Ugh. Just saw two promos for this, coming in July. It looks hideous.
Five characters. Starfire, Raven, Cyborg, “Beast Boy” (who went by “Changeling” by the time he was in the Titans) and Robin. No indication as to which Robin it is.
No Flash (probably because he’s in Justice League). No Wonder Girl. No Speedy.
Drawn like half-wit japanimation ripoff and from the promos it looks like the characters are meant to be about 13 years old, as opposed to the late teens/early 20s of the comics.
Is there anything anyone’s heard about this series that might lead me to believe it’s not going to be a steaming shitheap?
It’s the Tim Drake Robin from the animated Batman series. I’m betting that they couldn’t get the rights to anyone else in the Titans. That’s what happened in Batman Beyond where they had to replace WW with Barda.
The animation does look somewhat juvenile, but hopefully that’s because it’s meant to illustrate the teen in Teen Titans.
I’m assuming that it will be the same guys that have done JLA, Superman and Batman, right? If so, it should be at least a decent show.
As far as the limited cast of characters, as long as that means that they spend more time developing each character (The JLA characters seem to rotate in the stories so that thre’s generally five or fewer in each episode), then I’m OK with that.
Besides, they might be planning to follow in the footsteps of XMen: Evolution and introduce new members as the series goes on.
I was dreading it, but after seeing the promos (and hearing the theme music, which I love), I’m really looking forward to it. Yeah, Cyborg looks like ass and I’m not necessarily down with the whole faux-anime thing in theory, but what I’ve seen so far doesn’t look that bad.
I actually like the lineup a lot - I always liked Titans like Raven and Cyborg more than Aqualad and Speedy because… well, Aqualad and Speedy are really lame, for one thing (not now, I know, but back in the day…), but they’re more of a clean slate to work with. I wouldn’t be suprised if the writers didn’t want to deal with some of the baggage that comes with being a member of the Flash-family or whatever.
I think this might actually work better. If they were in their early 20’s, it would just be another Justice League (JL Flash doesn’t strike me as being any older than 25).
Even if I didn’t like the promos, I’d still give it a shot, if only because I originally wrote off X-Men Evolution entirely as having stupid costumes and straying too far from the comics, and that show turned out to be great.
By the way, the Teen Titans Battle Blitz game over at cartoonnetwork.com is really, really fun.
Huh, never even thought about including Aqualad in the lineup. I wonder why Speedy occurred to me but not Garth. Maybe because the original TT was before my time and that’s where Aqualad was more featured. I grew up with the Raven-assembled Titans so that’s who I think of. Even though Speedy wasn’t part of that group he was generally more featured throughout the run.
I like my Titans a bit darker than what I think this series is going to give me. This teeny-bopper crap is going to get old fast, I fear.
So which characters from the book should we start waging write-in campaigns for? First person who says Danny Chase gets a starbolt through the noggin!
(Which reminds me…green starbolts?!? Green?!?!?)
I’d like to see Jericho, Terra and Kohl. Especially Kohl because a) I think her crystal structures would look interesting animated and b) I hated that she was offed so quickly (she was a Crisis victim). For evil-doers we must have Terminator and Psimon and his bunch (The Fearsome Five I think they were called). Trigon I could take or leave, just because as conceived in the comics he would not fit at all into this series based on what I’ve seen so far.
I won’t get started on my hatred of how TV superteams need to have a standard race / gender mix (I’m not mad that they have a mix, but it always seems to be a -standard- mix). Bugs me a lot.
My first impression was “WTF?!” when I saw the ads. I didn’t have any intention of watching it. However, after seeing the slightly extended clip with the little nihilistic twerp hitting on Raven at the party…well, I have to watch at least until I see how she responds. Besides, after the rather grim and angsty Justice League, this looks kind of refreshing.
Wonder if they’re going to let Starfire learn English by kissing Robin?
BTW, Otto, Beast Boy changed his sobriquet to “Changeling” between the breakup of the original Titans and Raven assembling the new Titans. So he used both names while with different sets of Titans–the fact that Raven is already present means that they’re playing with the continuity. We may see BB trying to get the new name to stick in the series.
Favorite Changeling line: “It’s not home, but it’s much.”
Since it’s all one company (AOL-Time-Warner which DC is a part of) I rather doubt that a rights issue came into play with the selection. My guess is that the creators are probably just the right age to have a fondness for Wolfman’s New Teen Titans and didn’t want to just do JLA Jr.
Right, I should have been more specific. He was Beast Boy while with Titans West but by the time Raven appeared he was Changeling.
Are there issues with the creators of specific characters or their estates that might come into play? I don’t know my way through all the bynantine workings of the ownership of the various DC characters but I’m wondering if there might be some copyright or licensing hangups. Also, there may be an issue with licensing the character to the specific production company that’s making the series if there are commitments of the characters to other projects (i.e. no “Kid Flash” because of Flash’s presence on JL). I was reading something last week about characters not appearing in DC projects because of licensing commitments but I’m switched if I can find it now.
Anyways, what other characters would you like to see show up? WHo do you not want to see under pain of death?
Just because it’s one company doesn’t necessarily mean . They sell options to all sorts of different characters to different people at different times. It’s MUCH harder than you’d think to assemble liscences for a project, even under one roof.
Take a look at some of the promo clips that are floating around on trailers and the like - they definitely use some classic anime effects. I can’t remember exactly, but I’m pretty sure I saw someone with a huge teardrop on their forehead at some point.
