Longbox Review

Here’s a comic chosen at random from my collection.

It’s the third Titans-related comic in a row! (And it’s completely random–I swear!) Anyway, I loved this title when I first read it (30 years ago), but it hasn’t held up. One, and I know that I will probably lose a few points with some people, I just don’t care for Walt Simonson’s art. I never really have. Second, with Chris Claremont (I saw him at Emerald City Comicon and the line to meet him was always long!) writing, this is really an X-Men book guest starring the New Teen Titans. As much as I like the X-Men, I love the NTT, so having them relegated to a secondary status in the story doesn’t excite me. I did like, though, the villains of the piece: Dark Phoenix and Darkseid. I especially liked the ending where Darkseid gets jammed into the Source Wall, which is perhaps the first time I encountered that bit of cosmic structure (and if you believe the quote in Wikipedia, this comic is the Source Wall’s first appearance), and I believe the first time that I read about a resurrected Phoenix.

Despite the lack of sufficient focus on the Titans characters, Claremont does deftly manage to educate the uninformed about who and what the comic is about without coming off as pedantic. I would have loved to see how Wolfman and Pérez would have done an X-Men/Titans crossover–it’s a pity we never got to read the sequel.

I would love to know how this book got made and why (besides the obvious cashing in on both teams’ popularity). Was it always Claremont and Simonson as the collaborative team, and why was this a Marvel production and not DC’s? If you know, leave a comment, please!