Teen Titans at 25, Crisis at 20:
The Enduring Duo of Marv Wolfman and George Pérez

The legendary creative duos in comic books include two teams - Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby - of whom it is generally safe to mention only their last names. Others may well someday be added to this pantheon and still others probably already belong to it, but while Simon & Kirby helped define the 1940s and 1950s and Lee & Kirby certainly defined the 1960s, another team defined the 1980s and in many ways helped set the groundwork for the superhero comics we have today.

Writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez, who this year celebrate the 25^th anniversary of New Teen Titans and the 20^th anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths, have impacted the superhero genre as have few other pairs of creators. Though both worked extensively with other partners before and since those efforts, there is undeniably something compelling and special about that period and their collaborative labors.

Wolfman, a writer or writer-editor by trade, had briefly risen to the Editor-in-Chief spot at Marvel Comics and he'd also had a lengthy run on Tomb of Dracula, during which he created the characters Blade and Hannibal King. Pérez had worked on many Marvel titles, but was most famous for his work on The Avengers.

Both Wolfman and Pérez had come to DC after recent stints at Marvel. When Wolfman landed there at the end of 1979, he and editor Len Wein pitched DC's Jenete Kahn on bringing back the Teen Titans.

“When Len and I pitched Titans to Jenette her first thought was that book failed twice and she didn't like the previous incarnation at all. Why, she asked, did we think the new version would do well. We said we'd do it better. That is actually what we said. She said fine and let us go ahead,” he said. He then recruited Pérez.

“At that point I was still drawing The Avengers for Marvel. This would be either late in 1979 or early in 1980. Marv had already gone over to DC and it was he who approached me about doing some work over there. Specifically, a new version of The Teen Titans,” Pérez said.

“To be honest, I wasn't particularly interested in doing a new Titans book, although the thought of doing work for DC - I had only worked for Marvel at that point - really intrigued me. I agreed to draw New Teen Titans with the provision that I'd be allowed to do a fill-in issue or two of Justice League Of America, which was the book I really wanted to do at that time, a logical follow-up to Avengers in my mind,” he said.

“Len was the original editor,” Wolfman said. “He and I had been best friends since we were very young teenagers and we'd gone back and forth as to who edited whom. Len was a DC editor when I went to DC and he was the only one I wanted to work with on the title. Len believed, as I do, to hire the best folk and then leave them alone. In the very beginning he urged me to add a sorcerer to the group - he wanted a magic character in the Titans and I didn't. I came up with Raven to meet him half way and she quickly became my favorite character. Other than that, Len also worked on cover designs and copy editing. He didn't feel the need to get too involved with story content and he let George and me go off and pretty much do the book on our own.”

“Len's contributions as the book's editor and champion can not, however, be ever overvalued,” Pérez said. “He was as much of an integral part of the series' initial success as Marv, me and [inker] Romeo Tanghal.”

Pérez said he thinks that when the powers at DC at the time saw his initial designs for the new characters Cyborg, Raven and Starfire coupled with Marv's outline for the first story arc that their confidence in the series' potential rose.

At that point, the company took the then-unusual step of including a promotional or teaser comic within the pages of DC Comics Presents #26. The title was a Superman team-up series, like Marvel Team-Up was for Spider-Man, and it was a good bet as a place to grab other readers.

“That meant that DC was really backing up its faith in the comic with financial risk. The cover price for DC Comics Presents #26 remained the same although the printing cost for the Titans insert no doubt raised the per unit cost considerably. It was an unheard-of bargain for the fans, but a gamble for the company,” Pérez said. “Thankfully, the gamble paid off, much to my surprise.”

The results, at least for the first issue, weren't surprising.

“The book went through the roof in the first issue and then fell in sales for the next four,” Wolfman said. “Then with issue #6 it zoomed up and never went down. We were surprised because DC hadn't had a success in years and we weren't sure that no matter how good the book was that readers of that time period would look at a DC title. Fortunately they did and that began the process of helping to rebuild the company.”

No one was more surprised than George Pérez at the success of New Teen Titans.

“I didn't expect it to last beyond six issues. I only took it on as a stepping stone towards JLA. Even after I did get the regular gig on JLA after the unexpected death of Dick Dillin, I found that that Titans was going to be where my future would be mapped out,” he said.

New Teen Titans quickly became a runaway success. In many stores, it ran neck-and-neck with the Chris Claremont - John Byrne era of Uncanny X-Men in sales. There have been many who speculated as two why it was so successful, but there are not set answers.
“I'd like to think what we did was combine the strengths of DC and Marvel rather than just being a DC Comic or a Marvel comic,” Wolfman said. “We had Marvel action and character combined with DC plotting and inventiveness. I think George and I developed characters that people liked and we kept surprising them with it. We also created dozens of characters to populate the book, something that's hardly done anymore. Many modern writers just recycle old villains instead of keeping things fresh and new.”
Initially the duo worked in “Marvel style,” where the agreed upon plot (and sometimes a panel breakdown) is supplied by the writer first. The story is then illustrated, and then the writer adds the dialogue.

“I would add little tweaks here and there, but the details were already put in place by Marv, and I followed them pretty closely,” Pérez said.

“By issue 8, the pivotal “A Day In the Lives...” story, I was far more involved in the plotting aspects of the series. I had gotten to love the characters by this point and wanted to be involved more in the characters' development. That issue really galvanized the inner souls of the Titans for me, and I was really dedicated to their future from then on,” he said. “Eventually, the working relationship with Marv and me evolved to the point that we no longer had written plots. He and I would talk the stories out and I would draw it from memory, which was a whole lot better then. Marv would then script from my notes accompanying the art. It was a unique and creatively satisfying working experience that I've never been able to duplicate anywhere else.”

In its success, New Teen Titans spawned a mini-series, several annuals, and a more deluxe version of the series, which was printed on Baxter paper, which was definitely a step up from traditional newsprint. Since nostalgia basically runs on a 20-year cycle, it's not surprising that there is some degree of interest being paid to the work, but nostalgia alone doesn't explain the depth of the affinity that some feel for the series. The affection seems to carry over to the creators of DC's current hit, Teen Titans, as well. Pérez said he thinks it's the sense of family and unity of purpose that Wolfman and he instilled in the characters.

“They were young heroes, teens as the title insisted, who had to cope with not only unearthly and sinister menaces, but also the day-to-day traumas and challenges of just simply adapting to the growing pressures of young adulthood,” he said. “We dealt with peer pressure, drugs, runaways, parental conflicts, romance, alienation, pretty much what much of the young readership could identify with. And Marv always insisted on respecting his readers. We didn't condescend and we didn't pander. The Titans were written with respect for its audience.”

With New Teen Titans a firmly established hit, Wolfman and Pérez were handed the assignment to combine the many realities of the DC Universe into one new reality, Crisis On Infinite Earths. Gone would be Earth-I and Earth-II with their older and younger sets of heroes and the Justice League - Justice Society crossovers. Gone also would be some popular characters. The decision behind the story, let alone the story itself, was bound to create controversy. Why hand it to a popular duo, who at least theoretically had a lot to lose if it went south?

“I think the Titans proved you could do a regular series at DC with strong characters and stories and that people who previously would never have looked at a DC book would follow it. Crisis was more of an industry wide phenomenon in that it, for better or worse, completely revolutionized event comics programming,” Wolfman said.

“The stories were less character-driven due to the enormous cast, although it was amazing how Marv still managed to get some great emotional moments into such an epic,” Pérez said. “Initially, like Titans I was not as involved in the plotting, but would get more involved in that process when the story grew a bit too unwieldy for Marv to coordinate on his own. That's when years of symbiotic working relationship proved to be quite handy.”

“Nobody had done it before, Wolfman said, “and now, right to today's Identity Crisis, the concepts underlying George's and my Crisis are still being done.”

Last year George Pérez completed the epic Marvel/DC crossover JLA/Avengers. Marv Wolfman wrote for the hit Teen Titans cartoon show and finished writing a Crisis novel containing a large amount of new material that fits into the original Crisis storyline. Its first printing sold out in three weeks.

In 1987 they had started a lengthy New Teen Titans graphic novel, Teen Titans: Game, during their original run on the series. Due to a variety of circumstances, it was never finished. This year they announced they're getting together to finish it.

This article first appeared in slightly different format in The Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide #35, on sale now.