plot with Batman before Christopher Priest. Avoid all N52 Deathstroke junk.

Marv Wolfman's Titans run is just over 15 years. A couple years short of Claremont's legendary X-Men run. Though Claremont also wrote and maneuvered around a wider line of closely related spinoffs. Claremont also maintained a higher average. Those first five years of NTT with Perez can rival the heights of Claremont though. Maybe blasphemous, but I find Perez more interesting than Byrne. Then there are occasional highs for another seven years or so.

For comparison, Claremont's complete original X-Men run sits at a similar 10 oversized hardcover volumes or so. Though they're a little larger on average. 1. UXM Vol 1 2. Vol 2 3. Vol 3 4. Eventual Vol 4 5. Mutant Massacre/uncollected gap 6. Fall of the Mutants 7. Inferno Prologue 8. Inferno 9. Claremont and Lee Vol 1 10. X-Tinction Agenda/Claremont and Lee Vol 2

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