George Pérez on Titans Characters
George on The Good Guys
[from Comics Interview #50, 1987]
ANDY: Okay. How do you feel about the Titans and their various supporting characters; what are your comments about each of the different characters there?
GEORGE: Wonder Girl? My favorite. My favorite character, as far as person I would love to meet the most.
Robin/Nightwing, I like him a lot because of his history, he's been around so long, and there's a certain sleek sexuality about the character. He's got a certain sense of everyman, a young swashbuckler type.., he's probably the only character to have developed a rabid following. That I find incredible, particularly because he came out as a sidekick - that he's got the strongest following of any character really makes me feel good about Nightwing. He's the only Titan who made the CBG poll, and it was great, you know. The fact that he's still fresh after all these years.
Kid Flash/Flash, he's always been the one who's been the most trouble, because he was a hard character to handle. If he's so super fast, technically if handled correctly, he'd make the rest of the characters superfluous. No way he could ever be caught by anything, no one should ever get the upper hand on him. So he never was my favorite character, only because he was just difficult to handle in a group situation. I think the Frances Kane character introduced with him was a nice addition, but they didn't play her up enough to kind of give him a much stronger anchor. I did like the fact that he had two living parents.
Changeling, good comic relief, fun to draw - except when you're drawing all those animals 'cause you'll constantly get into other references - I like his rubbery face, his very expressive face.
Cyborg, my personal favorite to draw, mostly because I like a big, strong, scrappy guy. I'm 6'2" and I come from the ghetto, too, so I have a strong identification.
Raven? Interesting to draw. Without Trigon it's going to be interesting to see how to handle her. Now that she's open to emotion, it opens up the character. We can do a lot more of her opening up to a society that she had closed off for so many years. I think she's going to have a lot of potential.
Tara, she was made to be killed; she served her purpose. That was it.
Jericho-
ANDY: You didn 't get any attachment to Tara?
GEORGE: No, because I knew we were going to kill her. So I deliberately used all the things to make her as likeable and cute as possible, so people would never believe we were going to kill a sixteen-year-old. And she was a sixteen-year-old sociopath. She was one of our cleverest gimmicks; we deliberately created her in order to lead everyone astray. So we couldn't build any fondness for her, 'cause we knew full well what her whole motive for existence was. Her existence was basically to keep the stories interesting; we were tossing a curve that no one would have expected.
ANDY: You didn 't even love to hate her, huh?
GEORGE: No. I loved handling her, because she was such a good idea. But she was an idea. Not as much a person. She was there to show exactly how much their humanity can be one thing they have to be careful about, the Teen Titans have to be careful about. . . they can be too trusting, or their own weaknesses can be used against them.
Jericho, I personally... I created Jericho, I came up with the power, the idea of the mute and everything else. So I have a much more personal feeling about him. One regret I have for Jericho is that I left before I could ever really do anything with him. But I would like to do more with him; I think he has a lot more of the love element in him that he can show with the other Titans, because he's there as a listener and he's compassionate, he's really, really a nice guy. And Marv brought in that darker edge to show that he was a good fighter and he has a history, too; he remains nice through just about everything that happens to him, and that gives him a very strong. . that's something Marv did very well.
Speedy and Aqualad? Nicest guest stars. I like Speedy/Aqualad because of the limitation of his powers. He's nice - nice visual - but now that Robin's wearing his Nightwing costume, he's the only one that's showing his bare legs. Again, a nice little sexiness about him. I always like that kinky hair, and I deliberately gave him a more Italian looking face-
ANDY: Sort of like Patrick Duffy?
GEORGE: Actually, I based it on a girl's face. I dated a girl, she had very strong features, and I matched them, made them a little more masculine and made Aqualad out of her.
The Titans forgotten? Most of them well left that way! (Laughter.) With the possible exception of Lilith, 'cause I enjoy doing her but, now that she's gone, it's just as well, because of Raven's role in there. All the others, frankly, I don't care.
George Pérez Interview from Wizard #35 1994:
Did you have a favorite among the Titans?
My favorite to draw was Starfire, because she was made for any young male artist to enjoy. The one character I enjoyed developing was Cyborg: he was an inner-city youth, as I was. It allowed me a little more input to his character than I had with the others. Neither Marv nor I is cosmic, so Starfire was pretty much anyone's call; on Raven, I deferred to Marv, because he had done Tomb of Dracula and understood that mystic stuff; but Cyborg was from a situation that was alien to Marv on a first-hand basis. He had taught high school in Brooklyn, but that's not the same as growing up in the ghetto. There's also something about Cyborg being big but tender; I've always had a real liking for that type of character.
George on The Bad Guys
[from Comics Interview #50, 1987]
GEORGE: [...] The Terminator, my favorite of the TITANS' villains, because I really liked the idea of the strong, massive-yet-debonair older man. The fact that he's definitely a man in his fifties, but he's strong as an ox, very handsome, very polished - you can understand, again, a sexual appeal. I'm very big on sexual appeal of characters - particularly males. Since all the men are big and muscular, to show a bit of sexuality in them, that's a tough thing to do. The fact that the Titans have developed – we've gotten mail from women who think that Terminator is sexy as all hell. And that's great. That's the feeling I wanted.
Brother Blood? Marv's favorite character, not one of mine, only because I've never quite understood him. He was always more Marv's character than mine. He was a little too enigmatic for my taste.
And sometimes a little too unrealistic, in the fact that I can't believe how he can have such a strong influence for such a strong turn-off presence. Visually, he has nothing that would be appealing to me, anyway. If I were a wayward youth, he would scare the hell out of me. So, like, he's more Marv's character than mine. I think Marv's got a stronger grip on him. I never quite understood him.
Blackfire? My tribute to women in leather. (Laughter.) I like the look of that woman, you know?
ANDY: Even though in their first appearance she wasn't in leather?
GEORGE: They forgot all the black in Blackfire; they forgot to ink all the black areas. But I like her. The one thing I regret from other artists' points of view is that I gave her such a harsh face; I wanted it attractive yet strong, and many people, if you don't get those angles of that face just right, she comes out ugly - and Blackfire is not an ugly woman, she's just very harsh looking.
Trigon? Big, strong, incredibly awesome, what people thought looked like a silly thing of doing the little antlers on his head, was - yeah - this is a berserk Bambi. (Laughter.) But he was such a strong, powerful presence that I'm glad he's no longer being used, 'cause he served his purpose. He was our nightmare character.
Cheshire? I'm a bit disappointed in Cheshire, in the way she turned out, because it always bothered me that Cheshire had the baby, of any Titan. It keeps the Titans' world so small - you introduce a character out of the blue and, automatically, she's had something to do with the Teen Titans. And that always bothered me. I don't begrudge Marv doing that; I myself personally don't go for it. Not every superhero or super-villain has to have interrelationships with each other.
Vigilante? Nice character, I think Marv kind of copped out with him. I think he should have been a lot more of a strong, DEATHWISH type, as opposed to a character who can keep going back and forth. I think his potential was a lot stronger than his actual fruition.
The Brotherhood of Evil? Some were interesting.. I liked Phobia, I liked Plasmus, the idea of Plasmus touching and melting in his hand... Warp, he's okay, I'm not too crazy about him - his power's interesting; I designed a bad costume. I don't like his costume, it's my fault. Houngan never turned me on, one way or the other. The idea of an electronic voodoo I've just never thought was all that great. And, of course, Monsieur Mallah, the Brain - very nostalgic. I like him because of the fact they were the DOOM PATROL villains.
ANDY: And The Fearsome Five?
GEORGE: The Fearsome Five - a dumb group, initially. Dr. Light, because he's such a loser, they got rid of him. Jinx, I had nothing to do with, so I can't make any judgement on her. Mammoth, standard big super-villain, brute force guy. Shimmer, nice but hard to handle realistically. Psimon, my least favorite of the group, because he was so powerful and, my fault, I designed a silly-looking appearance for him. I wanted to make him look frail, but that did look kind of dumb. It looked like he was wearing a commode on his head. (Laughter,)
