The Teen Titans have dealt with their fair share of dark and scary situations, particularly
after the group evolved into the New Teen Titans in 1980, with a new group of young
superheroes joining up to take on Titan Raven’s demonic father, Trigon the Terrible.
Since, the group has endured a whole lot of drama and a whole lot of tragedy, some of
which might even shock you.
So today, we’re counting down the top 10 scary teen titans facts everyone forgets.
Because these kids have gone through some major sh*t over the years.
Let’s get to it.
10 Why Donna Troy Was Created – seduction of the innocent
When the Teen Titans first debuted in the comics, it was in The Brave and the Bold issue
54 in 1964.
The team was comprised of DC’s sidekick characters, Robin, Kid Flash Wally West and
Aqualad.
By the time issue 60 rolled around, they had adopted Teen Titans as their group name, and
Donna Troy has joined the group as Wonder Girl.
But unlike her teammates, Donna’s reason for existing in the comics wasn’t just to
connect to younger demographics to improve sales.
She was the byproduct of the comics industry undergoing some drastic changes thanks to
psychiatrist Fredric Wertham and his book Seduction of the Innocent, which attempted
to correlate comic books with ‘bad’ behavior in kids.
He claimed a lot of outlandish things, including that Wonder Woman was a lesbian because she
was depicted as a strong, independent woman.
In the aftermath of the senate hearing that Wertham’s book was catalyst to, DC had to
change her character to make her more ‘acceptable’ to parents, which including creating a Wonder
Family in which Diana would appear with younger versions of herself and her mother.
The teen version of herself was dubbed Wonder Girl, who eventually became her own character
and her sister.
So all in all, Donna was created to make Wonder Woman look less queer.
9 Donna Troy was recreated Donna Troy has a bit of a confusing history,
as you can gauge from our last number.
After a whole story arc where she got married, had a kid who was prophesized to grow up into
an evil dictator, who she then gave up her powers for in order to keep him and herself
alive, she would eventually get her powers back, returning to the titans under the name
Troia (after that husband turned ex-husband and kid died, fyi).
By the time Wonder Woman issue 136 rolled around, Donna was wiped from reality’s memory
and the newly reincarnated Diana would use her lasso to bind Donna and Wally West together,
using Wally’s memories of Donna to fill her soul.
Rather than, you know, going to another part of the multiverse and using one of those Donna’s
to do the same thing, this move would have greater implications later on for Donna’s
psyche, with the character constantly questioning if this version of herself really was true
to who she was, or was merely just Wally’s interpretation of her.
Basically, she lived in a perma- existential crisis for a while because of this.
Come on Wonder Woman, you should know better.
8 Dick’s Bad Hair Dick Grayson is often considered to be one
of, if not, THE, hottest character in comics.
But dude has been victimized by some REAL BAD hair styles over the years.
In 1992, he had a mullet.
This occurred in New Titans issue 88, when Mirage, disguised as Starfire, convinced Dick
that he needed a new look, stating, “it’s the 1990’s out there, sweetheart, and it’s
time you finally joined up!”
That mullet eventually grew out and became a ponytail, but luckily for readers everywhere,
that ponytail would get snipped off by a member of the false face society, a group working
for Black Mask.
This occurred during a fight in 1996’s Nightwing issue 1, so clearly, making a point of snipping
it off was something Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel really wanted to see happen.
For the record, Starfire’s hair was real intense too for a while.
Like, gave her an extra couple of feet in height.
And Beast Boy ALSO had a mullet in the 90s, too.
7 Speedy was a junkie Speedy aka Roy Harper Jr was the first of
Green Arrow’s ward.
He debuted in More Fun Comics issue 73 in 1941 as an orphan whose father was a forest
ranger who had sacrificed his life to save that of a Navajo medicine chief.
The chief, named Brave Bow, raised Roy Jr, and after he passed away, Green Arrow would
ask him to become his ward.
He would join up with the Teen Titans after Donna Troy did, who he began to date, but
after the group disbanded for the first time, they broke up.
Around the same time, Green Arrow would lose his fortune, and was neglectful to Speedy.
While his mentor was away on a cross country adventure, Speedy would become addicted to
heroin, which eventually led to the award winning story Snowbirds Don’t Fly, which
appeared in the Green Lantern Green Arrow crossover series.
The two titular heroes were investigating junkies when low and behold, they discover
that Speedy is a junkie.
Green Arrow loses it and even beats Roy up a bit over it.
Speedy quits being his ward, another junkie dies, and then Speedy recovers on his own,
returning to Oliver by the end of the story.
6 Starfire’s Torture Starfire’s origins are pretty dark.
So Starfire’s sister is Blackfire, a character who first appeared in New Teen Titans issue
22 in 1982.
When she showed up, things got a little wild.
Blackfire harbored a lot of hate for her sister, feeling denied of the throne of their home
planet because of her, even though it wasn’t really Starfire’s fault; the day Blackfire
was born, the Citadel Empire had committed genocide on thousands of Tamareans, so she
was believed to be a curse due to association.
Blackfire would find her own way to the throne, selling out and working with the Citadel Empire,
and torturing Starfire.
She sold Starfire into slavery, sold for one year at a time, like slaves on lease.
Her masters could do anything to her, as long as she wasn’t killed, and at the end of
every year Blackfire would get her back and torture her some more.
The torture appears to be a lot of physical labour, but it was implied she was sold into
marriages with aliens and was likely raped.
Eventually though, her sister sentenced her to be executed.
Before that could happen, they ended up being enslaved by the Psions, evil alien scientists,
who performed deadly experiments on the two of them.
Eventually, Kori got away, freed her sister, who still tried to get her executed.
Kori escaped that too, fleeing to earth.
So when Blackfire found her on Earth and kidnapped her, some major sh*t went down.
Not only did the two duke it out violently, but Blackfire pulled some really messed up
crap to the rest of the Titans, and then shot them into space to die, all to see her sister
hurt.
5 Jericho Jericho is a character who was introduced
in Tales of the Teen Titans issue 43 in 1984.
He was a character who was part of a movement by Marv Wolfman and George Perez in establishing
the titans as a team who was not the justice little league, as Perez put it.
The son of Deathstroke Slade Wilson, Jericho was a mute, but wasn’t born that way.
When he was a child, he was held hostage by a terrorist group called Jackal, who was sent
by the Qurac president as a means of retaliation against Deathstroke.
Although he managed to rescue his son, they cut Jericho’s throat, which rendered him
mute.
Things only get worse for him there.
After going the Teen Titans, he would become possessed by the souls of Azarath, who were
originally coming for Raven, but Jericho’s powers made it easy to go after him instead.
His throat was repaired and he could speak again, but during the Titans Hunt storyline,
the real Jericho resurfaced and begged his father to kill him.
So that’s what daddy dearest did.
Luckily, for the character, he would live on, with his soul apparently jumping into
Deathstroke after papa stabbed him right through the heart.
4 Dick was sexually assaulted Remember how earlier we mentioned that Dick
got his hair cut by Mirage pretending to be Starfire?
Well, Mirage is a character who first debuted in The New titans issue 79 in 1991, who was
a member of the team titans from the future, the ones who went back in time with the goal
of killing Donna Troy before she could give birth to her son who would grow up to be an
evil dictator.
While that’s going on, she ends up changing her appearance to look like Starfire, and
seduces Dick Grayson, sleeping with him, with Dick believing it was Starfire, although sensing
that something is off about her.
Now back in the future, Mirage was in a romantic relationship with the Nightwing of her time,
although it wasn’t Dick Grayson, which we would later learn.
In the present, Mirage eventually reveals herself to Grayson, who freaks out about the
whole thing.
To add insult to injury, Pantha then appears and starts calling Dick a slut as the realization
that he’s been sexually assaulted sinks in.
3 Deathwing Rapes Mirage Things only get worse with Mirage’s story.
Remember that Nightwing from the future that we mentioned?
So he travels to the past and reunites with her, but the evil version of Raven decides
that she’s going to use Nightwing’s body as the host for the Trigon seed.
She ends up going after this future version of Nightwing, who, just a reminder, isn’t
actually Dick, is just another dude with the Nightwing persona who, confusingly enough,
looks just like him.
This Nightwing becomes corrupted and violent, which warrants him the new name of Deathwing.
Deathwing goes to where Mirage is staying and rapes her, impregnating her.
2 Deathstroke and Terra In 1984, there was a story arc in the New
Teen Titans called The Judas Contract, in which a metahuman named Terra joins the team,
infiltrating them as a means of destroying them.
Let’s back track a sec. Terra joined the team thanks to her earth manipulation powers.
She forms a romantic connection with Beast Boy and gains the rest of the team’s trust
(except Raven, whose onto her) until it’s revealed she’s been working with Deathstroke,
she smokes cigarettes, and her and the mercenary are implied to have a sexual relationship.
She’s also depicted as a total psychopath.
George Perez would state that he and Marv Wolfman knew that she was going to be a traitor
from the start and that she was going to be killed off.
He literally stated of the character, I quote, “I wanted her to be cute but not beautiful.
She looked like a young girl.
I gave her a substantial overbite, her eyes were wide, her body was slim, she wasn’t
particularly busty.
I wanted her to look almost elven, so that when you see her for the first time wearing
full-makeup and dressed in a provocative outfit where you know she’s just been in bed with
Deathstroke that it does jab you a bit.
“Whoa, good god!
This little girl is a slut!”
HE ACTUALLY SAID THAT.
By the end of it, she’s overcome by her own hatred, Slade abandons her and she ends
up killing herself.
1 Raven Crashed Dick & Kori’s Wedding and it got weird
Despite Dick getting assaulted by Mirage, he and Kori worked through it, and he proposed
to her.
They were set to be married in New Titans issue 100, but the wedding ceremony was interrupted
by Raven, who at the time was evil.
And some pretty insane sh*t went down.
Literally right before the priest is about to announce them man and wife, he gets obliterated,
burnt down to his skeleton, and Raven, wearing basically a handful of ribbons, shows up with
Deathwing in tow.
It gets stranger; she creates a force field around herself and Starfire, blocking out
everyone else at the wedding, telling Starfire that she isn’t really Raven, she’s just
wearing Raven’s skin, and really she’s the summation of all of the one hundred children
Raven’s father Trigon had sired and killed.
Starfire seems to miss that, still addressing her as Raven, telling her she’s scared.
Raven then says “after all my love, you love me as much as I love you.
You love me!”
She forces Starfire to admit that she loves her, then straddles her, opens up her mouth
(implying that the glow emitting from it are the souls of those dead Trigon kids) and proceeds
to make out with Starfire, declaring that she will be reborn.
The whole thing is really intense and pretty terrifying.
There we have it friends!
What other scary teen titans facts can you all think of?
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