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Jan 18, 2017 · When the show became a hit, it spawned its own Teen Titans Go! comic series, based on the new TV series. It's been running since 2013. Confused yet?
- Trent Moore
People also ask
Is Teen Titans Go based on a TV series?
Was Teen Titans based on a comic book?
Is remember the Titans based on a true story?
What do you know about 'Teen Titans'?
- They're the young heroes of the DC Universe, and they've had quite a history!
- Teen Titans: The Basics
- Teen Titans' Powers and Abilities
- Teen Titans: Origin and Background
- Teen Titans: Beyond the Comics
- Explained!
By Arnold T. Blumberg
Posted: Oct 10, 2018 10:07 pm
The Teen Titans! They’re a bunch of young adventurers, sidekicks, and other super-powered kids eager to grow up and face a world of danger and excitement with their heads held high. As with so many other super-teams, they’ve been through a number of incarnations and rosters, but the core idea – young heroes dealing with the approach of adulthood while reveling in their abilities and helping the innocent – remains.
And now they're getting a live-action TV show called Titans on DC's new streaming service, DC Universe. So let's take a look at the history of the team!
It all starts with the original Teen Titans back in the 1960s, a team comprised of Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, and Wonder Girl. Later joined by Speedy, Green Arrow’s sidekick, the “cool” kids team faced sociopolitical issues like the Vietnam war and racial conflict head on. A brief blip in the mid-’70s created a gap in the original team’s series, but when they returned they were joined by the African-American hero Bumblebee and split their efforts with the addition of a West Coast team (you thought the Avengers came up with that?).
This first team came to an end when the heroes, no longer strictly teens, acknowledged the passage of time and moved on with their lives. Subsequently, various versions of the team were either revived, reformed, or created from scratch beginning with a relaunch in the 1980s that cemented the Teen Titans as an intrinsic part of the DC Universe for decades to come.
Oh, come on – we’re talking about a plethora of multi-powered heroes operating in a sometimes-dizzying combination of teams over the course of six decades! Do you seriously believe I’m going to list every single power and ability these people exhibit during the course of their astounding adventures? Let’s just say that due to their widely varied origins, the members of the Teen Titans possess countless super-powers -- some based in science, some in magic, and some based in just plain old I-was-trained-by-Batman-ness -- that together make them as formidable a team of adversaries as any similar assemblage in the annals of comic book crusading, and we’ll leave it at that.
…Oh, and Robin is quite the gymnast from what I understand. Backflips and everything.
Although many point to The Brave and the Bold #54 (July 1964) as the team’s debut, that’s only partly true. The trio of Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad seen there are joined by Wonder Girl in issue #60 (July 1965), and there they adopt the actual team name, “The Teen Titans.” For all intents and purposes, then, we can consider these four as the founding members of the original Titans. Writer Bob Haney was responsible for uniting the young heroes and shepherding them through many exploits; after a third (or second official) outing in Showcase #59 (December 1965), they began appearing in their own series in February 1966. A few breaks interrupted their run until they finally disbanded in February 1978 with Teen Titans #53.
As revived by the powerhouse team of writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Perez in DC Comics Presents #26 (October 1980), the next incarnation of the Titans enjoyed a great deal of success and lasted through a title change to Tales of the Teen Titans and some membership turnover as Robin became Nightwing and Jericho took the place of Kid Flash, among other alterations. During this time, the team –which also included Cyborg, Starfire, Raven, and Changeling – participated in an award-winning story arc titled “The Judas Contract.” (Head here for our take on five ways Teen Titans: The Judas Contract changed DC Comics.) After 1984, drastic shifts in the title’s creators and the cast of characters attracted controversy and declining interest. Nevertheless, the Titans soldiered on through the beginning of DC’s multiple multiverse reboots. There was even a historic meeting of universes as Marvel and DC collided with Marvel and DC Present The Uncanny X-Men and the New Teen Titans (1982).
A variety of live-action and animated versions of the team have been discussed over the years but collapsed before production, and the team has made a few appearances here and there, but arguably the most successful of the many recent variations on the team is a TV incarnation that later appeared in comics of their own. The Cartoon Network production Teen Titans ran from 2003-2006 and evoked the ’80s with its choice of membership – the core group consisted of Robin, Starfire, Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Raven – and adaptation of stories (including “The Judas Contract”). A follow-up of sorts reunited the voice cast for Teen Titans Go!, featuring amusing takes on what it’s like to be a Titan when not battling evil. That version is now getting a movie as well. A pair of DTV movies (Justice League vs. Teen Titans and Teen Titans: The Judas Contract) have also been released in recent years, and the characters have appeared in a variety of other series as supporting players.
And now, of course, the DC Universe streaming service will give us the live-action, darker take on the team called Titans. F' Batman?! Let's see where this goes...
…And yes, there are quite a few one-off and short-lived incarnations of this team that we skipped for reasons of brevity, but that certainly all qualify as part of the long-running saga that is the Teen Titans. If your favorite version of the team was omitted here, feel free to give them a shout-out in the comments below!
Find Arnold T. Blumberg on Twitter at @DoctoroftheDead.
Mar 30, 2022
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Star Wars: The High Republic Explained
- Arnold T. Blumberg
Sep 23, 2021 · The film depicts the creation of T.C. Williams High School as ground zero for the city’s latest fight, a new school that combined two older institutions—one all-Black and one all-white—into a newly integrated tinderbox. The real story involves a little more logistical complexity.
What if the Teen Titans animated series was 'based on a true story' - as in, a work of fiction inside a work of fiction? The Titans were a real superhero group based in San Francisco, and as part of their PR and financing deal, they agreed to have an animated series based on their exploits.
Nov 30, 2023 · Remember the Titans is a classic Disney sports film and while the movie is based on a true story, some of the facts, including the specifics of the injury to Gerry Bertier, are not completely accurate.
- Zachary Moser
Nov 6, 2022 · There exists a secret slice of the "Teen Titans" story, created as part of a '00s promotional campaign. This installment is dubbed, appropriately enough, "The Lost Episode."
Teen Titans, fictional superheroes. The Teen Titans were not the first group of teen sidekicks—young aides to adult superheroes such as Batman and The Flash—to join together to fight crime, but they are the most famous. The group has gone through many iterations since being introduced in 1964.
