The New Teen Titans #13, #14 and #15

One of my all time favorite Silver Age DC Comic Book titles is The Doom Patrol.

DC Comics decided to kill off all the members of The Doom Patrol back in the Silver Age.  It was a bold move at the time. The Patrol sacrificed their lives to save thousands.

For a number of years no Doom Patrol could be found, until November 1981 in issue issues 13, 14 and 15 of The New Teen Titans by George Perez, and Marv Wolfman.

In the story Garth (Beast Boy) searches for any surviving Doom Patrol members.  He discovers Cliff Steele (Robotman) stacked to a tree in a jungle.

From there things kick into high gear as The New Teen Titans get involved and come face-to-face with some of the Doom Patrol’s old enemies and an old enemies of their own.

As good as the New Teen Titans storylines had been and the quality of Perez’s artwork was beginning with issue #13 things jumped into high gear.

In my opinion issue’s 13, 14 and 15 marked a turning point in the quality of the stories and art of The New Teen Titans.

Secure in the popularity of The New Teen Titans’ title and confident in their ability to tell interesting stories complemented by great art, the team of Perez and Wolfman went at it full speed.

From that point on the stories became bolder, more relevant and no longer relying exclusively on fisticuffs but more on good storytelling with fleshed out characters and situations.

The creative team delved into what made The Teen Titans the team they were.

Each member was fully realized, as were their antagonists.

The New Teen Titans continued to grow in popularity and in turn the DC Universe as a whole changed.  No longer was DC Comics the ‘corporate’ publisher.  Instead it took on a new, young and fresh vitality that echoed in all of its titles.  

DC began to take chances and it turned out some of the most spectacular successes of its long printing history.

And all of this is credited to a small group of teenagers who dared to challenge the status quo.