George Perez is known to draw extraordinary and amazing things particulary with his work on Marvel’s The Avengers and Black Widow back in the 80s. I didn’t start to read comic books until The New Teen Titans Issue 18 came out which was dated April 1982. The issues here not including Marvel Fanfare were bought from a classmate when I was a kid. He said he wanted to sell me a bag full of his dad's comic books. If I remember right, he originally was asking for $14. I told him with some George Perez thrown in there, I'll buy it for $7. He agreed.
While I have no doubt Aliens will invade us one day and we are ill prepared because we’re too busy being stupid, comic books back then were rich in dialogue and storylines that made you think. The New Teen Titans 18 was the first comic book that I think I could relate to and the first I bought from Direct Sales or stores exclusively in the business of selling comic books. I bought about 12 copies of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths issue 1 and multiple copies of the rest and even more copies on certain issues such as when Supergirl dies. I always had the first dibs on everything because comic book store owners knew I had my finger on the pulse of the mainstream. So they would save copies for me, gave me signed books from my favorite artist and writer George Perez and Marv Wolfman and gave me deals on Will Clark baseball cards.
Crisis is where all the earths in the universe were combined into one. It was also to make the DC Universe less confusing (wink! wink! $$$$), but they kept doing it and it became boring. The Thanos storyline from Marvel comics with the rings came right after, again enlisting George Perez as artist just as he was in DC's Crisis. George quickly abandoned it because it really was boring and eerily similar to Crisis. Also, it was bad storytelling. Panels tell you the story. You actually had to read the book to understand what was going on. It was tedious and I didn't even bother.
Crisis is where all the earths in the universe were combined into one. It was also to make the DC Universe less confusing (wink! wink! $$$$), but they kept doing it and it became boring. The Thanos storyline from Marvel comics with the rings came right after, again enlisting George Perez as artist just as he was in DC's Crisis. George quickly abandoned it because it really was boring and eerily similar to Crisis. Also, it was bad storytelling. Panels tell you the story. You actually had to read the book to understand what was going on. It was tedious and I didn't even bother.
I wasn’t there for the various incarnations that would involve some kind of "Crisis on ... earths"- multiple earths getting messed with and stuff. I like to see new things, then and now. I like to constantly be inspired and not be sequestered into an environment for long periods of time. The reasoning behind it was to reinvent the DC super heroes for a new generation of readers or so they say, I don’t know. I don’t even know if real people are in charge anymore. I think it’s just business majors in charge of the whole thing. It’s really a tool for the big companies to make money off of people, because the gimmick is done every decade or so. Probably, every 5 years even. I stopped reading comic books in the early 90s.
The whole reason I got into mainstream comics like DC and Marvel was also the reason why I started reading independent comic books like The Elementals, Baker Street, Ms. Mystic, Black Kiss, and a myriad of titles when the major companies didn't do it for me anymore. I wanted to see something new, something that had style, something that looked like it came from someone’s hands. Hence, I created Integrity Comics. I created, wrote, and drew characters to imitate life, have struggles that can resonate within the community of comic book readers, and I also wanted my characters like Snake Eyes aka ...S..., Baby Warriors, Crimelords, and Invincibles aka ABC to have a beginning and end, and, lastly, to have a lot of action interspersed throughout the story.
I wanted to talk about social issues like child abuse, racism, homophobia, sexism- everything you could possibly think of that would address the issues that we as people deal with. People laugh at that, but the truth is- that really is all that matters. The New Teen Titans issue 18 epitomizes the concept of comic books and its relatability to the world we live in- to us as human beings.
Angered by Americans for the death of his wife and son, a grief stricken Marek Slavic of Russia, head of The Bureau of Scientific Records unleashes a virus using an innocent woman named Maladi Malanova to carry out his plans on I presume to infect all Americans and cause an outbreak. Ironically, she lands on The Teen Titan's territory in New York city and begins to infect people along her way- including a security officer at the airport, a cabbie driver, a doorman, and then a doctor. It is never discussed explicitly how Marek's revenge on Americans is implemented but the premise is a good excuse for this neat battle scene at the end against a former comrade of The Titans - the Russian Starfire.
I keep telling people that I don’t really read comic books. I either just make them or kind of skim through some parts to get a general idea of the story, and look at the pretty pictures to study them. One doesn’t have to be able to read to understand comic books, that’s why its popularity is so widespread. What made Marv Wolfman and George Perez resonate with me was the emotion that were conveyed through the characters. Another scene that comes to mind is when Electra dies in front of Matt Murdock aka Daredevil as written and drawn by Frank Miller for Marvel Comics.
These pages tell the whole story in a meaningful and relatable way. Characters that one could identify with. A situation one can relate to. Intellect, action, and conversation that I could see happening in real life. There might be multiple earths, event horizons, but those situations will never transmit into my senses as a human being. There’s even an instance where Kid Flash has a grievance with the whole team about being the only conservative amongst a bunch of liberals. When comics became something I couldn’t relate to, I abandoned the world of comics solely operating on the basis of profit, so opposite to what heroes exemplifies. It is perhaps why so many people in this industry have become villains.
The New Teen Titans was an amazing example of a time when profits weren’t so intertwined with the production of comic books. When creativity, innovation, and imagination were at the forefront of comic books. I am sure, that if these elements were implemented in comics for the last 3 decades, the world would be a much better place. I am grateful that I was there to witness it and to have studied and be entertained by it when it wasn't just a money making scheme. Contrary to what the machine thinks, The New Teen Titans revitalized DC comics even when they did tell stories that were relatable in some manner. Check out the issue. I think the issues are available on DC Universe. #georgeperez #marvwolfman #thenewteentitans #teentitans #maladi #virus #pandemic #coronavirus #outbreak #comicbooks #business #dccomics #dcuniverse #marvel #comicbooks #allanangel #integritycomics #babywarriors #titans #heroes #villains
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