DP02-12 The Power Girl Paradox Part 1

.....After the New Doom Patrol story arc ran in SHOWCASE #'s 94 (08-09/77)- 96 (12/77-01/78) there was surprisingly little editorial comment on it. The first letters regarding it were printed in #96 from Bob Rodi and Rick Taylor (both from Illinois). Editor Paul Levitz responded to Rodi by plugging the upcoming Power Girl feature (which Rodi didn't mention) and responded to Taylor thus:

• "If the DP go back into their own mag you can count on Robotman and Celsius having a few interesting discussions about the leadership role-- and Bob can look for the manhunt for Capt. Zahl. But we'll be looking for your verdict to determine whether the DP make it on their own."

.....Back when these comics were being published, the direct market was in its infancy and publishing decisions that would be driven by sales were driven almost exclusively by newsstand sales and the letters' page where that above response appeared would have to have been prepared before any unsold copies of the Doom Patrol issues could be returned from dealers, counted and deducted from the numbers shipped out in order to determine approximate real sales figures. Those sales figures would presumably be "your verdict". It was a very different system from the modern direct market in which publishers solicit advanced orders from retailers (generally through distributors), total the orders, round the numbers upwards and print that many. If the advanced orders are unusually low and a publisher has reason to trust the retailers' instincts, a proposed title might not even be printed. The fates of existing ongoing titles are determined by the continued confidence of those whose livelihoods depend on selling them, as with the old newsstand system, except that those fates are now determined before they ship, not three or four months later. Since editor Paul Levitz didn't know in 1977 whether the DP's revival would lead to getting their own title again or being put back on the shelf for the moment, he focused on the next scheduled feature, one which he wrote himself.

.....Tellingly, the next issue, which begins a three-issue Power Girl story arc [SHOWCASE #'s 97 (02/78)- 99 (04/78)] has a letters' page that leads with a letter written in anticipation of the Power Girl feature. (The writer, Allan Palmer of Quebec, was tipped off about their plans by a fanzine article. In keeping with the way future Vertigo characters would turn up on the periphery of DC history in the pre-Crisis years, Palmer suggests that PG's recent out-of-the-blue debut in ALL STAR COMICS could be explained by saying that she had been on Earth-1 fighting crime as Black Orchid, another flying bullet-proof female character whose identity and origin had not yet been revealed. Levitz describes this as "a very plausible suggestion".) A second letter from Bill Dickinson (of MN) is all about the DP but there is no response to it. In fact, none of the editorial 'voice' on the page mentions the DP at all.

.....Issue #98 contains a letter from Kevin Callahan (CA) who intuits much of what should have been explained by DC about the DP arc: that the "Doc" who repaired Cliff's body was Doc Magnus; that the Lt. Cable who appears in all three issues is the same Lt. Matthew Cable from SWAMP THING; and that Cliff's new body, drawn by Joe Staton in all three issues, strongly resembles John Byrne's ROG-3000, a back-up feature in Staton's E-MAN title for Charlton two years earlier. [I go on at length about it in the synopsis post for the John Byrne Period.] The DP is also mentioned in a second letter from Al Schroeder III (TN), but the reply to Callahan is more pertinent:

• "The Doom Patrol is indeed not dead. While sales figures are not yet in, we're keeping the magnificent misfits in the public eye in SUPER-TEAM FAMILY #16, in which they costar with Supergirl. Watch for it in a few months.-- PL"

.....SHOWCASE #'s 99 (04/78) and 100 (05/78) have no letters' pages and SUPER-TEAM FAMILY #15 (03-04/78) was the last issue of that series. Both titles eventually became casualties of the DC Implosion. There would also be no new Doom Patrol title, at least not for a while, no Power Girl title for a bit longer and no Hawkman title (the next three-issue arc in SHOWCASE after an anniversary story in #100). Yet there were clearly plans in place to continue stories with each cast of characters, even if their outlets turned out to be makeshift. Hawkman, for instance, hadn't carried his own title since the days of the original DOOM PATROL series. When it was cancelled he became a co-star in the Atom's series for its last year and then spent the 1970's merely as a Justice League of America member except for sporadic use as a back-up feature in DETECTIVE COMICS. In the year leading up to his SHOWCASE arc Hawkman took on a greater visibility as a character in his own right, guest starring in SECRET SOCIETY OF SUPER-VILLAINS and SUPER-TEAM FAMILY independent of the JLA. Despite that, after the arc when DC expanded all their standard titles by eight pages (all new material) he became the back-up in DETECTIVE COMICS again and would have been there regularly had the implosion not hit. To save the company's namesake title from cancellation it became the new home of the double-length BATMAN FAMILY Dollar Comic anthology. The Hawkman feature was relocated to its WORLD'S FINEST COMICS counterpart, replacing the Creeper feature (whose planned SHOWCASE issue was never published).

.....Power Girl (whose bizarre connection to the Doom Patrol I'll try to explain in future posts) at least had a natural home with the Justice Society in ALL-STAR COMICS, where she debuted in the same issue that revived the title, #58 (01-02/76). The story was written and edited by Gerry Conway with assistant editor Paul Levitz. Nearly two years later Levitz wrote the earliest stories featuring the Huntress. She had a simultaneous debut in ALL-STAR COMICS #69 (11-12/77) and DC SUPER-STARS #17 (11-12/77), both drawn by Joe Staton, at that point the regular penciller for both ALL-STAR and SHOWCASE. Power Girl and the Huntress seemed a natural pair. Unlike Earth-2's adult Robin, introduced in one of the 1960's annual JLA/JSA crossovers, these two young women were true legacy characters, not contemporary sidekicks who had grown into the roles of the characters from whom they were derived but new original characters succeeding their predecessors. At the time that was unusual in comics. Aside from Lee Falk's ancestral line of Phantoms (the identity was passed from father to son) or Charlton's Ted Kord replacing Dan Garrett as Blue Beetle, there aren't too many obvious examples. From the way Conway introduced Power Girl, its possible that he considered legacy characters to be a potential important theme for a JSA feature, circumventing the question of how much older these revered Golden Age characters can get and still be plausible as super-heroes. Conway began the series with the newly revealed Power Girl, the aforementioned adult Robin and the by-then-adult Star Spangled Kid forming what they called "The Super Squad", to be augmented by original Justice Society members. The name "Super Squad" actually appeared on a banner on the covers below the logo for the first eight issues of the revival, three issues beyond the point where Conway left as writer and editor and was replaced by Levitz, with Joe Orlando as his editor. After that, a large Justice Society logo pushed the series' actual title to a banner across the top and there was no longer any ambiguity about the focus of the series. It was all about the Justice Society and, less obviously, all about All-American Comics.

.....Are you familiar with the "three on a match" concept? When DC had an unexpected hit with Superman in ACTION COMICS in 1938, it took them a while to realize that having that anthology's only costumed character on the cover would spike sales. In 1939 they tried to test the appeal of costumes by trying a cover story on an older better established title, DETECTIVE COMICS, with Batman. That confirmed their popularity and all that remained was to determine whether it was a new, durable genre or merely a fad. To do this, editors Sheldon Mayer and M.C. Gaines, who had arrived from Dell since Superman's debut, were to create a whole stable of super-heroes. Although Superman and Batman were used to promote these new features (and mentioned as "honorary members" of the JSA when making rare cameo turns), they otherwise were kept separate where the actual stories were concerned. Their stories appeared in 'National' titles, but the next wave of characters would be seen in 'All-American' titles, named for Gaines' All-American Publications venture. If super-heroes had turned out to be a fad, the All-American titles could be cancelled without tarnishing the National brand. If they kept selling, National would add more. In 1940 Gaines and Mayer began with FLASH COMICS (an anthology including the debuts of Flash, Hawkman and Johnny Thunder) and ended with the first appearance of the Justice Society in ALL-STAR COMICS #3 (Winter/1940-1941). By the fall of 1941 National had formed its own team, the Seven Soldiers of Victory, also without Superman and Batman. By the late 1940's romance, westerns and horror began crowding out the super-heroes on the newsstands and, since Gaines had already sold back his interest in All-American to create EC Comics, the All-American brand identity disappeared along with most of the Justice Society's members. ALL-STAR COMICS actually wasn't cancelled, it became ALL-STAR WESTERN. Later, STAR SPANGLED COMICS became STAR SPANGLED WAR STORIES. The remaining heroes were consolidated as back-up features in titles whose leads became Batman, Superman or spin-off features like Robin solo stories or Superboy. In the 1980's many of those remaining back-up characters were retroactively assembled in the All-Star Squadron, but back in the 1970's they remained hopelessly obscure to all but a handful of fanatical Golden Age collectors. For a generation of comics fans in the 1970's the Justice Society embodied DC in the Golden Age specifically because they didn't survive past 1951 and were not impacted by the notorious Senate hearings on juvenile delinquency. From 1955 to about 1962 their names were stolen by space age strangers (or so it seemed at the time), but their peers, the Trinity (Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman), never went away. The Trinity escaped cancellation, weathered the witch hunts and went to other planets when the trends changed yet again. When the new strangers were explained as living on an alternate Earth, it necessitated there being an alternate Trinity-- one younger, one older. When Conway scripted the new ALL-STAR COMICS the numbering of the western phase of the title (#58 to #119) was ignored, but the stories couldn't reasonably pick up where they left off as easily as the issue numbers did. During the intervening 25 years some sampling of JSA members had been drawn out to join with JLA members for the annual 'Crisis' stories and if readers knew anything about them it was that most of them had retired from adventuring until those crossovers began in 1963. Conway couldn't set new stories in the 1950's with that imminent inactivity threatening to put a damper on things, so he set them in present day Earth-2 with a stand in for Superman (Power Girl, his cousin), a stand in for Batman (the Golden age Robin) and the only full member of the Seven Soldiers of Victory from their generation (Star Spangled Kid-- Wing had long since died and the Golden Age Speedy remained mysteriously absent until Crisis). There was no youth counter part to Wonder Woman (yet). Wonder Girl, after all, was a purely Earth-1 creation, as was Supergirl (the cousin of Earth-1's Superman and the character Power Girl was created to balance in Earth-2's alternate universe). Without a proxy Wonder Woman it wasn't really obvious that he was trying to acknowledge both National and All-American imprints. In a way, it may have been a tip of the hat to the early days of WORLD'S FINEST COMICS when Star Spangled Kid regularly had a feature and Batman and Superman each did as well, but not yet as a team. These younger characters formed a team of their own, a succession to the JSA, but when the Super Squad name dropped by the wayside it became clear that the JSA was to be carried forward, not succeeded. Enter the Huntress.

.....The first new issue of ALL-STAR COMICS gave us a cover of the younger generation of heroes rushing to save the older JSA members, roughly the plot Len Wein used to revive the X-men the previous year. Immediately following her debut, Huntress did the same on the cover of #70 (01-02/78). Since her debut, she took part in each of the annual JLA/JSA 'Crisis' stories until the big one in 1985-1986. At the end of that, she and the Earth-2 Robin became just two of numerous characters who didn't simply die but whose existence had never been part of the new synthesized Earth's history. For many readers (and we can only presume for Levitz) this meant much more than the loss of a beloved character (bad as that may be). It meant a lost opportunity for an Earth-2 counterpart to the concept of the Superman-Batman team. As I mentioned in a paragraph above, Superman and Batman each had features in WORLD'S FINEST COMICS, but weren't scripted as a team until the dawn of the Silver Age, less than a year before the adoption of the Comics' Code Authority. Those stories are generally acknowledged as Earth-1 history. To make the two worlds more closely mirror one another there grew an unspoken assumption that not only did the characters need to be duplicated, but the institutions as well. The Superman-Batman team couldn't really have been recreated in Power Girl and the adult Robin, since Robin's considerably greater experience would put them on an uneven footing. Power Girl and Huntress were both novices with roots to legends and more believably peers. Unfortunately they had only a year from Huntress' debut until the bimonthly ALL-STAR COMICS was cancelled in the DC Implosion. The JSA feature was then incorporated into the Dollar Comics format ADVENTURE COMICS for one more bimonthly year (1979) before being dropped when the title returned to standard length and its first monthly schedule in a decade. Huntress resurfaced in 1980 when DC tried to assuage reader complaints over their most recent price increase (from 40¢ to 50¢) by exchanging eight pages of ads per issue for eight extra pages of story. This made possible a Huntress back-up strip (again by Levitz and Staton) in WONDER WOMAN. Levitz wasted no time in having Power Girl as a guest star but the serial (which far outlasted many of its contemporaries-- most titles eventually just ran longer main features) was a less than ideal venue for building a partnership. They really needed their own feature and Levitz' increasing editorial duties made a now standard 25-page monthly title even less likely to happen than the 17-page bi-monthly title which had been much more common at DC when Power Girl and Huntress were introduced. The Implosion was once thought to have merely delayed such a potential title but that delay lasted until the circumstances of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, which made it impossible.

.....Today, of course, there is yet another alternate universe with an entirely new Earth-2 from which a kind of Huntress and a sort of Power Girl have been expunged and stranded in the New 52 Earth in the current WORLD'S FINEST series. Written by Paul Levitz, no less. Thirty-plus years overdue, but close enough. However, it was a much longer and harder road to reach that point than it would appear and the Doom Patrol ("...you remember Alice, don't you? This is a song about Alice...") got side-swiped in the process. Part 2 should be about what happened to that 1978 Supergirl story when the Implosion hit.

DP09-AP(e) Retro Stories During The Giffen Period

.....Barring cameos I haven't yet discovered or which may yet surface before the Flashpoint to-do plays out (we'll see how long DC's readers can sustain nostalgia for The Age Of Apocalypse, if at all), this was the last of the Doom Patrol appearances during Giffen's run that take place in earlier periods. During the most recent Doom Patrol title there were three issues which each focused on the history of an individual member, giving a coherent account of their passage through all the prior periods. I haven't included those because they'll be reviewed here in the context of the rest of the series at some far future date after the preceding periods have been reviewed.

.....The topic of this post is DCU: Legacies, a ten-issue limited series that ran #1(07/10) to #10 (04/11). Each of the first five issues covered a period of roughly ten years from 1935 to 1985 and the last five issues each covered a period of roughly five years from 1985 to 2010. Each issue has a serialized main story in which a retired policeman named Paul Lincoln recalls the history of DC's super-heroes and his occasional brushes with them (not unlike the photographer in Marvels). The chapters are written by Len Wein with short framing sequences drawn by Scott Kolins, but a different art team for the main body every two issues who also provide the standard cover. Each issue also has a short back-up story featuring a different group of related characters by yet a third art team who provide the variant cover for that issue. I mention this because Cliff Steele appears on the cover of issue #4(10/10), but only on the standard cover.

.....The Doom Patrol don't appear in the back-up stories, but their brief significant inclusion in issue #4 shouldn't be discussed without first mentioning something about #3. DCU: Legacies #3(09/10) "Powers And Abilities!" is the first of two parts drawn by José Luis García-López and inked by Dave Gibbons. The cover blurb, "The Silver Age Is Here!" pretty much gets the main point across with the standard cover being a white background and the sedately posed seven founders of the pre-Crisis version of the Justice League of America. Although Superman and Batman almost never appeared on the covers of early JLA comics, they had made cameos in the stories since the three trial issues in The Brave And The Bold #28(02-03/60)- #30(06-07/60). I say "almost" because they appear as chess pieces on the cover of Justice League Of America #1(10-11/60), as miniature background figures on #5(06-07/61), as Felix Faust's fingers on #10(03/62), as smoke in bottles on #11(05/62) and finally fully visible on the cover of #19(05/63), long after they had become fully active in the stories. However, that lack of visual presence translated into a total absence when the JLA's origin was reformulated after Crisis On Infinite Earths. One of the major effects of the Crisis is that after the surviving worlds and their respective histories were combined into a single synthetic Earth, Wonder Woman passed into legend, a final gift of the Gods when it became clear to them that they couldn't prevent her from being wiped from physical existence (and subsequently people's memories). The original Golden Age Wonder Woman became fictional in the post-Crisis Earth and was remembered that way by everyone. A younger, otherwise identical Wonder Woman emerged at the end of the Legends mini-series who didn't recognize any of the characters who had been her predecessor's teammates in the JLA. In the new scheme of things, Black Canary took Wonder Woman's place in JLA history and Superman and Batman were eliminated from the origin completely, joining a short time later. Similarly, Supergirl never existed in post-Crisis history (until several variant versions were later introduced) and so the Doom Patrol adventures with her in Superman Family #191(09-10/78)- #193(01-02/79) and Daring New Adventures Of Supergirl #7(05/83)- #10(08/83) would thereafter be remembered as having happened, but with Power Girl in the role of Supergirl. For DCU: Legacies #3 to return Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman to the origin of the Justice League calls into question exactly to what extent these post-Crisis revisions are being dismantled. Did the story in Legends not happen? Did the Doom Patrol have adventures with Supergirl or Power Girl? Both? Neither?

.....DCU: Legacies #4(10/10) begins with the right half of an interlocking García-López/Gibbons cover, indicated only by the edge of Superman's cape and shadow. Even without the continuation of images, though, issues #'s 3 and 4 are clearly parts of a whole. The cover of #4 also has the white background, the parallel blurb "The Next Generation Has Arrived!" and seven heroes, in this case the five founders of the Teen Titans in c.1965 uniforms plus Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) and Robotman (Cliff Steele). Curiously, and I don't know if anyone else is disturbed by this and I don't know if it was intentional, but Aqualad's hair here is straight. Short, matted or tousled, but straight. It appears this way in the interior pages as well. In his earliest appearances in Adventure Comics beginning in 1960 his hair was not only straight but light brown. After Bruno Premiani drew the first teen sidekick team-up story in The Brave And The Bold #54(06-07/64), Garth's subsequent appearances with his peers were (a) drawn mainly by Nick Cardy, (b) under the name Teen Titans and (c) sporting black hair in thick curls. Actually, for much of the 1960's Cardy drew Garth in both Teen Titans and Aquaman. On Teen Titans he would even ink the pencillers who took over (Irv Novick and George Tuska) as well. When Jim Aparo took over the art on Aquaman's interiors, Cardy continued to draw or paint the covers. In the 1970's, Garth appeared less often in Teen Titans and Aparo continued Aquaman's feature in Adventure Comics (including covers) before following him back into his revived title which was closed out with Don Newton pencilling. I haven't seen Garth's back-up feature drawn by Carl Potts, which ran in Adventure Comics after the Aquaman feature vacated, but if it was anything like the various art teams that worked on Teen Titans when it returned in the late 1970's, it would have adhered to Cardy's thick, curly precedent. George Pérez certainly did for occasional New Teen Titans guest spots and the first Aqualad Who's Who page. In fact, Pérez added visual detail to individual curls and gave Garth's hair more of a perm or afro style. The thinking must have been that his origin (coming from an underwater civilization akin to Atlantis) would imply a look more common to Mediterranean cultures (Greece, Italy, Ethiopia) than the freckled Midwestern boy he resembled when Ramona Fradon drew him. As prolific as García-López was at DC since the mid-1970's, it isn't easy finding an example of him drawing Aqualad in a story. These two examples seem to have been prepared for promotional or merchandising purposes. They're both dated 1982. Note Garth's hair:

http://comicartcommunity.com/gallery/details.php?image_id=34464&mode=search&sessionid=3fafb5a444eb83579edde842da559c10

http://comicartcommunity.com/gallery/details.php?image_id=34463&mode=search

.....Garth's hair seems black and wavy. It's consistent with Cardy, if not Pérez. It's Aqua-Dondi. So why the change in the look for what is meant to be a period-specific portrait? I doubt that it's Gibbon's inks. Ten years earlier, during the "Silver Age" one-shot event, Gibbon inked Cardy himself on the cover of the Silver Age: Teen Titans #1(07/00). Garth's hair looks straighter than Cardy's ever drawn it, but still thick past the ears. But Pat Oliffe's interior pencils make him look more like his modern Tempest identity, short with small tight curls. Whatever the reasoning was for the look used on DCU: Legacies #4, it couldn't possibly have the same impact on Doom Patrol history as would restoring Wonder Woman to JLA history. By relaunching Wonder Woman in the 1980's, Donna Troy's already murky personal story became notoriously impossible to reconcile, impacting not only Beast Boy/Changeling from their time together in the New Teen Titans, but Robotman, Mento and both the new and old versions of the Brotherhood Of Evil, who returned to activity between 1981 and 1986 in New Teen Titans, Teen Titans Spotlight and other Titans related titles. Extraordinary hoops were jumped through to accommodate post-Crisis continuity without throwing out some of DC's best-selling work since the start of the Comics' Code Authority. By restoring Wonder Woman to the Silver Age it becomes necessary to sift through the dozen or so existing Donna Troy origins to find one or more that enable us to retain the 'Gar Logan on Paradise Island' subplot from 1981.

.....Before the DP actually show up there's a full-page illustration, page 6, with 37 villains representing the Silver Age and not one of them with a connection to the Doom Patrol (the giant gorilla in the back is Grodd, not Mallah). What's even weirder is that prominently in the foreground we see Mongul, who first appeared in 1980.

.....On page 11, panel 1, we see the Original Period Doom Patrol (Cliff, Rita and Larry) in their 1960's style uniforms battling the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man. Cliff is tossing a lime green Volkswagon covered with a peace sign and numerous flower decals, for anyone who's been reading this far and is still not absolutely certain what decade this was paraphrasing. The accompanying narration tells us:

• "But the Metal Men weren't the only ones inspired by the example of the Justice League... In Midway City, a group of super-powered misfits calling themselves the Doom Patrol made their presence known."

.....In a previous post, DP05-AB "The Wilderness Years", I list Doom Patrol activity between the end of the series under the Vertigo imprint and their relaunch by John Arcudi. Part of that activity was tentative reintegration into DCU continuity and a significant part involved long overdue looks back into the group's history before Crisis as seen through a post-Crisis lens. JLA Year One placed their formation before the JLA's in a story originally published in 1998, only to have that order reversed just two years later in a lowly text piece in Secret Files & Origins Guide To The DC Universe 2000. It's hard to argue that this story is establishing anything other than consensus regarding who came first. And after this summer's Flashpoint reboot there's no telling what history will look like. And aside from tying into the Doom Patrol's guest spot on the animated television show, "Batman: The Brave And The Bold", I don't see the point of devoting two whole pages to reenacting the Original group's 1968 death scene. While pains are taken to get the name and population of the targeted fishing village correct-- Codsville, Maine and 14-- there are still goofs. Cliff is standing at the end, despite being depicted with the glowing halo of the magnetic charge that paralyzed the tiny servo motors in his legs. Madame Rouge is not mentioned and appears only as an indistinct figure in the background of one panel (page 21, panel 5), despite being instrumental to the original story. Finally, as seems to be the case increasingly, Zahl introduces himself as "General Zahl". He was actually Captain Zahl when he commanded the submarine that attacked the DP. He promoted himself to General Zahl while on land years later, some time between disappearing at the end of Doom Patrol #121(09-10/68) and reappearing in New Teen Titans #13(11/81)- #15(01/82). Even if someone didn't know that particular bit of trivia they ought to know that the title 'general' means nothing on a ship. Captains, admirals, ensigns (maybe) but not generals would be in charge of a ship. He might as well be calling himself 'pope' or 'your waiter for this evening'.

.....Closing out 2010 are DCU: Legacies #5(11/10) and #6(12/10). This time the interlocking standard covers are by George Pérez, depicting a chaotic moment during Crisis On Infinite Earths. Not that it's germane to the Doom Patrol, but I have to stop here to point out the cover to #5 is a scene that actually takes place in the comic book. On page 19 you'll see many of the same characters in the same poses and engaged in the same activities but seen from a different angle. Except for the two pages of framing sequence drawn by Scott Kolins in each issue, most of the serial chapter in #5 was pencilled by Pérez and inked by Scott Koblish. For #6, Pérez and Koblish split the inking chores on Jerry Ordway's pencils.

.....In the framing sequence of issue #5 narrator Paul Lincoln cites the death of the Doom Patrol as the catalyst that led to darker, grimmer moods in later metahuman adventures. On the splash page he holds up an old issue of Timeline Magazine with the DP on its cover. To bolster his point he cites the Joker's return to senseless murder, which was actually deemphasized while he had his own title in the mid 1970's. It was only after that title was cancelled that he became part of Englehart's and Rogers' return to classic villainy in Detective Comics. It's also worth finding his arc in the Huntress back-up feature in Wonder Woman a few years after that. It was in those appearances that the Joker was reestablished as a dangerous killer. More convincing is when Lincoln next refers to the Fleischer/Aparo Spectre stories from Adventure Comics. Those stories raised eyebrows and 'led to meetings', as they say. They are conveniently available as the trade Wrath Of The Spectre, which has been in and out of print but often offered both new and used. Lincoln is on to something; comics did get darker long before Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Unfortunately, as a character within DCU super-hero continuity he is uniquely unqualified to present the evidence that falls outside of that continuity. The early 1970's in comic book publishing were notable for sword & sorcery fantasy, horror and supernatural anti-heroes, jaded cosmically aware demi-gods, dystopian futures and black and white magazines not subject to the Comics Code Authority. All true, but nothing of which he would be aware. The death of the DP was certainly an unusual way to end a comic book series, but 1968 was practically a bloodbath compared to the "Summer Of Love" the year before. In fact, that issue would have been released in late July and still on the stands when protesters outside the DNC were brutally murdered. This was after the assassinations of MLK and RFK, as well as Prague Spring and the Situationist riots in Paris. The next few years were drenched in Altamont, Kent State, the My Lai Massacre, slum riots, prison riots and well-connected persons rigging the military draft so that the poor would die in their place. It's hardly fair to say that the 1970's began with a dark mood because the Doom Patrol made the ultimate sacrifice. It wasn't just comic books that became grimmer. Books, movies and music did as well. There was an over whelming sense that persons in authority were not only failing to guide civilization into peace and prosperity but were actually committed to preventing them. If Spiro Agnew sneering that he didn't have to pay taxes because he was better you didn't convince people of that, Richard Nixon ordering burglaries of his political enemies certainly did.

.....Of course, the Doom Patrol's story didn't really end in 1968 and the nine-year gap until their return becomes a one-issue gap in DCU: Legacies. Gar shows up without comment with the New Teen Titans on page 7 of issue #5. On page 10, he's with the slightly revamped (1984+) NTT, which is portrayed as contemporary with the debut of the New Doom Patrol. It's clear this is meant to be the Showcase #94(08-09/77), from General Immortus attacking in a one-man flying saucer to Robotman's temporary ROG-2000-esque body. It's especially temporary here, since it's drawn correctly in panels 2,5 and 6, but then reverts to a conventional 1960's head for an inset panel portrait. Also, Lincoln's comment "Yes, the Chief's widow had found the remains of Robotman and rebuilt him-- even as she gathered together a brand-new team of misfits." makes one wonder how much of the Doom Patrol's adventures is known to the public and how much is presumed. Cliff was rebuilt by Doc Magnus, not Celsius, but that information might be classified. The general public might assume otherwise or might have been told otherwise.

.....A very public event, the COIE, fills the end of issue #5 and the start of issue #6. Negative Woman passes through page 20, panel 1, while Gar manages to finally get a line in on page 21, panel 1. Both make the cover of issue #6, although Gar has switch from an elephant carrying Nightwing to a pigeon carrying the Atom in his barbarian warrior phase. Tempest appears as well. Only Gar appears inside though, in a recreation of the conclusion to Legends on page 18.

.....The whole DCU: Legacies series will be available as a hardcover trade this fall. Barring delays, it is scheduled for release August 24th, 2011. I'm debating whether to look to other media to cover all the other retro period depictions during the Giffen Period, such as the animated Batman team-up mentioned earlier or even action figures. As it is I'm going to collect my thoughts, dive into my comics and look for a new thread. Here's hoping all the links work!

Retro Denouement Interlude

.....To paraphrase Oprah, "YOU get a link, and YOU get a link, and YOU get a..."

.....After the previous two posts I had to get some much needed sunlight. The timing was right; here in the northeast U.S. it's been a bright, humid, summery first week of June, during which I cleared out several barrels of yard clippings, filled several (non-DP) holes in my comics collection and took a belated look at the solicitations for August. I still don't see any indication of Doom Patrol's future. Flashpoint will apparently be carrying on into September, unless absolutely everything ships on time, with the last day for all titles being August 31. With next month's Comic-Con there will undoubtedly be tons of news available about DC's direction while Flashpoint is still on the stands. In the meantime, we mere mortals have the blog "Too Dangerous For A Girl", whose recent posts as of this writing have been sifting through what look like press releases. The home page should be here:

http://dangermart.blogspot.com/

.....I checked in earlier today to monitor any possible comments (none today) and post one last 'retro' entry before devoting the next few days to editing a massive music entry for my other blog. I checked the stats, mostly to see if publishing the previous post had gotten any better reaction than the first few days. When you publish infrequently as I have in the previous year, people just don't bother to check you out every day. A new post can result in a spike in activity, either several people looking for something new or else a few people flipping backwards. In the past month I've been getting closer to a weekly schedule and was curious to see if the rate of pageviews would continue to spike and drop or begin to level off. Wellll... neither. The total pageviews for Wednesday were more than ten times the average for LGC: Doom Patrol. All day. The lion's share of referring URL's (i.e., the last page someone was on before coming here) were from tamaraorbust's blog, "Histories Of Things To Come" with the rest coming from the Doom Patrol-related blogs to whom I always link on the left side of this page. I wasn't at all surprised to see the "Histories..." URL's, given that we are mutual followers and have on more than one occasion referred to and endorsed each other's blogs. The curious thing is that "Histories..." is dramatically more prolific than this blog and deals with every topic under the sun (and behind it and probably in it, too). Many of its posts are not about comics, let alone Doom Patrol specifically. Otherwise it would have a permanent link with the others instead the occasional one, like this:

http://historiesofthingstocome.blogspot.com/

.....The readers for all those (or these, as those numbers are still coming in) views come from several countries, so I can't just dismiss this as one guy on a meth binge going back and forth between the two blogs for 24 hours straight. (For the record, the management does not endorse nonprescription amphetamine use. Try it with a pot of coffee, though.) If there are new readers out there, be advised that after the next retro post I'll be picking another theme for Doom Patrol stories to examine. I'm leaning towards the post-Crisis appearances that led to the Kupperberg series in 1987 and then the mini-series that tied into it, mostly because they've not been compiled into trades to my knowledge. If there are any other pieces of Doom Patrol-related knowledge or insight which you're having trouble locating on the web I could probably give you an answer, a helpful link or possibly a post detailing my reasons for an educated guess on the matter. Just leave any questions in the comments area and I'll be notified of them.

.....One last item: they technically aren't whole stories, but I've been enjoying the mash-up covers of the blog "The Brave And The Bold: The Lost Issues" (currently retitled "Marvel Two-In-One: The Lost Issues") for a long time now. Check out Ben Grimm's imagined adventure with the Original Period DP here:

http://braveandboldlost.blogspot.com/2011/05/thing-and-doom-patrol.html

.....And this earlier Batman excursion into Gypsy Period 1 here:

http://braveandboldlost.blogspot.com/2010/08/this-is-one-of-very-first-covers-i-did.html

.....Or Ben with Danny's roommate:

http://braveandboldlost.blogspot.com/2010/11/thing-and-ambush-bug.html

.....In a few days I'll have the post intended for this slot and try the following week to maintain a weekly pace.

DP09-AP(a) Retro Stories During Giffen Period

.....In the various Period synopses early in this blog, beginning with "The Wilderness Years", I began to designate period pieces with the symbol [P]. The phrase "period piece" here means the same as it does in theater and film: a whole work that noticeably takes place in an earlier, distinctly different period. There's a qualitative difference between those stories and ones that include flashbacks to earlier periods for exposition purposes or ones that simply take place earlier in continuity within the same period.

.....At the time that I put together the synopsis for Gypsy Period 2 and the accompanying Trade Survey that follows it, I wasn't aware that Ambush Bug was going to play such a significant part of the current series. It's hard to think of him as a team member, since so much of what he is seems to be conscious and willing on his part, while the common bond among the Doom Patrol's members is that they were the results of tragic accidents. Irwin's parents may beg to differ with me, but that's my first impression. Had I known, I would have included the TP SHOWCASE PRESENTS AMBUSH BUG on both lists, early in 2009 (March 25th), right before the first DP volume and after the issues of TRINITY. Incidentally, the issues of TRINITY, which take place in an alternate timeline, pose a question of judgement for me. I've decided to judge them as I would Elseworlds stories. The Doom Patrol have experienced different states and different senses of existence often enough that it isn't immediately obvious which versions are 'real' and which aren't or even what 'real' means. The one time I've cut myself some slack in the 'comprehensive' aspect of these searches was when I decided to dismiss out of hand the Tangent 'Doom Patrol', not because of any concerns I had about the quality of the stories but for the simple fact that they were unrelated characters in a unrelated timeline in unrelated circumstances who were given the same name for Maximum Obfuscation Purposes best understood by DC's Marketing Department and whoever prescribes their medication. Not my kids, not my problem.

.....Speaking of kids, the last entry on the Gypsy Period synopsis is where we should start when considering period pieces, with some careful qualifications.

.....[juv.] Batman: The Brave And The Bold #7 (09/09) "The Secret Of The Doomsday Design!" by J. Torres (script) and J. Bone (art) with a cover by Scott Jeralds and edited by Rachel Gluckstern and Michael Siglain is an original story in the style of the Cartoon Network series. This is made for children but that would only be implied by the cartoon art of the cover. There's little in the way of trade dress that would suggest that to the casual observer. For instance, the checkerboard Cartoon Network logo is not present and DC's kids titles have dropped the Johnny DC logo and imprint identity, although they continue to use the character as the 'voice' of the editorial content. Below the UPC box there is printed "dckids.com", but that's less than an inch from the bottom of the page, almost literally beneath notice. It's been a long time since Helix, Piranha and Paradox were absorbed into DC or Warner Books' other imprints, but the past year has been an exercise in streamlining with the dismantling of Wildstorm/ABC and Zuda. A casual flip through a recent Diamond Comics Distributor catalog shows that the super-hero titles are now under a "DCUniverse" imprint and Vertigo is still there, but everything else, from Tiny Titans to Resident Evil, comes under the generic sounding "DC Comics" imprint.

.....This is clearly not DCU continuity, but anyone who has seen the animated television series that the comic book is based on would agree that it's a weird synthesis of periods whose result is something unique to the show, something it doesn't even share with DC's other animated projects. Starting with Batman himself, he doesn't resemble the versions from "Batman Adventures", "Justice League Unlimited" or "Young Justice". He doesn't even jibe with the tot-friendly "Super Friends" from the 2008 comic (or the 1970's cartoon for that matter). If anything, he calls to mind the animated opening sequence of the live-action 1960's "Batman" series, a fact they've actually played with when peppering the current animated series with visual in-jokes. In a way that's not entirely inappropriate. The show usually takes place in the present day but Batman's personality is generally like his comic book counterpart in the late 1960's, a period comparatively overshadowed by the campy TV show contemporary to it and the fantastic Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams issues that followed. While I personally prefer the O'Neil/Adams stories, the late 1960's stories weren't bad at all. They tended to distance themselves from the celebrity villains and pop-art self-awareness of the TV show and opt instead for straight-forward self-contained detective stories. In fact, the silliness of the TV show villains seemed to have soured both writers and readers on Batman's fetishistic rogues' gallery. They rarely appeared in the 1970's in either Batman or Detective Comics until Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers brought them back with a vengeance nearly a decade later. Despite the fact that the Batman of the current cartoon is fighting colorful villains, both he and the 1960's comic version are tight-lipped without being grim, relentless without being ruthless, perfect for kids who won't stand for something babyish but aren't quite ready for the Christian Bale version.

.....For their part, the Doom Patrol here are a synthesis as well. This story shipped over a year before the team appeared in the episode "The Last Patrol" (October 8th, 2010). A "B:TB&TB" spot was only a matter of time, since there had already been appearances by The Brain ("Journey To The Center Of The Bat", January 30th, 2009) and Mallah ("Gorillas In Our Midst", April 16th, 2010). But the version of the Doom Patrol who eventually surfaced in that episode was very close to the Original Period line-up: Cliff, Rita , Larry and The Chief. Shockingly, they even updated the 1968 self-sacrifice scene. The version in this comic book story not only adds Beast Boy but uses a version of Gar closer to that from the "Teen Titans" animated series, which preceded "B:TB&TB". The squad as a whole most closely approximates the "Homecoming" incarnation of the group. "Homecoming" was a two-part season premiere of "Teen Titans" (September 25th and October 1st, 2005) broadcast during the waning days of the Byrne Period. The premise is that Beast Boy introduces his current teammates to his adopted family, the Doom Patrol, when they are kidnapped by the Brotherhood of Evil. The remaining five episodes in that season's first leg (through November) use the Brotherhood as villains. In "Homecoming", The Chief is nowhere to be found and Mento is the leader of the group. The following spring that team configuration was featured in the comic book counterpart to the series, Teen Titans Go! #28 (04/06) and again months later in #34 (10/06). The cartoon version almost seemed coordinated with the DCU version from Teen Titans #34 (05/06)- #37 (08/06), the "One Year Later" story that immediately followed Infinite Crisis. In that story Gar has returned to the Doom Patrol and they decide to have Mento be their new leader after reassessing Caulder's people skills.

.....When the Doom Patrol eventually appeared in Batman: The Brave And The Bold #7 (09/09) the roster was Cliff, Rita, Larry, Beast Boy and The Chief. Mento isn't mentioned, but curiously although the team is wearing uniforms in the same style they used in the 1960's, the color scheme is Mento's purple and black instead of Original Period red and white. One can only assume that was done in the hopes of carrying over readership from Teen Titans Go!, where Gar has always worn those colors for some reason. The plot of the issue involves Cliff, Rita and Larry being kidnapped by the Mad Mod, who intends to cannibalize the material of their costumes (or in Cliff's case his body) to custom design a battle suit that takes advantage of the materials' adaptability to the DP's powers. The Chief, based on experience no doubt, assumes General Immortus is responsible and dispatches Gar to recruit Batman's help. The scene in which Gar finds Batman shows him swooping into the Batmobile in the form of a green bat crying, "Daddy! Daddy! I've been looking all over for you!" That line is particularly jarring to anyone who knows the personal histories of both characters, even by the standards of Gar's filterless humor. In his own life Gar watched his natural father (and mother) die, was stolen from the African king who adopted him and then was adopted by Rita and a reluctant Steve who years later tried to kill him. Batman not only watched his father (and mother) die but was himself a proxy father to at least three boys: Dick Grayson was his ward for years (for decades to readers) without ever being formally adopted; an adult Dick then stood by and watched Bruce adopt Jason Todd relatively quickly; Jason was killed shortly after that while in Bruce's care; Bruce then took in Tim Drake while Tim's own father was incapacitated, leading to complications when Tim's father recovered; and finally learned that Tim's father was murdered during Identity Crisis as a direct result of Tim's activity as Robin. And then there's Damian. Gee, Gar, why not invite Scandal Savage or Orion of the New Gods and make the adventure a 'daddy issue' trifecta?

.....The choice of Mad Mod as the villain should also be acknowledged as a nod to the animated "Teen Titans" TV show as much as the purple and black costumes. Between the cartoon and the Teen Titans Go! comic book, I can't recall him appearing anywhere else in the past decade. Having made only two outings in pre-Crisis comics, both while the Original Period Doom Patrol was being published in the sixties (the second just barely), it could be that he and the DP's roster were chosen to evoke that period, at least among older readers. Yet, I'd wager his use since being revived for animation in 2003 has caused most fans to forget his turn as a reformed supporting character in Dan Jurgens late 1990's Teen Titans comic book series. So then, is this issue an Original Period story, albeit from the Original Period of an alternate timeline? Only with that conditional 'out' could I feel comfortable saying yes. To argue in defense of that choice I should point out that neither Batman or Beast Boy mention Robin or the Teen Titans even as they're fighting a TT villain. If they had I might have reconsidered what possible analog DCU continuity period the story could have fit. There are few other clues, although there is a wink on the last page as the team are enjoying their restored uniforms. Larry says, "I've been considering a makeover. How do you think I'd look in a trenchcoat?"

.....The 2010 retro stories are next.

DP02-11 Beast Boy and Mal Duncan Part 6

.....[This post has been re-edited after May 4th, 2011 before original publication.]

.....As recounted in the Original Period reprint posts last year, Doom Patrol was one of several DC titles revived or created to run themed reprints briefly during 1973. Just prior to this the original run of Teen Titans was cancelled in the midst of an intense spate of experimentation with diversifying formats at DC. Three years later, just as the price of 32pp standard format comics was rising to 30¢ at DC they introduced two new reprint titles in their 64pp special format at 50¢ just before it was due to shrink to 48pp. Of special interest to this blog was DC Super-Stars #1 (03/76), reprinting Teen Titans stories. The cover was largely appropriated: two vignettes redrawn or reinked from the covers of the stories within; the four full-length poses (Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl and Speedy) that lined the left margin (in the same order) of every cover from #27 and #29 to #43; and the logo used from #19 to #43. There was also a blurb across the bottom announcing, "Extra-- Introducing The Teen Titans" followed by six faces: the five founding members and Lilith. And yet...

.....Between the reprinted stories is an unattributed article called "INTRODUCING THE TEEN TITANS"(N-1449). It's ostensibly narrated by the character Mr. Jupiter but probably written by editor E. Nelson Bridwell. It's only four pages of brief text pieces accompanied by appropriated spot illustrations, but... the characters profiled are the ten members of the group plus Beast Boy. There's no profile of the Russian teen Starfire or Joshua or any other character. Here's Mal and Gar's full text:

1. "Mal Duncan grew up in Hell's Corner, a tough slum district. The Titans first saw him when he protected his kid sister from young hoodlums who'd wrecked her lemonade stand. Later they befriended him and he proved he had the strength and wits to be a Teen Titan."
2. "Beast Boy (Gar Logan) was the son of a brilliant doctor. When the lad contracted a fatal disease, his father found a way to turn him into the one animal which could throw off the infection-- a Green Monkey. As a result, Gar has green skin and hair, plus the ability to turn into any kind of animal. He shared many adventures with the Doom Patrol and one with the Teen Titans."

.....Bridwell is credited with the closing text piece: "TALES OF THE TITANS" (N-1456) recounts the history of the group, noting the personnel changes on the team in chronological order and slipping in Beast Boy's one-time guest appearance, but again ignoring other potential team candidates Starfire and Joshua. Is it making too much of these filler pieces to suggest that there had been plans to put Beast Boy back into circulation with the Teen Titans as the means? The return of the Teen Titans title was still eight months off and the West Coast faction would not appear in it until a year after that when the New Doom Patrol made their debut in the revived Showcase. Bridwell did indeed have some hand in the Titans' title, but for a mere ten issues there's a surplus of editorial shifting around. The only consistent name is Jack Adler who began as Production Manager (#44-46), a position that was replaced with Vice President/Production (#47-53), also Adler. The first issue back (#44) was intended to be written by Nicholas Cuti (probably most famous as the creator of E-Man for Charlton) using a plot provided by Paul Levitz. It was eventually scripted by Bob Rozakis (retaining some of Levitz' dialogue), who stayed on for the whole series, despite also taking over for Gerry Conway's Corner on Secret Society of Super-Villains as of that series' #5(01-02/77) and sticking with his earlier gig on Batman Family.

[.....As a side note for trivia buffs: Conway himself had been editor of Super-Team Family for the first three issues when he announced on the letters' page that he was leaving that title so that Conway's Corner, his studio-within-DC, could put out SSSV. Replacing him on Super-Team Family as editor was Bridwell, who stayed for three issues and left just before Teen Titans returned.]

.....Aside from Adler in Production, there were two sets of credits regarding editorship. The nominal Editors were Julius Schwartz with Associate Editor E. Nelson Bridwell (#'s 45-50) and Jack C. Harris (who either didn't have or didn't list an assistant editor)(#'s 51-53). Rather than naming an editor, the first issue (#44) named Managing Editor Joe Orlando and Editorial Coordinator Paul Levitz. Their names disappeared for two issues but returned when Adler's position was changed to V.P. and all three of them stayed with those titles to the end. So Bridwell was only an Associate on the story that reintroduced Gar and only on the first of three issues. He might have thrown forward Gar's name at a meeting, but it could just as easily been Rozakis or Schwartz.

.....I wish I could say there was more consistency in the art than there was in edits, but the opposite was true. Only two issues (#'s 48-49) have the same penciller and inker team. There was a total of six pencillers and six inkers working in different combinations. The cover pencillers never did interiors, which was not uncommon at DC. Ernie Chua did covers to #'s 44-45 (inked by Vince Colletta) and Rich Buckler did #-s 46-53 (usually inked by Jack Abel). I am not certain which (if any) of these artists might have worked on the full page ad (L-510) that ran in Super-Team Family #7 (10-11/76) right after a reprint of Teen Titans #31(01-02/71). Most of the art from that page was shrunken and incorporated into the 'Daily Planet' motif editorial page a few weeks later (see the top left hand corner of this post). DC ran those Daily Planet pages weekly starting earlier in 1976 and that one was Volume 76, Issue 15, August 9, 1976. The ad copy that it excised from the original ad was:

".....You've seen THE TEEN TITANS as they were-- Now take a look at how they're gonna be! Robin! Speedy! Wonder Girl! Kid Flash! And introducing-- the Guardian! in "THE MAN WHO TOPPLED THE TITANS!" coming in the FIRST ISSUE of the NEW TEEN TITANS magazine! (Number 44, November-- on sale August 19th-- WATCH FOR IT!)"

.....The Daily Planet page added the second regular logo from the original run (from #19-43), even though all ten issues of the revival would use the earlier logo (from #1-15; the intervening issues-- 16, 17,18-- each had unique logos worked into the cover art). Since the Daily Planet page is essentially advertising, albeit in editorial form, why not just use the logo that would be on the newsstands a week later? After all, the editor of the Daily planet page was Bob Rozakis himself, the same person who wrote the series. It could have been a stylistic choice or a miscommunication between departments. On a practical level, the later of the two logos may be more legible after reduction, since the earlier logo utilizes a 3-D 'depth' effect (like the more famous Superman logo) that could get lost when shrunk. I don't know if anybody besides Todd Klein and myself care about these things, but the logos of comic books aren't printed in hand-crafted, stylized fonts by accident. If the fans' eyes didn't scan a sea of color for familiar shapes to pick out their favorite titles from chaotic convenience store racks in the pre-direct world of 1976, then publishers would have saved time and money by printing every series' title in the same font and in the same color on each issue.

.....The actual series ran on an irregular schedule. The cover dates were the even numbered months, plus November. The actual shipping dates were roughly three months ahead of the covers, meaning that the title was effectively bi-monthly with an extra issue for the summer in August. Some characters (Gnarrk) wouldn't appear again until Crisis, if then. Most would appear at Donna's wedding in Tales Of The Teen Titans #50 (02/85), which was cutting it close in terms of publishing if not continuity. Below is what I hope is the most accurate (to continuity) and comprehensive listing of appearances prior to Garfield chartering the NTT in 1980. Each of the Teen Titans issues will be reviewed in individual posts.

1. Detective Comics #462 (08/76) Robin appears in the conclusion of a Batman 3-parter.
2. Batman #279 (09/76) Robin appears.
3. Batman Family #7 (09-10/76) Robin appears in an Elliot S! Maggin story with Batgirl (Barbara Gordon).
4. Teen Titans #44 (11/76) Mal adopts the Jim Harper Golden Guardian costume, augmented by an exo-skeleton.
5. Batman Family #8 (11-12/76) Robin confronts Duela in a different identity.
6. Adventure Comics #446 (07-08/76) Robin makes a cameo in the Aquaman feature, calling by video-phone to locate Aqualad.
7. Teen Titans #45 (12/76) Mal defeats Azrael The Angel Of Death and is rewarded by Gabriel with a shofar. He is told to blow the horn in order to even the odds in a fight. Karen Beecher is introduced on page 5.
8. DC Super-Stars #10 (12/76) Robin and Wally appear in a story pitting Justice Leaguers against super-villains in a baseball game. If you ever hear cranky old-timers complaining that they don't understand why the Crisis reboot of 1986 was necessary, just show them this issue. Then hit them with it. Again and again and again.
9. Batman Family #9 (01-02/77) Robin confronts Duela again.
10. Teen Titans #46 (02/77) Robin brings Duela into the group. The Fiddler (from Earth-2) appears after All-Star Comics #63. When The Fiddler uses his violin's sonics to control rats and insects, Mal learns that Gabriel's horn can be used to wrest that control.
11. World's Finest Comics #243 (02/77), Batman #285 (03/77)- #286 (04/77)and Batman Family #10 (03-04/77)- #11 (05-06/77) Robin only appears. He appears in two different stories in Batman Family #11.
12. Teen Titans #47 (04/77)- #49 (08/77) After three self-contained issues, this is the first multi-issue arc and it has several concurrent plot lines. Most importantly relative to the Doom Patrol, Karen Beecher becomes Bumblebee. Initially she created the alter ego so that Mal (without his knowledge) could repel her staged attack and gain respect from his teammates. Instead, they defend Mal so fiercely that Karen is convinced that they already do respect him. Other lines include Aqualad becoming comatose due to a mysterious illness and is eventually taken to Atlantis for treatment. The team moves to a new headquarters in Farmingdale, Long Island, underneath a former restaurant which the team renovates into the nightclub they call "Gabriel's Horn". Mal wears a fan-designed Hornblower costume for one issue (#49). And weirdly, Duela is able to predict parallel crimes, claiming to have "a mental link with whomever planned" them-- that turning out to be Harvey Dent, Two-Face.
13. Batman Family #12 (07-08/77)- #15 (12/77-01/78) Robin's feature continues. Kid Flash makes a guest appearance in #14.
14. Teen Titans #50 (10/77)- #52 (12/77) This arc is the big one, the formation of Teen Titans West. Gar Logan, still called Beast Boy here, has not been used for so long that there seems to be some confusion about exactly how his powers work. In #50, when he transforms into an animal he retains a green head but his body becomes the natural color of that animal. In #51, he becomes completely green but still has a thatch of hair, even if the animal is not a mammal. The plot is needlessly confusing and centers on a villain named Mr. Esper who has managed to tap into the mental powers of the semi-retired Lilith. He uses those powers to cause chaos by levitating an ocean liner, turning a passenger train into a roller coaster and launching the Ferris building into the air, which are prodigious feats of telekinesis Lilith has never exhibited herself, before or since. Mal returns to the Guardian costume and hides from the others, including Karen, that he has lost Gabriel's horn. Aqualad returns, explaining that he must quit the group because his illness was psychosomatic and rooted in his feelings of inferiority within the Teen Titans. He stays long enough for a group photo of all fifteen combined members from both coasts.
15. Secret Society Of Super-Villains #8 (07-08/77)- #9 (09/77) and Super-Team Family #13 (10-11/77) Kid Flash guest stars. For some reason, this appearance seems to have dropped of the radar of some of the more reliable data bases. That could be because, like much of 1970's DC stories, it causes too many conflicts with post-Crisis continuity. The only reason I was able to include it here is because, by chance, I personally own some well-worn copies of all three issues.
16. Detective Comics #472 (09/77)- #474 (12/77) Robin guest stars in parts 4-6 of the Steve Englehart arc, remembered primarily for the Marshall Rogers art and the return of classic villains. #474 has a one panel cameo by Donna, calling Dick to an important meeting to take place in Teen Titans #53. There is also on that page a panel with portraits of Donna and Duela, but I'm betting that the panel of Donna on the phone by Rogers was the single reason George Pérez kept her in the red unitard for most of New Teen Titans. These stories were reprinted in the mid-80's in the Baxter paper mini-series Shadow Of The Bat (not to be confused with the 90's ongoing series). They are more readily available as the trade paperback Strange Apparitions.
17. Teen Titans #53 (02/78) The first and last page form a framing sequence in which Mal and Karen read a scrapbook containing the previously untold story of the Teen Titans' first adventure, a newly written and drawn story that makes up the rest of the book. The group started with a teaming of Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad in The Brave And The Bold #54 (06-07/64), but the name "Teen Titans" wasn't actually used until they returned in #60 (06-07/65), adding Wonder Girl along with the name and the logo they would eventually use on their own series. The story Mal and Karen are reading took place between the two and shows the boys and Speedy meeting Wonder Girl for the first time. She introduces herself as Wonder Woman's sister and claims she was sent by Hippolyta but the real story leading up to that scene would not be revealed until Donna's origin "Who Is Wonder Girl?" from New Titans #50 (12/88)- #55 (06/89). At the end of the frame sequence, the group again disbands (revealing the meaning of Donna's phone call to Dick in Detective Comics (above)). Roy tells Mal and Karen to "keep the books balanced". In lieu of a letters' page, a text page (probably by Jack C. Harris) discusses plans to use the various characters in the future. Mal and Karen were intended to appear in Secret Society Of Super-Villains, and that Bob Rozakis was supposed to be scripting it. Those plans never went forward.

.....And now, for what it's worth, the remainder of appearances prior to New Teen Titans:

1. Green Lantern #100 (01/78) Roy Harper/Speedy appears.
2. All-New Collector's Edition #C-56 ([3]/78) This was the tabloid-sized special better known as Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali. It had no month on the cover, but was advertised to ship December 12th, 1977, contemporary to March 1978 cover dated comics. The cover shows about a hundred real and fictional people drawn into the audience, including Aqualad, Kid Flash, Robin, Speedy and Wonder Girl.
3. Batman Family #16 (02-03/78)- #17 (04-05/78) Robin appears in both and with Duela and Betty Kane/Bat-Girl in #16.
4. DC Special Series #11([5]/78) Also known as Flash Spectacular and advertised for February 20th, 1978, this contains a short chapter in which Wally West graduates and the Teen Titans attend in their civilian identities: Dick, Garth, Donna, Roy, Mal and Duella.
5. Showcase #100 (05/78) Before COIE, before Secret Wars, this was a double-length one-issue story featuring nearly every character featured in the original run of Showcase (i.e., no Doom Patrol or Power Girl). That includes Hawk and Dove as well as Aqualad, Kid Flash, Robin and Wonder Girl.
6. Secret Society Of Super-Villains #12 (01/78) Robin guest stars.
7. Karate Kid # 14 (05-06/78)- #15 (07-08/78) Robin guest stars; the story continues in Kamandi, but Robin is only mentioned in recaps.
8. Batman Family #18 (06-07/78) and Batman #302 (08/78) Robin appears.
9. Batman Family #19 (08-09/78)- #20 (10-11/78) Robin appears in both and with Duela in #19.
10. Flash #265 (09/78), 266 (10/78) and 269 (01/79) Kid Flash appears.
11. World's Finest Comics #251 (06-07/78) In the Green Arrow feature there is a review of Roy's career. Roy also appears in flashbacks in #254 (12/78-01/79) and 257 (06-07/79).
12. Superman Family #191 (09-10/78)- #194 (03-04/79) In the Jimmy Olsen feature, Jimmy and the Newsboy Legion try to find the Golden Guardian (they all met during Jack Kirby's time on the series when it was called Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen.) Because the Teen Titans had the costume in storage, Mal, Karen and Roy help Jimmy retrace its path.
13. Detective Comics #482 (02-03/79) Dick is a guest star in the Batgirl feature.
14. Adventure Comics #461 (01-02/79) The Wonder Woman feature retells Donna's origin story with Roy in flashbacks.
15. Adventure Comics #461 (01-02/79)- #463 (05-06/79) Aqualad appears with Aquaman.
16. The Brave And The Bold #149 (04/79) Batman is investigating a gang recruiting teenaged runaways and enlists Dick, Donna, Wally and Roy to go undercover.
17. Detective Comics #481 (12/78-01/79)- #483 (04-05/79) These are the last Robin solo stories with Bob Rozakis scripts. Duela masquerades as the Card Queen.
18. Flash #277 (09/79) Wally appears.
19. Detective Comics #484 (06-07/79)- #488 (02-03/80) Robin solo stories scripted by Jack C. Harris begin.
20. Wonder Woman #265 (03/80)- 266 (04/80) When Mr. Jupiter appears to have been murdered (it turns out to be a trick), Donna tries to investigate.
21. World's Finest Comics #262 (04-05/80) and #264 (08-09/80) Aqualad appears.

.....And then one day DC Comics Presents seemed thicker than usual.

.....I'd like to say "...and that's it.", but of course things like this are never really over. There are always new stories being retroactively fit into earlier continuity, always minor cameos that escaped attention when lists like this are compiled and always little nuggets like this leaking out: although Mal and Karen didn't make it into SSSV, the throwaway villain Sizematic (from the Two-Face story in Teen Titans #'s 47-49) did, albeit in the unpublished issues #16 and 17. Also, when Hawk and Dove later appeared in The Brave And The Bold #181 (12/81) in a story written by Alan Brennart, they appeared to have aged considerably more than their former teammates concurrently appearing in New Teen Titans, by then a year into that series. As though to hammer home the point, the story title was a lyric from the Simon and Garfunkel song "Hazy Shade Of Winter", which not only dates back to their original series, but is a song about aging. They didn't appear again until Donna's wedding in Tales Of The Teen Titans #50 (02/85), where the continuity gaffe became the basis of an inside joke. On page 30 Donna introduces her new husband Terry to Hank and Don. Terry, who's aware of Donna's super-heroine activity, says, "Donna's often spoken about you, too. Funny, I got the impression you were older." Hank replies, "Yeah, lately everyone's been saying that." Mal and Karen at least paint a warmer picture. Talking with Donna, Terry and Lilith they seem happy to have put the Guardian and Bumblebee identities behind them after getting married themselves. Karen's taken up cooking and Mal had just published his first book. Mal then mentions to Lilith that he was sorry about Gnarrk, but the details of that go unsaid. It does indicate that however inactive they may have been that they weren't completely out of touch.

.....Speaking of out of touch, this blog has been buried in Teen Titans minutiae to establish background for Mal Duncan and Karen Beecher. Just as it reached the stories that brought them together, the current Doom Patrol series has been cancelled before Vox could be brought back into it. I'm going to have to touch on some of the other periods before going over the details of their Teen Titans appearances. And for once I'm throwing the floor open to suggestions. I have some seriously overdue music blogs to update. Another post for May is nearly complete here. After that? Without a current series, I'm open to suggestions. Any cryptic references from the past forty years you just haven't managed to decode? Any obscure characters you just can't place? Continuity qualms? Creator credit quandaries? If you leave a comment, it will alert me. That's intended for screening purposes, but it also grabs my attention, even after this post has aged. I'll know within 24 hours and I can respond much quicker than I can post something like the monster above. And, as always, if you have any additions or corrections regarding that monster then the comments section is an appropriate space for those as well. Enjoy.

DP02-10 Teen Titans solo appendix 1973-1976

.....For readers, the length of time between the demise of the Doom Patrol (the first time) and the return of Robotman for the New Doom Patrol was nine years. According to narration at the time it was "mere months". By contrast, the discorporation of the Teen Titans within that same time lasted just under four years for readers but took two years for the characters. Of course, it's generally accepted that fantasy heroes don't age as we do. That's been a long-forgiven conceit that allows generations to share common characters and icons rather than regularly replacing them like professional athletes. But the huge disparity between the two gaps probably has less to do with retroactively changing the relative order of the events and everything to do with the relative interim activity of the principles. The latter half of the Teen Titans roster (Hawk, Dove, Lilith, Mal and Gnarrk) may have been no more visible than the presumed-dead Doom Patrol, but the original five (Aqualad, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Speedy and especially Robin) kept busy individually.

.....Visibility, it's helpful to remember, is not the same as activity. Case in point: Adventure Comics #416 (05/72) was part of the DC 100-Page Super Spectacular series of specials (#DC-10, to be exact). It had an all-female theme with a new cover including Wonder Girl and Lilith, the only female Teen Titans. Trouble is, they didn't appear in any of the stories. In a way it was the opposite of Mal's dilemma of rarely appearing on the cover of Teen Titans. Robin didn't have either problem after the title folded. Although no longer a regular supporting character in World's Finest Comics as he had been in the 1950's and 1960's, Robin continued to appear periodically with Batman and in solo features in both Batman and Detective Comics and eventually Batman Family as a lead, alternating and teaming with Batgirl. He even made a (presumably) non-continuity appearance in Plop! #5 (05-06/75). He had already become a Mego figure as well, something the other four original members wouldn't experience until the ten-issue revival was under way. That could be because DC took only tentative steps to see if they, individually, could be reintegrated into existing titles.

1. Flash #220 (02-03/73)- 221 (04-05/73) No longer in solo stories, Kid Flash becomes a guest star for Uncle Barry.
2. Wonder Woman #209 (12/73-01/74) Donna becomes inserted into a remake of a Golden Age story originally written with a teen-aged Diana. As with anything concerning Donna, whatever tenuous claim this story may have to canon is up for endless debate.
3. Action Comics #436 (06/74) Roy Harper appears in the Green Arrow back-up feature.
4. Adventure Comics #436 (11-12/74) Aqualad appears in the Aquaman back-up feature.
5. Justice League Of America #114 (11-12/74) Kid Flash helps the JLA with a telethon, answering phones in exactly one panel. There's no dialogue and no acknowledgement from the other characters.
6. Justice League Of America #116 (03/75)- 117 (04/75) Charlie Parker becomes Golden Eagle. This was his first appearance; his only other pre-Crisis appearances were the three-issue "Teen Titans West" arc in the revival and Donna's wedding in 1985.
7. Flash #232 (03-04/75) and #239 (02/76)- #240 (03/76) Kid Flash is a supporting character in the main feature, and in #232 he's also the topic of a two-page article narrated by the Flash.
8. Adventure Comics #446 (07-08/76)- #452 (07-08/77) Aqualad drops into the Aquaman feature, which replaced The Spectre as the lead in #441. When Aquaman moves back into his own title, Superboy becomes the lead feature while his own series is retitled [Giant] Superboy And The Legion Of Super-Heroes. An Aqualad origin story written by Paul Kupperberg becomes the first back-up feature, in Adventure Comics #453 (09-10/77)- #455 (01-02/78). At the time Kupperberg was also writing a three part Mera back-up feature in the Aquaman title before taking over the main feature from David Michelinie just before cancellation. He worked in Aqualad for the last two issues, Aquaman #62 (06-07/78)- 63 (08-09/78). Despite being published after the end of the revived Teen Titans series, these stories are thought to occur before the team reunites. In fact, there's a scene in Adventure Comics #446 where Robin calls Aquaman in order to locate Garth, unaware that Garth and Tula are working undercover. Robin doesn't mention his reason for calling and it would be four months until readers would see the team reunite, sans Garth at first.
9. Batman Family #6 (07-08/76) The first appearance of the character who came to be known as Duela Dent, Joker's Daughter or Harlequin (and other names and disguises) came shortly before the Teen Titans series returned. Both were written by Bob Rozakis and he soon brought her into the group.

.....For what would eventually be a team of fifteen characters, that's not much of a showing for four years. Gar Logan's and Mal Duncan's absences here don't seem so dramatic. They're no more absent than Lilith or Hawk and Dove. Or Gnarrk. Robin's presence, had it been documented here, would have nearly tripled that list. There also seemed little point in trying to ascertain the chronology for the appearances of Dick and Roy's Earth-2 counterparts:

1. Adventure Comics #438 (03-04/75)- #443 (01-02/75) An unused 1940's script for a Seven Soldiers of Victory story is newly drawn by various artists. Earth-2 Speedy appears with Green Arrow in the first and last chapters and are the focus in #439 (05-06/75).
2. Justice League Of America #123 (10/75)- #124 (11/75) The adult Earth-2 Robin is part of the annual JLA/JSA Crisis, this one leading into the return of a JSA series with All-Star Comics #58 (01-02/76)- #74 (09-10/78), continuing after the Implosion in Adventure Comics.

.....In addition to the ten characters listed in the first paragraph and the two introduced in the above checklist (Golden Eagle and Duela), the remaining three characters who would have been the focus of this were: Betty Kane (the other Bat-Girl, not Barbara Gordon), who had not been seen since before the Teen Titans formed in 1964; Gar (Beast Boy), who had not been seen since before the Doom Patrol 'died' (technically, he wasn't in the last issue); and Karen Beecher (Bumblebee), who would be introduced in the revival. Next, Mal and Gar return in Part 6.

DP02-09 Teen Titans reprint index 1972-1982

.....For one year from mid-1971 to mid-1972 DC comics did not publish comics in the standard 32-page length they had been using for nearly two decades. Their new standard became 48 pages at 25¢, known as the "Bigger and Better" format. Until then, that had been the price point of their 64-page "Giant" format, which then became 35¢ for its last four issues. While those four issues played out in the last half of 1971, three issues of a new title in a new format were published. DC 100 Page Super Spectacular was actually 96pp @ 50¢. By including the covers in the count, a nice round number could lend itself to marketing. As 1971 ended, the '100-page' series ceased to be a title per se and instead replaced the 64-page Giant special format for seven monthly issues. That ended temporarily when the "Bigger and Better" experiment ended, then it returned as a monthly title for a year as 1973 began. In 1974 it became a general format again, exploding to seven titles a month for a year.

.....The reason I bring all this up is because the time between the cancellation of the Original Period Doom Patrol series and the introduction of the New Doom Patrol in Showcase (when this sudden experimentation with formats took place) was a growth period in comics as a hobby. Monstrous print runs for a handful of titles each at several publishers gave way to smaller runs for an avalanche of titles at a shrinking number of publishers. Even with more titles, smaller print runs meant smaller profit margins for new material and both Marvel and DC made full use of the lower production costs of reprints. Dell and Tower were already ghosts and in ten years Charlton, Atlas/Seaboard, Harvey, Fawcett, Gilbert and Gold Key would be gone or going. Marvel and DC increasingly found themselves competing only with Archie and undergrounds, usually perceived as serving different markets and therefore more symbiotic than competitive. Marvel and DC in the early 1970's began slowly reducing non-super-hero and/or non-adventure stories. First went funny animals, then teen humor, then romance, then westerns, then war and finally, reluctantly, horror. Yet, this was also the time during which Robert M. Overstreet marketed the first commercially available comic book price guide. The first national scale comic book conventions were held. The direct market was created, eventually yielding direct-only titles by the early 1980's. These were to be sold in existing stores devoted to the hobby of reading and collecting comic books. This strongly suggests that the ratio of casual readers to hobbyists nearly reversed and that the hobbyists favored super-heroes. This meant packaging greater quantities of super-heroes (and in the early 70's, barbarian adventure) and much of those expanded formats at DC in the first half of the decade were filled out with reprints pulled out of three decades of back catalog. Even relatively new characters like Hawk & Dove and The Creeper saw their Showcase debuts reprinted even though they had no title or even feature of their own at the time.

.....I've already examined Doom Patrol reprints in three DP01-AR posts (February 8-10, 2010) in detail and a neat one-page post (February 14, 2010) with the basics for anyone who'd like a printable checklist. Of course, the entire series has been reprinted in both the Archive and "Showcase Presents..." formats. Teen Titans, roughly the same length, seems to have stalled as of this writing. There was one Archive of the original series and two "Showcase Presents..." (with a third necessary to include the revival and Hawk And Dove). By comparison, New Teen Titans has been reprinted in four Archives and a spattering of color paperbacks. When trying to research the visibility of Beast Boy and Mal Duncan during the nearly twenty years between the first and second Doom Patrol titles, their absence from reprints of Teen Titans stories was glaring. The only appearance of Gar in the original run (#6) has only been reprinted in bound volumes, to my knowledge. The revival issues have never been reprinted, meaning that Karen Beecher/Bumblebee doesn't show up on this list at all. Her other half, Mal Duncan, appears exactly once. That appearance is flagged accordingly.

1. Action Comics #409 (02/72)- 410 (03/72) Reprints Teen Titans #4 (07-08/66), split into two parts.
2. Superboy #185 [aka DC 100-Page Super Spectacular #DC-12] (05/72) Reprints The Brave And The Bold #60 (06-07/65), their second appearance.
3. [DC] 100-Page Super Spectacular #DC-21 [Superboy-themed issue, but published outside his title's numbering, unlike the issue above] Reprints The Brave And The Bold #54 (06-07/64), their first appearance.
4. The Brave And The Bold #114 (08-09/74) Reprints Teen Titans #5 (09-10/66).
5. The Brave And The Bold #116 (12/74-01/75) Reprints Teen Titans #16 (07-08/68).
6. Limited Collectors' Edition #C-34 (02-03/75) [this is a tabloid-sized "Christmas With The Super-Heroes"] Reprints Teen Titans #13 (01-02/68). This is missing page 2, with contemporary references to the Batman TV show, and alters some narration, but extends the art in some panels. Nick Cardy also does the ensemble cover with the Teen Titans (in their 1960's costumes) in the front and in portraits on the back.
7. Super-Team Family #1 (10-11/75) Reprints Teen Titans #19 (01-02/69) and has a new ensemble cover by Dick Giordano.
8. DC Super-Stars #1 (03/76) Reprints Teen Titans #11 (09-10/67) and #24 (11-12/69) plus five new pages combining text and spot illustrations. They discuss Gar and Mal, so they'll be covered in the next post.
9. DC Super-Stars #7 (09/76) Reprints the Aqualad back-up story from Teen Titans #30 (11-12/70)
10. [Mal appears] Super-Team Family #7 (10-11/76) Reprints Teen Titans #31 (01-02/71), and they also appear in part of a new composite cover by Ernie Chan and Vince Colletta. In this same issue is a full-page ad with original art announcing the revived series beginning the next month.

.....Finally, with a month to go before he returns with the new series Mal Duncan (and Lilith, come to think of it) shows up in one of the almost twice-annual sporadic reprints that had kept his teammates in the public eye. After the 1978 DC Implosion most of the publisher's larger page-count titles were anthologies of new material. Beginning in 1979 a new line of digest format titles emerged (possibly to explore new markets) which were primarily or entirely reprint material. The format was discontinued after Crisis in 1986 as DC began rewriting a new, coherent and consolidated history and wanted to be extremely selective about reprinting old stories lest they undermine the new continuity before it even had a chance to assert itself. Mal wasn't in these, either:

1. The Best Of DC #3 (01-02/80) Reprints Teen Titans #18 (11-12/68).
2. DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #5 (11-12/80) Reprints the 8-page "THE ORIGIN OF WONDER GIRL" from Teen Titans #22 (07-08/69).
3. The Best Of DC #18 (11/81) This was an all-Teen Titans issue with new front and back covers by George Pérez and an original New Teen Titans story by Marv Wolfman and Carmine Infantino. The rest reprinted Teen Titans #20 (03-04/69), #21 (05-06/69), #22 (07-08/69) [except for the story reprinted the previous year] and #24 (11-12/69).
4. The Best Of DC #22 (03/82) Reprints Teen Titans #13 (01-02/68).

.....That last story continued to be reprinted in various Christmas collections over the years. A dozen issues in a decade and only one story from Mal's tenure. Better news in Part 6.

DP02-08 Beast Boy and Mal Duncan Part 5

.....We've reached 1971. Beast Boy and the Doom Patrol will remain unseen for six years (Gar reappears in Part 6). Mal Duncan has been asked to join a covert, government sponsored civic works program run by Mr. Jupiter, only to learn that he has become the only member of the Teen Titans without a super power. The team that created him has left the book and been replaced by industry veterans Murray Boltinoff (editor), Bob Haney (writer) and George Tuska (pencils). Also at this time only Robin and Kid Flash appear in back up features in titles for the characters from whom they were derived (Robin regularly in Batman and Kid Flash sporadically in Flash).

.....In the previous two years, the Teen Titans' roster had doubled from five (Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Wonder Girl and alternate Speedy) to ten (Hawk and Dove, Lilith, Mal and Gnarrk). With only ten issues left in the original run only Hawk and Dove leave until the revival a few years later. The other eight would appear in combinations of four to six both in the main title and guest appearances, such as the Brave And The Bold issue that closed Part 4. This juggling of the cast may keep everyone visible but it also makes it difficult to plan continuing stories. The choice of returning Bob Haney to scripts made this approach a more workable option, given his predilection for short, self-contained stories. That talent was what made him a longtime favorite on The Brave And The Bold, where the cast is (a) always small and (b) changes every issue. Unfortunately, the irregularity of the cast coupled with a bi-monthly schedule made character development next to impossible. And of course, regardless of which characters actually star in any given issue, portraits of Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl and Speedy appear on the cover in the margin along the spine.

1. Teen Titans #34 (07-08/71) Robin, Wonder Girl, Speedy, Lilith and Mal appear. The last 15¢ issue.
2. [No Mal] Robin appears in the landmark Batman #232 (06/71). Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams, who have been working on Green Lantern/Green Arrow for about a year, begin a truly killer residence. It is also the last 15¢ issue. After this first story (and #237) Robin kept to his Mike Friedrich back-up feature, with the next arc being #234 (08/71)- 236 (11/71).
3. [No Mal] Justice League Of America #91 (08/71)- #92 (09/71) This annual cross-over between the JLA and JSA has a long overdue chat between Robin and the adult Robin of Earth-2. The Unofficial Guide to the DC Universe (link on the left margin) places this story after the last of the Mike Friedrich-scripted Robin stories in Batman. Friedrich scripted this story as well and introduces the teen Earth-1 Robin by saying that he was responding to a report overheard in the story from Batman #234, above. There is no such scene anywhere in the three-parter, so the DCUGuide chronology may not be off after all. Although there's no Mal here, this story is still worth mentioning because it introduces a costume change. When Earth-1 Robin's costume is shredded while on Earth-2, his adult counterpart offers him one "fashioned by a costume-maker I know-- Neal Adams!". This is the original version of the costume eventually worn in the late 70's.
4. World's Finest Comics #205 (09/71) Mort Weisinger's departure dropped several titles into Julius Schwartz' lap, including this one. In his two years as editor, #198 (11/70)- #214 (10-11/72), Schwartz tried to shake up the tired Superman/Batman formula by pairing Superman with other characters (as Kashdan and Boltinoff used Batman in The Brave And The Bold). With Steve Skeates scripting, he uses the five teammates who appeared in all five of the Teen Titans issues he scripted: Lilith, Mal, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl and Speedy. Mal even makes the cover... drawn by Neal Adams!
5. [No Mal] At about this time Speedy (as Roy Harper) is the focus of the famous anti-heroin story in Green Lantern/Green Arrow # 85 (08-09/71)- #86 (10/11/71), but because the events of that story are not reflected in Teen Titans they are generally assumed to take place after the title is cancelled.
6. Teen Titans #35 (09-10/71)- #36(11-12/71) The "Bigger and Better" format is adapted. The standard format of 32 interior pages ('guts') is expanded by 50% for 25¢ for all DC comics for one year. (The only exceptions are oddities, such as digests, magazines and specials with 64 or more pages.) While some issues carry blurbs announcing "48 pages" and later ones announcing "52 big pages, don't take less", they are all the same page count. The later ones merely count the covers as four pages. The only two issues I've mentioned so far here not in this format are the ones I've noted were 15¢. The additional pages were usually filled with some combination of original back-up features (often giving a solo story to a supporting character) and random reprints. In this case, Mal gets a solo story. While Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Speedy and Lilith go to Italy with Mr. Jupiter for the two-parter in the lead stories, the same creative team gives us "A TITAN IS BORN", a seven page Mal story in #35. In it, he remains in the states and faces The Gargoyle, an extradimensional menace that has escaped from the limbo in which Robin imprisoned him in issue #14 (03-04/68). That issue, the Mal short here and the final issue of the revival, #53 (02/78), form the basis of the Secret Origins Annual #3 (1989). Plotted and written by George Pérez, the 66-page story reveals that The Antithesis was the force behind the Gargoyle's attacks on the Teen Titans and that, in the post-Crisis continuity, he took the opportunity while Mal was knocked unconscious to enter a program into the computers in Mr. Jupiter's facility. The program included the means to breach dimensions and was planted in the hope that it would be discovered, tested and eventually used by someone who would accidentally breach The Antithesis' prison. About two years later (in continuity; five years in publishing) Karen Beecher built a sonic tool/weapon called the Gabriel's Horn using the Teen Titan's computer's so that Mal would have more resources during the team's battles. The Antithesis program was one of those incorporated into the design of the horn, meaning that the Titans' Lair was using Mr. Jupiter's equipment until the revival in 1976. In those actual issues, the pre-Crisis continuity had it that Mal was given a shofar, not a mechanical device, by the angel Gabriel as a reward for defeating Azrael, the Angel of Death in combat in issue #45 (12/76). (More on that in Part 6.) #36 has the first chapter of Lilith's origin story and a three page fragment of an Aqualad story that was probably intended for the recently cancelled Aquaman title since it was written by Skeates, drawn by Aparo and edited by Giordano. Two pages of an Aquaman story (with a different artist) had already appeared in Super DC Giant #S-26 (07-08/71), buried amid Aquaman reprints.
7. [No Mal] Flash #211 (12/71) Wally has a back-up feature.
8. [No Mal] Batman #237 (12/71) Robin appears in the lead feature.
9. Teen Titans #37 (01-02/72) Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Speedy, Lilith and Mal get in the middle of a foreign war and fight the Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse. The only back-up is a reprint.
10. [No Mal] The Brave And The Bold #100 (02-03/72) Robin guests with Green Lantern and Green Arrow. This must take place mid way through the O'Neil and Adams GL/GA stories, although that title was one issue from cancellation when this came out.
11. Teen Titans #38 (03-04/72) Robin, Wonder Girl, Lilith and Mal. In what must rank among the creepiest of plot ideas, Mr. Jupiter and Lilith plot to induce hallucinations in the other three members to force them to confront their fears. Mal's, for the record, is agoraphobia (a fear of open spaces), curiously not a problem when he and Kid Flash were trapped in prehistory in #'s 32-33 or on a battlefield in the previous issue. In Wonder Girl's hallucination she calls herself Donna Drake and goes undercover in male drag. The back-ups include the second chapter of Lilith's origin and some reprints. Mal's on the cover.
12. [No Mal] Batman #239 (02/72)- #242 (06/72) Robin back-up features. Kid Flash (#241) and Lilith (#241-242) guest star in this four part story. After this, the JLA/JSA story with both Robins (mentioned above) is presumed to take place.
13. Teen Titans #39 (05-06/72) Gnarrk returns. Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Speedy, Lilith and Mal take him on an assignment to the southwest. Bizarrely, Wonder Girl is called "Donna Drake", the name she used in her dream in #38. Thankfully, that mistake doesn't need to be explained, since this self contained story would be stricken from continuity by the events in New Titans #56 (07/89), which repositions Gnarrk's first appearance between the end of this series' revival and the beginning of New Teen Titans.
14. The Brave And The Bold #102 (06-07/72) Another Haney script teaming Batman with Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Speedy and Mal. The back-up reprint is the Robot-man story spliced together from two different Doom Patrol back-up stories. (see the post DP01-AR1 Original Period reprints)
15. [No Mal] Flash #216 (06/72) The last Skeates back-up feature for Wally. This is also the last "Bigger and Better" format comic on this list. After this DC's standard format reverts to 32pp of 'guts', but at the new price of 20¢.
16. Teen Titans #40 (07-08/72) Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Speedy, Mal and guest star Aqualad. Art Saaf takes over the pencils from George Tuska. Saaf was an industry veteran from the early 1940's who had been doing romance and war comics for DC since the late 60's. He continues until the end of the original run with Cardy continuing to ink. Mal technically appears on the cover, but farthest in the background and possibly only because the Titans are all in chains.
17. [No Mal] Batman #244 (09/72) Elliot S![sic] Maggin takes over scripting the Robin back-ups. DCUGuide gives an odd order to Robin's appearances in the latter half of 1972: After this, Teen Titans #41(main story), then Batman #243(main story), #245(back-up), Teen Titans #42 and Batman #246(main story).
18. Teen Titans #41 (09-10/72) Robin, Wonder Girl, Speedy and Mal only. Mal plays a pivotal role in yet another supernatural story, but only due to his resemblance to a pre-Civil War slave. If that weren't bad enough, he still doesn't get on the cover despite being central to the plot and despite the fact that Kid Flash (who does not appear in this story or the back-up) is both on the left margin as usual and in the scene from the story depicted on the cover. The back-up story is the third chapter in Lilith's origin.
19. [No Mal] Batman #243 (08/72) with Robin in the main story and #245 (10/72) with Robin solo in the back-up feature.
20. [No Mal] Justice League Of America #100 (08/72)- 102 (10/72) This year's JLA/JSA Crisis reintroduces the Golden Age Seven Soldiers of Victory, including the Earth-2 Roy Harper. This story may have been three years in the making. The SSoV were the subject of one of the last of DC's old Fact Files in, among other places, Binky's Buddies #4(07-08/69) and reprinted in DC Special #5 (10-12/69). They were also part of four pages of new pin-ups and text in the otherwise all-reprint Justice League Of America #76 (11-12/69). This Roy Harper/Speedy is no relation to the Earth-1 Roy.
21. Teen Titans #42 (11-12/72) Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Speedy, Lilith and Mal. All the Teen Titans, including Mal, make the cover. They're tiny and with their backs to the reader, but they're all there. This is Mal's last appearance for a while.
22. [No Mal] Batman #246 (12/72) Robin appears in the main story.
23. [No Mal] Teen Titans #43 (01-02/73) Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Speedy and Lilith. The events of this story are cited in the Secret Origins Annual #3(1989) by Dick (by then Nightwing) as the reasons for the Teen Titans splitting and Mal's absence as the reason he maintained the Titan's Lair until the series resumed. Dick's reasoning was that Mal was the only one not disillusioned when they failed to prevent an old man from killing a supernatural being masquerading as his dead grandson. The members disagreed as to whether all life, even unnatural ones, required their protection. The fourth chapter of Lilith's origin story is the back-up feature. All four parts take place before her first appearance in issue #25.
24. At this point the O'Neil and Adams GL/GA stories with Roy take place.

.....That's it for Part 5. Part 6 will be entirely about the revival, although I may precede that with an appendix on the intervening presence of the Teen Titans, individually or in reprint form. As always, if there's any omissions or outright mistakes please use the comment area. With all those numbers there could be some typos in there, you never know. Also, if you've read any of these stories recently and can cite reasons why the chronology or continuity should be otherwise, that's helpful, too, but with the tendency at this time to rely on self-contained stories that's less likely.