Savas Abadsidis reminisces about the comic book stories he was obsessed with as a youth, and talks to Marv Wolfman, writer of the series and one of Savas’s heroes.
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The year was 1984. I was 8 going on 9 years old and had already been addicted to this comic book called The New Teen Titans for about a year. The first issue I bought was issue 26, and it was a story called Runaways. It continued into issue 27 and once I entered those pages I was hooked. I remember buying mostly because it featured Robin and I had been hooked on him since seeing the Batman TV Show. I loved Robin, the idea of being a kid and getting to hang out with the coolest superhero on earth was beyond appealing; that and never having to worry about what would happen because Batman always saved Robin. Always.
Our concern was to do the kind of comics we wanted to see; written for all audiences but also written so older readers could enjoy them. If I remember correctly we were the first super-hero group[title to have pretty much an equal number of male and female members. We wanted to better reflect the real world than most comics at that time had done.
The Judas Contract is arguably one of the best story lines of all time. Did you have any trepidation about how you would top that?
We knew Judas Contract was special but you can’t worry about topping stories; you keep trying your best and hope another great idea comes. I stayed with the titans for 16 years and hope we had other good stories, too, whether they were as emotionally strong and surprising as the Judas Contract is doubtful, but I think there are many other good stories there.
Nobody at DC ever put any limits on what we could or could not do. But for much of our run we had the Comics Code symbol so we had some strict guidelines there. But never about who would be in the stories or what we did.
If you’ve become a fan of series like Teen Titans and Young Justice on Cartoon Network, you’ll see the obvious influence these stories had on these shows. I would argue that it was probably one of the finest era of comic book storytelling ever.
Photos of Marv and George at Lone Star Comics Convention, Dallas, Texas in the early 1980s by Kevin Gould!
I’ve been a Teen Titans fan since I saw Wonder Girl literally hanging by a string in Issue #9 in a grocery store. Having these together in an Omnibus collection takes me right back to my 8 year old self, and reminds me what it was I loved about comics in the first place. Thank you Savas, for a great tribute.
I remember the first appearance of the Teen Titans in (I think) *Brave & Bold* around 1965: Robin, Wonder Girl, Speedy and Aqua Lad. While the stories were a bit hackneed and peppered (as I recall) with obsolete slang that came off as corny, I loved the idea of the TT, of young heroes sans adult heroes making their mark on the world. Almost thirty years later, I embraced their new advent with pleasure and delight. I grew up reading comics and loving the DC Universe. Their influence, for better or worse, has been life long.