Terry Long D.O.A?
Titans Hunt editor Jonathan Peterson: "Donna Troy... okay, another one I wanted to see stay. Though I was mad Marv had married her off. I wanted her hubbie [Terry Long] to go. Personally, I thought the hubbie was a whiner. He needed to be upgraded or tossed out. yeah, so he was always on the block [laughs]. Month to month we kept running a vote saying "Should we kill him now? He's really annoying me this month!"
Peterson on the Total Chaos storyline: "The whole thrust of that story was, “I’m going to kill Terry Long if it’s the last thing I do.” [laughs] I wanted to off him in issue # 100, and “Total Chaos” would be the beginning of that."
[...] "Remember when I said I wanted Raven to go bad for a year or two? That was one of the things. We had some sort of Rube Goldberg thing. Raven would be involved in the death of Terry, but she wouldn’t put her fist through him and directly kill him, because ultimately we did want Raven to become good again and be back in the group, so we didn’t want too much blood on her hands."
"I thought that was a good way to get Terry out of the mix, because the other character I wanted to push forward was Donna Troy. I thought she was being under-utilized. She was assertive, yet always deferred to Dick. Helpful, yet not central to the story. I remember Tom Grummett redesigned her costume; I wanted to get her back to being a hot single woman that could kick ass. I remember always giving Marv grief, “Why the hell would Donna pick Terry?” [laughs] “Of all the guys in DC Universe, she picks him?” So part of the “Total Chaos” story would lead to the wedding, but would also redefine Donna."
Donna Troy's Unused Costume - and Keeping Her Powers
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Troia's unused costume design by Tom Grummett. |
Donna Troy was not originally going to lose her powers at the end of TOTAL CHAOS; From the letters' page of #99: "Waaay back when, before "Total Chaos" was even near completion, it was our intention to basically give Troia a new costume at the story's end. That costume, as designed by Tom Grummett, is what found its way into DC'S house ads, the Titans mobile, Cosmic Cards series, etc. But as the tale of Lord Chaos unfolded, things started to move in a different direction. and the decision was made to de-power Donna Troy. "
"That's not to say that her powers are gone forever, but that is the situation for the present. Still, we have no intention of letting Donna fade into the woodwork. Donna is a fighter. She's a hero. And she's just as important to the Titans Universe without powers as she was with them. She's part of the family and will not be neglected, I promise. For more on her development, as both a non-super-powered Titan and a mother, check out current issues of TEAM TITANS."
Peterson on depowered Donna: "That was never part of my plan. That wasn’t what I intended, at least. At issue 100, I wanted Nightwing and Starfire to be married and go off for a while, and my idea was that Donna would take over the group. So rather than being subservient - which never made sense to me since Donna was this Amazon - let’s make her more assertive. She’ll have room to breathe and take charge."
"Then when Dick comes back, there would be a butting of heads. Donna would be like, “Hey, I’ve finally come into my own. Don’t think I’m giving it up so easily,” and by that time we’d have my alternate-reality younger Teen Titans running around in need of mentors, but the mentors would be bickering. That would play into Hybrid. The Teen Titans would be like, “Hmm. We’re supposed to take our lead from them, but they sure do argue a lot,” and the Hybrid would be whispering in their ear, “Well, why do you think we’re off on our own?” That would give it more of the X-Men vibe, the idea of being a teenager and feeling lost, and you’re not sure who you can turn to."
Aqualad Sleeping With Da Fishes?
Titans Hunt editor Jonathan Peterson: "As for Aqualad, no, I wanted to keep him as well. He was a close call, though. In terms of killing a major side character, we did come close to axing him and Jericho, just to give things more weight."
Nightwing & Starfire: Married For Real
Titans Hunt editor Jonathan Peterson: "We actually even knew one step further. We were actually ultimately building to New Titans #100, which was two steps beyond. Phase One was “Titans Hunt.” We kill Jericho, get a real Wildebeest and some other new characters like Pantha. Phase Two is dealing with the idea [that] they are mature. Let’s make the New Titans kick-ass adults. That was when I turned to Art as the lynchpin, to do a Nightwing book. As part of that, I wanted to push the Dick and Kory romance along. I thought that had gotten too stale. I mean, it was just out there, but not really going anywhere. So to me, it was like telling Nightwing and Kory, “Crap or get off the pot.” [laughs] We wanted the endpoint to be that Nightwing would actually marry Starfire in New Titans # 100, because we could do that. There was a Robin in Batman, so it didn’t matter. I thought it would be like marrying Reed and Sue in Fantastic Four. That was a momentous occasion, so let’s build to it."
"So I turned to Art. I wanted him to do a Nightwing six issue mini-series right around New Titans # 93. It’ll ship with New Titans up until New Titans # 99, at which point Art could have Nightwing proposing to Starfire in the last issue, and then issue # 100 would be the wedding issue. That was endpoint two."
The Newer Teen Titans
Titans Hunt editor Jonathan Peterson: "Then there was phase three. I wanted to get the Teen Titans back, so I explained my whacked out idea. I really wanted Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, Changeling, Raven, Starfire and Cyborg back to what they were originally, so I wanted to do an alternate dimension or timeline, and I turned to Kevin and said “You get to launch an all-new Titans book and design them from the ground up.” Not only that, but this alternate universe would have an alternate young Robin, and alternate young Starfire and all the rest. The plan for Team Titans was a secret one. With the first Team Titans Annual, or at the end of the first 12 issues, I told Kevin he would then be relaunching the Teen Titans with alternate versions of the core-seven members.
"[Look] at the Teen Titans Cartoon Network show now. It has its own atmosphere. It’s hip. They act like teenagers, and it’s funny. This is what I wanted to do twelve years ago! This was my game plan. New Titans would be the heroes acting their age. They’d be mature. On the other hand, I would be bringing the classic Teen Titans back, and I remember Len Wein and Marv sparked to that. "
"They went through lists of Titans stuff they could redo or bring back, and then we thought, we could bring back Terra! Steve Erwin even suggested bringing in the original 1960s Bob Haney Teen Titans, and Weezie Simonson called out some names, as well. The idea was to open this doorway to this alternate reality and then we could just screw around with everything. We could bring through whoever we wanted to, but I had one rule: they couldn’t be an exact copy of what they used to be. If you’re going to be bringing somebody from this alternate universe, it has to be a brand new character or a completely different spin on an old character."
[...] "Then you have Team Titans. My plan there was to have those members slowly grow in those twelve issues. They would grow or move on or be phased out. That would lead into the first Annual. That Annual would introduce our alternate [universe], younger Teen Titans. The book would change it’s title to Teen Titans and feature the alternate, younger versions of those core-seven Titans. That was the plan."
Restoring Cyborg
Marv Wolfman shares: "Cyborg never was supposed to die and didn't. But what did happen to Cyborg I know wasn't my idea. He was supposed to be brought back - in changed form, yes - within 2-3 months instead of many years later. The end of the story didn't work out for many, many reasons. [...] As I said this story kept going and I wanted it to end as fast as it came. The editor who came onto the book decided he didn't want Vic back. I thought that was a major mistake. As I said, the last four-five years of the Titans is something I'm not particularly proud of."
Titans Hunt editor Jonathan Peterson: "I remember that was a good way to upgrade his look. We tossed out whacked ideas. One idea was to make him even more robotic, like a head on a truck, and the other idea was to make him more [like the] Six-Million Dollar Man. With cell regeneration and nanites, he could appear more human. He would undergo some process that he could switch between human and robotic, but with the nanites, he could turn into large Transformer-size things."
Changeling & Pantha: Beasts of Burden?
Titans Hunt editor Jonathan Peterson: "That was from one of our conferences. Someone had suggested the idea at one point that he would be stuck in one form for a couple of issues, and it would be a feral form. So at that point, would he get it on with Pantha? And out of that, would he undergo some sort of personality change? That was one of the ideas we came up with. "
Pantha's Original Origin
Titans Hunt editor Jonathan Peterson: "The idea was supposed to be that she was actually created by the original H.I.V.E. group, and I remember that the character tied back with Deathstroke. He was somehow involved. The H.I.V.E. was responsible for her creation, and at one time she was a real woman. I do remember we had it on the drawing board as something Louise Simonson would write."
"There would be a story where she actually turned back into a normal woman. She pulled a Hulk/Bruce Banner, and that would be the shocking reveal of seeing who she really was. I think we toyed with the idea that she was a bookworm librarian and had all this repressed anger, and that all came out as Pantha, and at the end of the story, it would be a “Ben Grimm” type story where she tragically becomes Pantha again. The emotional thing for her would be “Good, I’d rather be Pantha.”"
[...] "I do remember planning that with Weezie, and I did challenge her to be creative about it, that maybe Pantha could be some C-level character from Titans history, if that worked. It would give us the excuse to [go],”Ah-ha!” But obviously, that story never came about."
Terra & Aqualad: Muddy Waters?
Titans Hunt editor Jonathan Peterson: "Bringing her back was interesting because that was Marv’s idea. I remember Marv saying the death of Terra was one of the biggest mail surges. We definitely wanted someone in Team Titans to anchor the group to Titans history, and that was the first one Marv latched onto and ran with. I think we also toyed with the idea she would have a romance with Aqualad. I remember the running joke: she’s earth and he’s water, and together they make mud. Traditionally, we had the Changeling and Terra thing, but I liked the idea that in some way all these characters would be intertwined. I liked the ideas of these triangles to really keep people guessing. The only people I really wanted locked together were Nightwing and Starfire. My attitude was that everyone else was Titans 90210."
Hybrid: The Series
Titans Hunt editor Jonathan Peterson: "So we left the “Titans Summit” with our battle plans. I wanted New Titans to be it’s own thing where the characters would be grown-ups and do their own thing - shake that up a bit and add new characters. Deathstroke would be the hard-edged book. Then I wanted Len Wein to write Hybrid as the dark side of the Titans universe. I always felt that people gravitated to those darker books. I wanted to bring back some of that pain and angst. The original Titans was about that stuff they went through, and then it became the Titans having meatloaf with Donna and Terry. It turned too suburban."
Mento's super-team of misfits, the Hybrid, were slated to get their own ongoing series with Art Nichols on art chores. Harpi of the Hybrid abruptly appeared in New Titans #87 longing for freedom from Dayton Estates. This 'plotline' was never followed up and the Hybrid did not appear for the remainder of the New Titans series, which was cancelled with issue #130.
Titans Hunt editor Jonathan Peterson on how far the Hybrid series was planned: " Not very far. I remember there were some questions with royalties with that, as well. I remember there were some royalty things we were trying to figure out and it was confusing, but I had left around that time. That was my last memory of the Hybrid series."
Rogue Titans
At one point, there was another Titans spin-off book planned with Jonathan Peterson and Kevin Maguire. The working title was Rogue Titans. Some of those characters eventually evolved into Strikeforce!, a series Peterson & Maguire both did for Image Comics.
Titans Hunt editor Jonathan Peterson: "Yeah, it sorta evolved into that. The idea was Kevin would do Team Titans up until # 12, and then the all-new Teen Titans would debut. At that point, some new guys would take over that book. I think we talked about Phil Jimenez doing that, and he eventually did work on Team Titans. So then I talked with Kevin about doing yet another Titans spinoff, and Kevin came up with the name Rogue Titans. If I remember right, some of them would be new characters and some of them would be existing DC characters who would then have this affiliation with the Titans universe."
