A TEEN TITANS ANNOUCEMENT

As I understand it, in 1985, DC launched a second Teen Titans series. As we've seen, THE NEW TEEN TITANS was renamed to TALES OF TEEN TITANS around issue 45. Subsequently, DC created a second volume of THE NEW TEEN TITANS. The idea was that volume 2, available exclusively through comic shops and telling all-new stories with higher production values, would run alongside TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS, still for sale on the newsstand. These stories would then be reprinted a few months later for general consumption in TALES.

But first THE NEW TEEN TITANS would need to accumulate a backlog of material for the reprint series. So, for eight issues, TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS would feature ongoing original stories by Marv Wolfman and a handful of fill-in artists while the first six issues of THE NEW TEEN TITANS, by Wolfman and Pérez, would be distributed to comic shops concurrently, but take place subsequently to issue 58 of TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS.

I've seen varying opinions on these eight issues. Some seem to think they're inconsequential filler while others believe that some of them, at least, are pretty important (apparently there's a trial for Deathstroke taking up part of the run). But, at any rate, they were left out of the NEW TEEN TITANS OMNIBUS volume 3, since George Pérez didn't work on them.

However, the issues are available through DC's Comixology app. So, for the first time ever, I'm going to purchase some digital comics. Sure, I've got a (temporarily lapsed) subscription to Marvel Unlimited, but that's more of a "Netflix"-type deal, and I feel the value is much stronger. I've always avoided buying digital comics a la carte specifically because I don't like the price point (thirty-plus year-old comics should cost 99¢, tops, at all times) and, more importantly, because I have no way of knowing when the technology will become obsolete and my digital files useless. But, in order to get the full 1985 TEEN TITANS experience, the time has come to drop some cash on digital issues. Thus, beginning Wednesday, we'll step away from the NEW TEEN TITANS OMNIBUS series to begin covering TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS #51 - 58.

And a reminder, for those who may have forgotten: while the NEW TEEN TITANS OMNIBUS volume 3 covers additional issues past the first six NEW TEEN TITANS (vol. 2) issues, I will be stopping after #6. There's a jump of more than forty issues in the book at that point, to take the series up to Pérez's second run as co-plotter and artist, and rather than make that jump now, I think I'll let it sit and get back to the book again sometime in the future. Not that I'm not enjoying these issues; they've been a great deal of fun, in fact -- but I came into this planning only to read the original Wolfman/Pérez run, and I intend to stay that course.