Graduation Day for Geoff Johns

Wizard's Ben Morse reports: "As he prepares to depart Teen Titans, Geoff Johns explains why he’s leaving as he remembers favorite moments and characters, discusses the stories that never were, and talks about how if Superboy hadn’t died things might have ended differently."

Geoff Johns: "With “One Year Later,” we had just lost Superboy and Kid Flash, so that was something [artist] Tony [Daniel] and I talked about a lot at the time. Superboy was my favorite character in the Titans; I spent the majority of those first two years focusing on him and his relationships with Robin and Wonder Girl. I asked myself if I could work on the book without Superboy, if it was possible, and the only reason I could is because I was working with Tony. We sat down and asked ourselves if without Superboy and Kid Flash, two of the most popular characters on the team, was there a way to do this book and have fun on it? It was a big decision. I didn’t want to stay on the book if it wasn’t going to be fun. What happened is we started to talk about other characters and that’s where Ravager first came about, and Kid Devil, and Miss Martian, and Zatara and all these new characters. As we got more and more into detail on Kid Devil and Ravager, we started to realize those would be really fun characters to write. I wanted a ton of mysteries introduced in #34, our first “One Year Later” issue, so that’s what we were shooting for. It was a great energizer for us as it led us to all these different stories, like seeing the Doom Patrol and thinking they’re a great team and realizing maybe they’re not, realizing maybe it’s okay not to be perfect and that it will take time to rebuild this team. I really felt like we were doing the next step of Teen Titans and that’s why I stayed—I stayed because I felt like we had stories to tell. "

"I'm leaving now because I feel like “Titans East” is going to be a good story arc, a good place to leave, and because Tony is leaving. I could stay until issue #50, but would it be the absolute best book I could write? I don’t know, maybe it would be, but it’s like when I left Flash: They told me they were only doing five more issues of [the series] and asked if I wanted to stay, but I said no because I’d just be staying to stay. If Tony was staying until #50 and I felt it was good for the book and for the characters, I would have stayed, but I just felt like it was the right time to go. There’s no reason to stay just to hit a number. I left Hawkman after “Black Reign” because it was a really good storyline and because [artist] Rags [Morales] was leaving and he’s the best Hawkman artist there is. I couldn’t make the book any better. Ultimately, that’s what motivates me when I leave books. I like to stay on books for a long time, but this is it."

Read the full interview here.