Jeux Sans Frontieres

It's the penultimate day of the Christmas/Hogmanay holidays and Gaeldom was lashed by gales earlier.  Allegedly, there was a blizzard on the A9 at Aviemore and the train service between Inverness and Aberdeen has been suspended. I'm pretty glad I came back early last week from Glasgow, which was hit by 90 mph winds today.
I've been catching up on my marking and watching Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe on dvd.  I'm going to try a new format this month: concentrating on fewer topics per blog entry. But I make no promises that it'll last since my brain doesn't really work that way!


Over the last two decades, I've found myself buying a graphic novel or trade paperback as a self-gifted Christmas present. It began with the spectacularly morbid and Symbolist Arkham Asylum (Ho ho ho...!), continuing through Kingdom Come and JLA Earth-2. At the end of 2010, it was a collection of exquisite Kull the Conqueror reprints; in 2011, also from the Bronze Age, The New Teen Titans: Games.

Stop and consider: it's thirty-two years ago since Koriand'r escaped from the Gordanian slavers...

I bought many of the issues in the first year off the spinner rack in Lewis's in Argyle Street.By the second year, this blend of the Claremont/Byrne X-Men, Star Wars and Tomb of Dracula was a sales juggernaut: The Search for the Doom Patrol; Blackfire and the Omega Men; Brother Blood (and the Night Force preview), the Tales of the Teen Titans miniseries; the gorgeous X-Men team-up; the Judas Contract and Terra's betrayal. The fusion of Perez's ornate cartooning and Wolfman's corny, melodramatic dialogue and long-form plotting brought a dash of Kozmic 70s Marvel to Dick Giordano's New DC.

Once the series was upgraded to Baxter paper for the Direct Sales market, Perez left to pencil Crisis on Infinite Earths and The History of the DC Universe. NTT slumped ino a sequence of depressing, interminable and below-par storylines, usually inflicting pain on the principals. Beginning with the weepy angel Azrael and the tragic Kole; through months of Dick's seduction by the Church of Blood;  the Hybrid, an X-men parody by way of Greek myth; even the ludicrous and grotesque Twister. Thankfully Perez returned briefly- but for a ho-hum cosmic epic: "Who is Wonder Girl?"

Then we were faced with The Titans Hunt- the "Avengers Disassembled" of its day-  the terrible Team Titans from the future (above, a strangely-timed Neal Adams pastiche) and Wolfman's writer's block. I finally gave up the title in the early Nineties.

But so beloved was this Marvel-esque melodrama, that the Wolfman/Perez line up has been revived three times, (not to mention the Image-style Dan Jurgens Titans, led by Teen Atom and the Manga-style animated series). Another Image-style Titans was launched last year as part of the new 52.

 Why was the Wolfman/Perez combo so popular? A combination of three factors, I think. Firstly, George's ability to render Marv's schmaltzy soapy storylines both initimately and cinematically. Secondly, the new audience was self-identifying and felt themselves represented by characters here and in X-Men and LSH. Finally, these characters were all undergoing the transition from teen to adult in the storylines. That had never really been a feature of other Titans series and mirrored the contemporary audience for whom comics "aren't just for kids any more" (Nowadays, unfortunately, we can transpose those first two words)

 The completion of this long-dormant graphic novel project was first announced eight years ago. In the intervening years, catching up on Essential Marvel's ToD in particular, I had grown to find Wolfman's style histrionic and utterly without a sense of humour. I had also damned Perez for his overly-intricate, asymmetrical costume designs.

But delightfully, the finished product doesn't disappoint. Wolfman delivers a conspiracy thriller with a truly tragic supporting cast loss; a villain reveal I should have seen coming; foreshadowing for the Geoff Johns revival and a nod to the cartoon series. The principal members of the expansive supporting cast -one of the features that lent the Titans its family-oriented atmosphere- all make cameo appearances. There is even a redemption of sorts for bratty Danny Chase, Wolfman's hugely unpopular final addition to the Titans line-up.
Perez, the Titans artist par excellence had fallen out of favour with me of late for the "Where's Wally?" excesses of  "Legion of Three Worlds". Here, the trademark complex cityscapes and creative panel arrangements are utterly in keeping.


Revisit the warmth and drama of one of DC's biggest hits of the early 80s with Games, by Azar!


Coming soon in 2012: The World's Most Dangerous Villains; the First Avenger; and Vworpabix.

All images are presumed copyright of their respective owners and are represented here for purposes of nostalgia and comment.