Dan Didio Titans Answer

Dan Didio talks Titans in his 20 Questions segment. But he mostly talks about the Avengers. I'm not sure he truly answered the question, but here it is...

From Newsarama's bi-weekly “20 Answers, One Question” with DC Universe Executive Editor Dan Didio...

2. Let’s get into the larger plan for the Teen Titans and the larger Titans franchise. March sees the debut of the new Teen Titans lineup, which looks interesting in a “Let’s bring in the new guys” way. Since the Teen Titans have been in that mode a lot recently, let’s talk about that first – fan expectation and desire versus what you see as good story and shaking things up. Judging by feedback, at least by what we see at Newsarama, if Teen Titans fans had their way, any version of the team would have Robin, Wonder Girl, a Flash, and probably Superboy in it. This lineup doesn’t have that at all. What’s the thinking when you take a chance like that?

DD: The hope is that we’re telling stories that are exciting, and people are buying in to the Teen Titans franchise. The good thing is that when you have characters like Blue Beetle, Wonder Girl, Red Devil, Miss Martian and others that inhabit the world of the DC Universe, there’s no place else to see them other than the pages of Teen Titans. So we can take a lot of dramatic, storytelling chances with them and we can show a lot of things happening to them, without having to coordinate it through several books.

When characters like Robin or Kid Flash are not available at the moment, this gives us the chance to let these other characters open up, tell more story with them, and hopefully develop the same level of fanbase that Robin, Kid Flash and all the others did on their own terms. What happens is if those characters from the team’s other eras do return to the story, we can bring new readers back in, but also have the potential to spin off some of these other characters, if we’ve been successful in building a fanbase for them.

I hate to say it, and it gets me in trouble, but I have to use my Marvel reference with this one again – from what I understand and what I’ve read, Avengers, with Iron Man, Hulk and Thor wasn’t nearly as possible as it was when they introduced the team of Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. They were supporting characters at best at the time, and they were all considered villains, but they came into the Avengers team, and because they weren’t appearing anywhere else, they were able to tell these incredible stories with them that caught everyone’s interest, and the book really took off at that point.

What I always hope, and what’s always the hope, is that we can take some of our supporting cast members and be able to tell strong, compelling stories with them, and hopefully people will get as excited about them as they did with the characters as they did with those in Avengers, years ago. What we’re seeing more and more, and this isn’t a surprise to anyone, is that it’s getting harder and harder to introduce a character in their own solo book or series if they don’t get the sampling that we hope for from readers. But if we start them, or put them in a series which we know has a pre-sold quality like Teen Titans of Justice League, the hope is that the people who buy Teen Titans and Justice League will read these books, enjoy these characters, and want to see more with them, even if it’s outside of those series. That’s what we’re always striving for.