Here's the important things. Teen Titans (the comic) started long ago to show off all the sidekicks that the big name heroes had, and what they would do if they had a Justice League of their own. This was from way back before people realized that you don't take kids along to fight crime, aliens, and murder-bots. The fact that this wasn't obvious in the 60's really says a lot.
Anyway, no one really cared until the 1980s when Marv Wolfman wrote actual storylines for the team, which was now comprised of Robin (still from the sidekick days), and a bunch of other teenage superheroes, although ones with actual powers (because, you know, murder-bots and all). It was all very...
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| I guess Donna Troy is technically a sidekick, since she's Wonder Girl, but this is pre-Crisis, so really, WTF knows. |
Blah blah, then there was the original TT cartoon. It retold all the good stories from the W&P comic run, but in an updated semi-humorous way. This also brought the characters from that run back to the forefront, making Raven/Cyborg/Starfire/Beast Boy popular again. It also introduced Silkie, who I don't believe has entered any other continuity, which is unfortunate. Silkie was created by the Killer Moth, who I've talked about here.
TT got cancelled, uncancelled for another season, cancelled again, but got a movie out before finishing. It was unfortunate, but that's how things work, and TV execs are stupid.
However, TT was soon replaced by Young Justice, which was the title of a 90s reboot/restyling of the Titans for the 90s, but it was again largely sidekicks (because we needed another Kid Flash, I guess). The TV YJ wasn't really anything like the comic, or the previous TT cartoon.
But, it too got cancelled after two seasons (because TV execs are stupid), and due to my DVR losing a disk, I never got to see the final episodes. This is largely due to the fact that I had like six months of episodes unwatched when the disk failed. That says something about the quality of YJ, which I found to be overcomplicated with lots of storyline ties that didn't seem to work well. Basically, they flooded the show with characters, and that diluted the amount that I cared about any one of them.
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| Although.... |
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| ...it did provide this brilliant interaction. |
With YJ cancelled, TV execs decided that they'd really like to un-re-un-cancel the original TT cartoon, but only kind-of-sort-of. Here's another digression: TT was a comic, that they turned into a cartoon. However, DC still makes comics, so they put out a tie-in comic for TT named Teen Titans Go. When the TV show was cancelled, the comic was killed off too, because you don't need a tie in comic that doesn't have anything to tie into. However, this killed an "All Ages" comic, and there's effectively a conservation law on those. This led to the creation of Art Balthazar's Tiny Titans, which took the DC characters (including the Teen Titans, but also branching out to most of the DC Universe if I remember correctly) and reimagined them as crayon drawings where everyone is basically just in elementary school.
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| Yes, that's Darkseid as the acting principal of the school, ex-lunch lady. |
Oh, this is also around the time that DC comics decided that they'd take Starfire, who is pretty much only known from Teen Titans, and therefore became popular with the cartoon, and rework her character in what is basically the stupidest way possible (here's the associated David Willis comic).
So everything was wonderful, and we had TT back, but it was a bit different. What's the problem?
My problem is Robin. Because this isn't a long enough post, we're now going to switch to youtube videos:
Which won't load in the compose screen, so I'm going to have to remember which ones I put where, and fix the commentary later. Or not. Watch the videos, read the text, collate.
First, TT. This is Robin fighting Madame Rouge, who can shapechange and be stretchy and all that. Not really a major issue for Robin, who ends the scene by basically blowing both of them up with the assumption that he'll just tuck and roll and be ok. Robin is trained by Batman, and is basically unbeatable in combat.
Still on TT. This one has Robin fighting the entire rest of the TT team. I was looking for the Red X clip, but this one works as well (Red X was where Robin dressed up like a villain and fought the team to try and fool Slade, the main villain). Robin's fighting the team because Slade (the main villain) has poisoned them and will insta-kill them if Robin doesn't work with him. Again, Robin doesn't have much trouble fighting and defeating the rest of the team. Oh fuck. I just now clicked to play the video and discovered it also is a stupid fan music video. Shit. It's too late to find another one. Basically, Robin is smarter than the rest of them, and knows how to defeat them despite not having powers.
Finally for TT, Robin's away adventuring, and the rest of the team dresses up like him because that's what they do. Robin returns, is totally cool with everything, and you can tell that he's the leader because a) he's cool, b) the rest of the team understands that he's cool, c) he wears a mask.
Now on to YJ. Robin here isn't the leader, and he isn't mysterious and brooding, as that position has been taken by Superboy. Instead, he gets to keep being the smart one, even though he comes off more as a caricature of "the nerd."
And finally, TTG. Robin's Day Off. He can't stand being relaxed, and does a bunch of stupid "let's always be super prepared to go fight crime" shit.
Chores List. Robin doesn't want to do the laundry, so he invents stupid challenge shit so he can shift the job off to someone else.
Robin doesn't have superpowers, so he feels out of place with the rest of the team, so he tries to get superpowers, and there's all this stupid shit in every episode where they really try to make you not like Robin.
And that's the issue. Watch that last video/first 25 seconds for the Starfire bits. She is exactly the same as in the wearing Robin's clothes from TT. The other characters are as well. They've not changed a bit, except they're now in a more jokey version of the world. But Robin is now an insufferable jackass, who can't do anything in a simple way, and tends to cause all sorts of problems for everyone else. Why? Why make this one change that pushes the entire thing such that it feels weirdly similar but still off?
I'm betting that the problem is that somewhere, a TV exec is stupid.
Links.
- Huh. Somewhat conflicted here. Plus side: New PPG. Down side: "Powerpuff creator Craig McCracken didn’t participate in the production." Potential ok: "Dave Smith (The Flintstones: On the Rocks)". F:OtR wasn't really bad.
- You only need the headline here, if you remember the video game.
- I never considered it this way. It does ignore Data's computer thing in his quarters though. He'd work on that at night.
- Plusle.
- Hello Kitty's coming to hug you. There will be no survivors.
- I guess this is a popular thing to do?
- Obligatory self-link for how this worked last time.
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