- Here's a bit of superhero history for you.
Okay, so, the original Teen Titans team was created
by Bob Haney and Bruno Premiani during the '60s,
with a frequently changing roster consisting mainly
of Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Wonder Girl,
and a handful of other young superheroes.
Their series drawn largely by artist Nick Cardy,
lasted until 1973, but by all accounts
that first comic run wasn't super popular,
and the series died off.
The Teen Titans tried to make a comeback a few years later,
but their revival was again unsuccessful and short-lived.
The team just wasn't resonating
with readers the way that DC had hoped.
(knocks at door)
It seemed that try as they might,
nobody could make the Teen Titans work
until artist George Perez and writer Marv Wolfman
stepped up to the plate, took their best swing,
and absolutely knocked it out of the park
with their brand new take on the team
that premiered as The New Teen Titans
at the start of the '80s.
Under these two talented gents,
the Teen Titans roster added the core characters
I'd wager most people associate with the team today.
Starfire, Cyborg, Raven, and Beast Boy,
who, in addition to Robin, make up the main players
we've seen across animated movies, cartoons,
and, now, live-action shows.
Third time's the charm, it seems.
But here's a question for you.
After back to back failures, why would DC Comics
take yet another chance on the Teen Titans?
And why did it resonate much more the last time around?
Well, it all began when Marv Wolfman started writing
for DC Comics after making a dramatic exit
from the publisher's main competition, Marvel Comics.
And you have to understand,
this wasn't just another case of a comic creator jumping
between publishers looking for work.
Marv Wolfman was the editor-in-chief of Marvel at one point.
He was at the top of the food chain,
but the company was so stressful and chaotic
and a pure nightmare to work at,
that he abandoned ship to write Teen Titans
for the competition instead.
So what the hell was going on
at Marvel Comics during the '70s?
Well, the story involves a sinister comic book dictator,
Stan Lee drunk on Christmas wine,
devastating levels of regret, and--
(bell dings)
Plenty, good Lord, plenty of office drama.
(phone rings)
Hello?
Oh, no!
How are you doing, you wonderful nerds?
Scott here, and this is gonna come up a lot in this story,
so it's worth noting for context
that during a large chunk of the '70s,
Marvel was just flying through editors-in-chief.
Every time Marvel put someone new in charge,
they got overwhelmed after a few months
and passed it on to someone else.
It happened so much, that Marvel made fun
of themselves in their own comics for it.
Roy Thomas passed it on to Len Wein
who passed it on to Marv Wolfman who only filled that role
for about one year between 1975 and '76.
- [Marv] I was having some personal situations at the time,
and I was tired of fighting the business side.
I just wanted to do more creative things.
I love being an editor, and I'd have no problem
as an editor-in-chief today, but when I was in my twenties,
and going through a lot of the personal stuff as well,
that became too much of a hassle.
- You know what, that's pretty fair.
And with all that weighing on him,
Wolfman quickly passed the role of Marvel's editor-in-chief
onto Gerry Conway who passed it on to Archie Goodwin
who finally passed it on to Jim Shooter.
And remember, all of this rapid changing
of the guard at Marvel happened
between just a couple years, 1974 to 1978.
Not a great look for the company,
but you know what, Jim Shooter was now in charge,
that young up and comer.
What's the worst that could happen?
Jim Shooter was a bad, bad man.
Okay, I'm exaggerating a little bit, obviously.
He's probably a perfectly fine human being.
It's just that everybody hated working with him,
and every picture of him looks like his sinister plot
to destroy the world is coming together quite nicely.
(laughing maniacally)
Other than that, he's fine.
I bring Jim Shooter up because it was this specific conflict
between him and Marv Wolfman that eventually led
to the New Teen Titans revival, so let's talk about him.
Shooter's legacy is endlessly fascinating to me.
Under his rule, Marvel had a ton of successful
and iconic comic runs
like Claremont and Byrne's Uncanny X-Men,
Miller's Daredevil, and, uh, New, New Universe?
Is that a, that's not a great example.
Forget I said that.
The point is that, yeah, Jim Shooter's reign
as editor-in-chief produced some good things
and some terrible things, but at the end of the day,
his approach to running the company
did help revitalize Marvel Comics.
It's just that he did so by being strict and controlling,
and everyone hated him for it.
During the nine years he was in charge of Marvel,
he had very public spats with the artists
and writers who worked under him.
It wasn't great for the morale around the office.
- [Roy] Jim wanted total power,
and I felt he had ambition enough
to dance on all our graves.
- [John] I fear I am one of those artists
who is heavily impacted
by the environment in which he works.
The work suffers if I am not happy,
and in those final years of Shooter's reign,
I was most definitely not happy.
- [Chris] Everything that has been done to us
in the past years has been from the attitude,
here, my boy, have a lollipop.
It's been a parent dealing with an unruly child.
We're not children, we're people, we're creators.
It's about time we stood up
and made them take notice of that fact.
- So people didn't like the guy, to say the least.
Which is why you might be wondering
how he in the world was Jim Shooter able
to rise to power at Marvel in the first place?
And that's where the story gets interesting.
This is literally just more coffee, by the way.
You see, Jim Shooter had been working
in the comics industry since he was a literal child,
but by the early '70s, he had left the field
to work on advertising and other odd jobs,
just wasn't very fulfilling,
and Shooter wanted to work on comics again.
Its just that he needed a way back in, you know?
And guess who hired him.
- [Marv] I made the mistake of hiring somebody
who never should have been hired,
who rose up through the ranks and became editor-in-chief.
I knew pretty quickly he was somebody
I did not wanna work with.
- Yep, during his brief stint as editor-in-chief,
Marv Wolfman offered Jim Shooter a job
in an editorial position at Marvel.
He would go on to regret that decision.
Hi.
So, it takes me a while to make these videos.
I wrote and recorded this entire next section
that you're about to see a month ago,
before the news came out about Stan Lee's passing.
And I just wanted to give you a head's up there
because I'm about to make fun of him
for some of his silly life decisions.
Honestly, I think he would've wanted it this way.
But I'm still debating If I wanna make a full video
about my thoughts and feelings towards Stan Lee.
If you wanna see something like that,
maybe leave a comment below.
But, I just wanted to give you a heads up right now
before we continue on because it is kind of timely.
That's an unintentional pun, I think.
Either way, let's just jump right back in to the video.
I'll set the stage for you.
The year was 1976 at Marvel Comics.
After Marv Wolfman stepped down as editor-in-chief,
came Gerry Conway who held the job for about a month
and a half, Jesus Christ.
But then Archie Goodwin took over shortly after.
Okay, how much of this company's budget is designated
to all these nameplates?
Can somebody please hold this office for longer than.
At this time, Jim Shooter was an associate editor
working directly with Stan Lee.
Stan Lee hated how Archie Goodwin was running things,
so he and Shooter concocted a secret plan
to flip Marvel's leadership around.
Basically, give Goodwin some nonsense job
that sounds prestigious, while promoting Jim Shooter
to the role of Marvel's new, new, new, new,
new editor-in-chief the following year.
Turns out, surprise, surprise, it's pretty tricky
to keep a secret around these offices.
Now, I'm not saying that I know who spilled the beans,
but let's just say secretaries are not the best people
with whom to entrust secrets.
Wait.
(keys clacking)
Oh, yeah that actually makes a lot of sense.
The point is, Archie Goodwin quickly found out
about Stan Lee and Jim Shooter's plan to remove him,
and he was furious.
- [Jim] His read was that I had stabbed him in the back.
Even though he was gonna get a raise and title,
he just basically told me to go to hell.
Yeah, maybe because you conspired against him
to take his job out from under him, Jim.
Maybe that's why, Jim.
Either way, the plan worked, and Jim Shooter was soon
to fill the role of editor-in-chief
at Marvel by the end of '77.
But an unexpected death in the company
would put the announcement on hold,
until Stan Lee got drunk at a Christmas party.
John Verpoorten had been Marvel's production manager
for seven years.
He worked with the entire creative staff,
coordinating between writers, artists, letterers,
and anyone else working to produce Marvel comic books
in the '70s.
He was selfless, running a secret plan
to make sure that struggling artists were paid
even before their work was turned in.
And on December 19th, 1977,
John Verpoorten was found dead in his apartment,
alone, at the age of 37.
It was a shock to everyone at the company.
Stan Lee wanted to announce Jim Shooter
as the new editor-in-chief of Marvel before Christmas,
but now, it just didn't seem like the right time.
It would be best if they waited.
Let people have a chance to grieve
before forcing more change on them.
But alcohol's a funny thing.
- [Jim] Stan and his wife Joan had been
to another Christmas party,
and I guess they had a glass of wine or something.
And Stan just blurted it out, hey everybody,
Jim is gonna be the new editor in chief.
Archie and his wife are sitting there shooting daggers
at me with their eyes.
You could have heard a pin drop, no applause.
- The following morning,
Jim Shooter receives a phone call from Marv Wolfman.
This is the guy who rehired Shooter at Marvel.
The guy who gave up the editor-in-chief position
to focus on writing comics,
and now he was working under the very man that he hired.
Wolfman doesn't congratulate Shooter over the phone.
He doesn't even say hello.
He only says six words.
What are you going to do?
It didn't take long for comic creators
to jump ship and find work elsewhere
including Marvel's biggest competitor, DC Comics.
- [Marv] I was playing in a regular poker game
with the DC and Marvel people back then we were all friends,
and I mentioned, would there be interest
in my coming over to DC?
I knew the characters, et cetera,
and I was told, absolutely, yes.
So I told Marvel that I would not be renewing my contract
at the end of its time period,
which was December of '79, and that I was gonna leave.
- Marv Wolfman, the once editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics,
left for DC because of a hiring decision
that he made and regretted.
And as you can expect,
Jim Shooter wasn't bitter about it at all.
- [Jim] When Roy Thomas's contract came up,
he wanted things that, which we didn't want to give him.
Even though DC was not offering those things,
he felt obliged to go over there
because he couldn't get what he wanted.
Um, uh, same sort of thing with Marv Wolfman.
Those guys both are very talented
and they're both very good.
I think uh, I think stylistically, uh, they belong at DC.
They're, uh, they kind of come from a different school
than Stan and I come from and so that doesn't bother me.
I don't think we've been hurt by that at all.
- That was great, Mason. - I'm Jim Shooter.
- Stay classy, Jim.
When Wolfman got to DC Comics, he made one request.
He had just wrapped up a 14-issue run
on the series Marvel Two-In-One,
a book all about pairing Fantastic Four's The Thing
with other fun characters from the Marvel Universe
like Thor, Spider-Woman, Daredevil,
and in an exciting crossover
that rarely ever happens, Mr. Fantastic.
But honestly, it was a fun concept,
its just that, after writing over a dozen issues,
Wolfman was getting tired of these team-up books.
He hated team-up books, they just felt artificial.
If he was gonna take the jump from Marvel to DC,
Wolfman requested that they do not make him write
any more team-up books.
So, naturally, the first two series they gave him
were The Brave and the Bold, a Batman team-up book,
and DC Comics Presents, a Superman team-up book.
It was torture.
So Wolfman decided that instead of working
on these artificial team books,
he'd just make team book of his own,
complete with characters that had powers and personalities
that made for organic, entertaining stories.
Wolfman proposed a revival of the Teen Titans
with a mix of some old characters and some new characters.
But there was a bit of resistance from the higher-ups
at DC who remembered the poor reception
of the original Teen Titans comic.
- [Jenette] Why do you wanna do this?
The last one didn't sell, and it wasn't very good.
- [Marv] We'll just do it better.
We'll do it better than anybody.
Why doesn't everybody shut the (bleep) up
'cause we'll do it better.
- Artist George Perez was brought on
to design the new characters
and illustrate the very first issue of the new Teen Titans.
Perez had also just left Marvel
where he was drawing The Avengers and had his sights set
on drawing Justice League comics for DC.
But he fell in love with the New Teen Titans so much
while working on them,
that he wanted to stick around on that title.
When the first issue hit shelves,
fan reaction was negative, obviously.
Comic book nerds tend to be resistant to change of any kind,
and this New Teen Titans book threw away
most of the original team.
Wolfman thought Kid Flash was too powerful to need a team,
so he was cut from the new squad after a few issues.
He thought Aqualad was too dependent on ocean stories,
and that Speedy really couldn't do anything
that Robin couldn't already do.
Again, these are his words, not mine,
so don't yell at me in the comments about it.
That's not gonna stop you. (chuckles)
But honestly, this new team they assembled was just,
I mean, it was just brilliant, it was brilliant.
They made a team where every member
is a different genre of story.
You want space adventures, here's Starfire.
How about more grounded sci-fi stories with a city setting?
There's a Cyborg for ya.
You want a detective story, can't forget about Robin.
You want grand tales of mythology?
Wonder Girl's right there.
You want a supernatural horror mystery?
That's so Raven.
It was awesome.
It had something for everyone.
It was better.
And its influence is still felt today
when the Teen Titans pop up in cartoon shows,
and animated movies, and beyond.
And I, at least, think it's fun to turn back the clock
and see how a series of events can fall like dominoes
and lead to unexpected and wonderful creations
like the Teen Titans.
A bunch of behind the scenes drama at Marvel no less,
made it a miserable place to work by nearly all accounts,
and it led to creators turning that misery
into creativity elsewhere.
Because staying just wasn't worth the trouble.
And as I'm sure you know,
when there's trouble, you know who to call.
♪ When there's trouble, you know who to call, Teen Titans ♪
♪ From their tower they can see it all, Teen Titans ♪
Thank you to everyone who provided a voice
for this video, there was a lot of them.
And these are all wonderful YouTubers
who I encourage you to go check out.
Their channels will be linked in the description down below.
Specifically, I asked you guys on Twitter
who you'd want to hear voice the duo
of Marv Wolfman and Jim Shooter,
and a ton of you suggested Mr. Sunday Movies
and Nick Mason who absolutely crushed it.
I even had them record a bunch of lines
that were never intended to be in the final video,
because like Jim Shooter, I, too, like to abuse my power.
Jim Shooter was a violently sweaty man.
(laughing)
If he'd been touched, looked like
he had been fished out of the grossest, saltiest ocean.
- That is mean. - That's so mean.
- Is that a real quote? - Yeah.
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This could be you, this could be your name.
And hey, you know what, I enjoyed hanging with you today
and this party doesn't have to end.
Click or tap right here for something else
that YouTube wants you to watch.
Thanks for watching.
My name is Scott, reminding you to read
between the panels and grow smarter through comics.
See ya.
- [Marv] It's me, Marv Wolfman.
I'm definitely a human like you
and not a terrifying wolf man.
(bleep)