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The Titans & Loren Jupiter
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| Loren Jupiter |
| Jarrod Jupiter |
| Arthur Swenson |
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| Loren Jupiter Quick Bio: Wealthy philanthropist Loren Jupiter funded the original Titans team for a time - as well as Atom's Teen Titans much later. Jupiter later was revealed as the father of Titans' psychic Lilith Clay and Titans' foe, the illusion-casting Haze. |
The Life of Loren
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Lilith reveals
herself as Omen!
From
TEEN TITANS
(second series)
#15 [1997] |
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Millionaire Loren Jupiter has made a name for himself through his vast fortune and philanthropic initiatives. About 25 years ago, Jupiter fathered two children. The first was Jarrod Jupiter, whom he never got to know, as his mother ran away with the child shortly after birth. A short time after that, Jupiter fathered another child, Lilith. For undisclosed reasons, Lilith was eventually given up for adoption as a baby in a Kentucky orphanage. Jupiter did not learn Lilith was his daughter until she reached adulthood.
As the years rolled by, Loren started a secret government-sponsored training project for teenagers, in an effort to help create a better world. After the accidental death of pacifist Arthur Swenson - a death the Teen Titans were unable to prevent - he invited the Titans to abandon their superhero guises and join his project. They did for a time, joining the mysterious precognitive Lilith, who was already a part of Jupiter's program. Robin refused the offer, electing to pursue his college studies. After Robin solved the Swenson case, the Titans were free to don their costumes once more, and Jupiter continued to finance them.
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Mr. Jupiter makes his offer in from TEEN TITANS #25 [1970]. |
Meanwhile, Loren's son Jarrod grew up feeling unloved, and came under the delusion that his father had abandoned him. When Jarrod learned that Loren Jupiter funded a group of teenage heroes, his bitterness mounted. Jarrod eventually attended Cardy Boarding School, where students began to mysteriously disappear. Learning of the disappearances, Jupiter sent the Teen Titans to investigate. During the investigation, the Teen Titans faced disapproving visions of their mentors. As they saw through the deception, a vision of a skull appeared - revealing the person behind the mentally placed visions. The person called himself Haze, and announced himself as Jarrod Jupiter. Jarrod admitted he kidnapped and killed the missing kids as a ruse to get the Titans to investigate so Jarrod could exact revenge on them for co-opting his father's affections. During the battle, it appeared that Jarrod had died. Lilith and Mr. Jupiter erased this battle from the Teen Titans' minds, since it was such a traumatic experience.
Eventually, this incarnation of the Titans disbanded, as members elected to pursue school and other interests. Loren Jupiter continued his philanthropic pursuits and eventually settled in Metropolis.
Atom's Teen Titans
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Ray Palmer on his usual "I'm Justice League" rant
in TEEN TITANS #7 [1997]. |
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Jupiter resurfaced to fund yet another Teen Titans team, long after the original group went through regrouping and breakups and changes in membership roster. This team was comprised of Argent, Risk, Joto, Prysm and the de-aged Atom. Jupiter was keeping company with a mysterious mystical woman known as Omen - who was later revealed to be the former Teen Titan, Lilith. It was also revealed that Lilith was Jupiter's daughter. Lilith and Jupiter discovered this some time ago, and for undisclosed reasons, kept it a secret from the other Titans. At some point, Lilith met her mother who helped amplify her powers to include teleportation, mind-reading and other undisclosed abilities. The identity of Lilith's mother remains another secret the Titans aren't privy to. Lilith's mother was the one to tell her that Loren Jupiter was her father.
It was also during this time that Jarrod Jupiter - also known as Haze - resurfaced. Haze was defeated a second time by the original Titans (Nightwing, Arsenal, Tempest and Flash) and Jupiter's new teenage team. He is currently in a catatonic state in a mental ward under observation.
Jupiter's second team of Titans eventually disbanded as well.
Family Time
Although both Loren Jupiter and Lilith Clay were introduced in Teen Titans #25 [1970], neither were aware of their father-daughter relationship at that time. Likewise, the writers never intended the pair to be related by blood. Twenty-seven years later, in the pages Teen Titans (second series) #15 [1997], Lilith is revealed as Jupiter's daughter. This revelation was courtesy of then-writer, Dan Jurgens, who provided some answers to Lilith's murky past. That same story also introduced Loren's unseen son, Jarrod Jupiter.
Almost Evil
In 2005, former Justice League liaison Maxwell Lord was revealed as the duplicitous leader of Checkmate. In Countdown to Infinite Crisis #1 [2005], Blue Beetle discovered Max's secret - and was shot dead. So what does any of this have to do with Loren Jupiter?
At Wizard World Philadelphia 2005, DC's Dan Didio revealed how they arrived at Maxwell Lord as the Big Bad. They were thinking of people in the DC universe that could arrange such a plot ... King Faraday... Nemesis... and... Mr. Jupiter. But then they reconsidered, "We can't call him Mr. Jupiter. That sounds lame," Didio quipped, "Mr. J?" But then they thought of Maxwell Lord, who fit the story better and was more well-known. "Mr. Jupiter was in like four Titans stories in 1971," Didio mused. So Mr. Jupiter almost killed Beetle! In a weird way, he could have worked; It's rumored he may have psychic powers. And he's one of the world's richest men. On the other hand, how many betrayals can the Titans handle anyway?
O Brother Where Art Thou?
In Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #56 [2007], Cyborg and Aquaman uncovered information about the sinking of San Diego. In that issue, readers are introduced to Greg Jupiter, Loren's previously unseen brother. Greg Jupiter ran Pro-Gene Tech, which was responsible for the sinking of San Diego and transforming its citizens into water breathers.
Having produced two children with psychic abilities, it is thought that Jupiter may possess some (perhaps latent) psychic abilities as well.
Teen Titans #25 [1970]: The Teen Titans are recruited, through Lilith, by Mr. Jupiter, one of the world's richest men and the financier of a secret government-sponsored training project for teenagers. First appearance of Lilith and Mr. Jupiter. Lilith, Hawk and Dove join the Titans. Robin takes a leave of absence.
Teen Titans #26-27 [1970]: Mal joins Mr. Jupiter's training program and learns the Teen Titans' secret identities in this story. After training in Mr. Jupiter's survival course, the former Titans are assigned to a field exercise: to survive in "Hell's Corner," a tough inner-city neighborhood. Malcolm "Mal" Duncan's first appearance in issue #26. Mal joins the Titans.
Wonder Woman #265-266 [1980]: Back-up story featuring Wonder Girl. Donna Troy is informed that Mr. Jupiter has died, and she is the heir to his fortune. It is actually a trap to lure Wonder Girl as she is captured by Mr. Jupiter's secretary, who calls herself 'Perfection.' She is intrigued by the Amazon race and wants to study Wonder Girl as a model of 'perfection' and rid the world of Imperfection. Wonder Girl had sensed a trap and feigns helplessness long enough to get the drop on 'Perfection', and frees a captured, very-much-alive Mr. Jupiter. Last Mr. Jupiter until he reappears in Teen Titans (second series) #1.
Teen Titans #1 [1996]: Omen and Mr. Jupiter prepare for the H'San Natall invasion. First appearance of Argent, Risk, Joto & Prysm. First appearance of H'San Natall. First Omen. First modern appearance of Mr. Jupiter.
Teen Titans #2-3 [1996]: After avoiding capture, five teenagers are taken in by Loren Jupiter and the mysterious Omen and become the new Teen Titans.
Teen Titans #12-15 [1997]: "Then and Now: Parts One-Four": Nightwing gathers his old teammates to help find their former mentor, Mr. Jupiter, and the missing Omen, which leads to a confrontation with Haze, a never-before-seen villain from their past. Issue #12 features a never-before-revealed flashback tale involving Haze [First Appearance of Jarrod Jupiter, Loren Jupiter's son; First Appearance of Haze]. In Issue #15: Omen is revealed to be Lilith. Lilith is revealed as the daughter of Loren Jupiter.
Teen Titans #16 [1998]: As Joto is laid to rest, the kids are unresolved if they should continue. Mr. Jupiter answers that question when he dissolves the team. Arsenal muses about staying to train the new team. Lilith adjusts to everyone's reactions to her revelations last issue. Lilith visits her bother, Jarrod, in a mental institution.
Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #56 [2007]: Further revelations abound concerning the murky past of the new Aquaman as he steps forward to embrace his future. Cyborg and Aquaman uncover information about the sinking of San Diego. In this issue, readers are introduced to Greg Jupiter, Loren's previously unseen brother. Greg Jupiter ran Pro-Gene Tech, which was responsible for the sinking of San Diego and transforming its citizens into water breathers. First appearance of Greg Jupiter.
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Haze
Alias: Jarrod Jupiter
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Misspent Youth
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Jarrod Jupiter reveals he is Haze in a flashback sequence from TEEN TITANS #12 [1997]. |
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Millionaire Loren Jupiter has made a name for himself through his vast fortune and philanthropic initiatives. About 25 years ago, he fathered two children. The first was Jarrod Jupiter, whom he never got to know, as his mother ran away with the child shortly after birth Some short time after that, Jupiter fathered another child, Lilith. For undisclosed reasons, Lilith was eventually given up for adoption as a baby in a Kentucky orphanage. Jupiter did not learn Lilith was his daughter until she reached adulthood.
Not much is known about Jarrod's childhood, but it appears it was a traumatic one. Jarrod grew up feeling unloved, and came under the delusion that his father had abandoned him. When Jarrod learned that Loren Jupiter funded a group of teenage heroes, his bitterness mounted.
Jarrod eventually attended Cardy Boarding School, where he learned he had the ability to mentally project images from people's mind. Jarrod learned to master these new abilities and began to formulate a plan of revenge. Jarrod kidnapped and killed some of his fellow students, hoping to gain the attention of the Teen Titans. During the investigation, the Teen Titans faced disapproving visions of their mentors. As they saw through the deception, a vision of a skull appeared - revealing the person behind the mentally placed visions. The person called himself Haze, and revealed himself as Jarrod Jupiter. During the battle, it appeared that Jarrod had died. Lilith and Mr. Jupiter erased this battle from the Teen Titans' minds, since it was such a traumatic experience.
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And you think your family is dysfunctional?
The Jupiters have an impromptu therapy session in TEEN TITANS #15 [1997]. |
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Hazing the Titans
Actually, Jarrod had survived. And in the ensuing years, his hate for his father and the Titans grew. The Genesis Wave also gave his mental powers a boost.
Jarrod's half-sister, Lilith, eventually resurfaced under the new guise of Omen. She was allied with Mr. Jupiter, who funded a new team of Teen Titans including a teen-aged Atom (de-aged by events in Zero Hour) and new heroes Argent, Risk, Joto and Prysm. Omen kept her identity hidden and remained a mysterious presence on this new incarnation of the Titans.
Shortly after the formation of this new team, Jarrod Jupiter kidnapped Omen, planning to use his sister's psychic powers as a way to augment his own. And once the Titans attempted to rescue Omen, Haze planned to kill them one by one. Atom's team – with Nightwing, Tempest, Flash and Arsenal – tracked down Haze and confronted various illusions. During the battle, Omen was revealed to be Lilith Clay and Joto was seemingly killed in battle. New and old Titans joined forces to eventually defeat Haze.
Jarrod Jupiter is currently in a catatonic state in a mental ward under observation.
Haze possesses various mental abilities, mostly surfacing as the creation of illusions. These illusions are created by tapping into the heads of his victims. Thus, the illusion is pulled from the thoughts and memories of said victim, making the illusions seem quite real. Haze's abilities are somehow augmented by close proximity to his half-sister, Lilith.
Teen Titans #12-15 [1997]: "Then and Now: Parts One-Four": Nightwing gathers his old teammates to help find their former mentor, Mr. Jupiter, and the missing Omen, which leads to a confrontation with Haze, a never-before-seen villain from their past. Issue #12 features a never-before-revealed flashback tale involving Haze [First Appearance of Jarrod Jupiter, Loren Jupiter's son; First Appearance of Haze]. In Issue #15: Omen is revealed to be Lilith. Lilith is revealed as the daughter of Loren Jupiter.
Teen Titans #16 [1998]: As Joto is laid to rest, the kids are unresolved if they should continue. Mr. Jupiter answers that question when he dissolves the team. Arsenal muses about staying to train the new team. Lilith adjusts to everyone's reactions to her revelations last issue. Lilith visits her bother, Jarrod, in a mental institution.
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Arthur Swenson
Dr. Arthur Swenson was a famous pacifist and philanthropist. During a peace rally in which Swenson was a speaker, a riot broke out. The Teen Titans intervened and tried to prevent more violence. During a struggle with a gun-wielding protester, Hawk, Dove and the Titans all had a hand in the weapon that discharged, and shot and killed Swenson.
The Titans were reprimanded by their mentors and felt blame for the man's death. Lilith Clay made them an offer to join Mr. Jupiter's training program for young people. Jupiter was one of the world's richest men, and a huge philanthropist himself. The Titans accepted this offer and joined his training program, forsaking their costumed identities for a time.
Teen Titans #25 [1970]: The Teen Titans meet Lilith and are soon framed for killing Dr. Arthur Swenson, a famous philanthropist and pacifist; After being reprimanded for their part in the killing by their Justice League mentors, the young heroes are recruited, through Lilith, by Mr. Jupiter, one of the world's richest men and the financier of a secret government-sponsored training project for teenagers. Robin declines Mr. Jupiter's offer in order to pursue his own career and attend college, but Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Speedy, Hawk, and Dove, together with Lilith, become students in the new program, forsaking their costumes and superpowers for the duration. First appearance of Lilith and Mr. Jupiter. Lilith, Hawk and Dove join the Titans. Robin takes a leave of absence.
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The Titans Get Relevant
Comics Feature #19: "There Were Titans In Those Days..."
An article by David Kirk from Comics Feature #19, 1982
With issue #25, TEEN TITANS went through a major change that altered the flavor of the series completely. With Robert Kanigher taking over the writer's job, TEEN TITANS retained its youth orientation, but became a very serious book. The Titans attended a peace rally, during which a riot broke out. As the Titans struggled with one of the militants, his gun went off, and fatally shot Dr. Arthur Swenson, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and crusader for world harmony. The Titans, feeling responsible, vowed never to use their powers again, and joined a top secret project run by a Mr. Jupiter, the world's richest philanthropist The team was no longer a junior Justice League, either. The Hawk and the Dove, who had guest-starred in #21, joined the team with the "big change" story, as did a young psychic name Lilith. Aqualad had been on leave since #19, and Robin had not been with the team at the peace rally, and so was not part of the vow or Mr. Jupiter's project. Those in the project threw out their costumes in favor of light purple jumpsuits, to further demonstrate the break with their old ways.
Whether these changes were advisable is questionable. Considering that one of the appeals of the series was the chance to see the kid sidekicks on their own, away from their adult mentors, the introduction of Mr. Jupiter as a father figure was unwise. For those who had adult mentors already, he was redundant, and for those who didn't, he robbed them of their initiative. One of the characteristics central to the Hawk and the Dove's concept was their efforts to find out what to do, how to act, with their natures in opposition. But with Mr. Jupiter calling the shots, they became little more than a surly boy arid a wimpy boy arguing about whether or not to hit people. The uniforms were pretty boring, too, and made it difficult to tell the team members apart.
The new direction collapsed into mush almost immediately, as the returning Aqualad convinced them to put their costumes back on for one mission, at the end of which they decided that they might overlook the vow every now and then, in extreme situations. The uniforms and costumes switched back and forth thereafter, with little rhyme or reason, and their solemn vow faded quickly from sight. They never decided they were wrong, that their powers were in fact better used for good, they just sort of shuffled the vow under the rug. The characters lost whatever impact they might have had as moral paragons or super-heroes, and their indecisiveness made the series seem directionless.
The new scripting didn't help the book any, either. Steve Skeates had assumed the scripting chores after Kanigher's three issues, but neither's stories were nearly as tightly plotted as Haney's. They chose to center around social issues at the cost of plot, and rather than making a dramatic case for some sort of social reform, his stories seemed to limply plead that bad things are wrong. One notable story pointed out another of the major problems with Skeates' stories - they were silly. It #31's ‘To Order Is To Destroy" presented us with a college campus full of zombies. It seems the university psychologist had been advising brain operations as a cure for stress and social consciousness, and slowly but surely had taken over the minds of the entire campus. Haney's ludicrous plot elements were a strength to the series when he was writing it, because his stories were supposed to be funny. But Skeates' were an attempt at serious storytelling, and ridiculous plots like that one made it impossible to take the (usually overtly stated) morals seriously.
Dick Giordano on Teen Titans [from The Titans Companion, 2005]
TTC: What brought about the movement toward relevance during your tenure?
DG: The idea came from Carmine [Infantino], as did the idea to de-power the Teen Titans and Wonder Woman.
TTC: Was it a direction which you agreed with?
DG: I kinda liked the idea because it put us at a different level and got creative people thinking in ways that they hadn’t thought of before. It was, of course, fathered by the stuff that Stan Lee was doing that was reaching a broader audience. At least Stan claimed he had accessed college level readers; DC’s were being aimed at our perceived audience of younger readers that gave up reading comics when they discovered girls and cars.
TTC: Why was Mr. Jupiter brought into the series?
DG: I’m blanking on the “why.” Taking a look at the intro story, I would venture a guess that we felt that we needed an adult mentor in place to guide the soon to be de-powered Titans, but I don’t remember discussing it with anyone. Maybe [it was] just Kanigher’s idea. He was brought in to handle the emotional moments of the TTs losing their powers. Robert was pretty good with emotional stories; that was his shtick. And Robert liked to go his own way.
TTC: If you had stayed, would we have seen more “relevant” stories from you, or would you have also returned them to super-heroics?
DG: Hard to tell. Relevancy, de-powering super-heroes, and getting rid of costumes were management’s editorial edicts that I implemented the best way I could. I have no idea if management officially pulled the relevancy plug after I left or if they just let things slide back to where they were by themselves.
The above excerpt is from The Titans Companion by Twomorrows Publishing.
Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the New Teen Titans, The Titans Companion is a comprehensive look at the history of the ultimate teen team - over 200 pages in all! From their early days in the 1960s as a team of teen sidekicks through their best-selling days in the 1980s and beyond, this book explores the history of the team through the eyes of its creators! Interviews with Marv Wolfman, George Pérez, Nick Cardy, Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, and others reveal the evolution of the series over the years. While artwork by Cardy, Pérez, Adams, Garcia-Lopez, and many more illustrates each era of Titans history! To order the book, click here .
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