Saturday, July 21, 2018

Schwarz Weiß Saturday with the Teen Titans

As longtime readers of the blog know I always try to bring a bit of variety to the blog and cover a wide range of subjects so you may ask why I am doing another black and white post about NEW TEEN TITANS when I did my last one just in May ? Well, the answer is that Today is Romeo Tanghal´s 75th anniversary and while I have written a lot about Marv Wolfman and George Perez contribution I haven´t always mentioned Romeo´s titanic inks on what is undoubtedly one of THE best Bronze Age comic series.


Which is a bit strange since I always paid a lot of attention to the inkers on comics because - at least in my opinion - the inker can make or break a book. For me he is an integral part of the creative team and I also feel that when comic companies decide to forego the inking stage and just color directly on the pencils or ink digitally they squander a big opportunity. To me those books never look finished and it feels weird for me to pay money for a comic that doesn´t look like it is finished. And where would comics be Today without the great inkers like Josef Rubinstein, Terry Austin, Brett Breeding, Mark Farmer or Klaus Janson. Also would THE TOMB OF DRACULA have been as good without Tom Palmer´s inks on Gene Colan ?


Which brings us back to Romeo Tanghal. When he started out he was just doing regular inks but over time George Perez did just breakdowns and Romeo was listed first as embellisher and then as finisher. So the look of NEW TEEN TITANS was in big part due to his work. He was the backbone and while George Perez provided the structure he did the heavy lifting.

So since this post is about showcasing his work most of the art are original pages with the colored version - as usual. I would have liked to do a post just with that but I don´t have enough original art pages of good quality plus I am keeping a few pages for the DEATH IN COMICS : THE DEATH OF TERRA post that I still hope to write in the future. So there will also be some regular pages. Although with this title there are no regular pages.


As for the NEW TEEN TITANS, as I have already mentioned in my last post by this time I have written so many posts about it that there is not much left to say which I haven´t written elsewhere. Also since there are too many posts to link to them all - especially if you count all the posts I have written about George Perez - you will just have to use the tags. Finally I can get some mileage about doing them. And one final word before we come to the rest of the original art pages by Romeo Tanghal there are also no recommendations for the NEW TEEN TITANS since you currently have a wide range of options if you want to check out this classic comic series.

There are the Archive Editions which cover issues 1 to 27 that are a bit pricey at 50 bucks. They are better to read than the heavy omnibus editions and I have 3 of them but only because I found them at half price.


You do get to see it in the size it was intended for though. Then there are the omnibus editions which used to be very expensive - especially the first volume when it was out of print - but are now available in a new edition at a reasonable price. You could get volumes 2 and 3 of the first printing through amazon at a very low price for the longest time and I have pimped those books enough. If you want to get the new editions, I have only the first one because I missed my chance with the first printing.

Although that may be a good thing because according to the reviews I read online the binding was very bad and the books almost fell apart. With the new editions this seems to be a thing of the past but they changed the contents of volume 2 and 3 for some reason so if you already have volume 2 or 3 of the first printing and then buy volume 2 or 3 of the new printing you will have some issues twice and some issues will be missing.

Last but not least the complete series is being reprinted in affordable trades and I have to get some because in the omnibus books they mainly concentrate on the issues by the creative team of Marv Wolfman and George Perez so they skipped a whole bunch. Okay, that was more than I thought I had to say about the subject so without any further delay here are some more original Titans pages by George Perez and Romeo Tanghal.


Okay, one more thing. For all the things that made Slade Wilson a.k.a. The Terminator a badass what always bugged me was how he let the H.I.V. E. use and abuse him like a bitch. I mean they killed his son to get him to capture the Teen Titans for his and instead of figuring that out and taking his revenge on them he was always after the Titans. He should have killed every last one of those bastiches. For me he´s the book´s biggest dupe.


Since I don´t have any links for this post and I already covered all the celebrity birthdays of the day last year and there is nothing new I have to add we are going straight to the video part. We start with a featurette on Filmation´s Batman & Robin but don´t ask me where I posted part one.



With all the music videos I bookmarked there is none that really lends itself for a post about The Neww Teen Titans and since without the birthday section we have a certain lack of hot babes I am including this one to kill two birds with one stone. I can´t read what it says on there but the preview picture alone was enough for me to click it and the video really does not disappoint. I´m sure George Perez would approve of her.



It´s back to comics with a duel between two former Robins. Under The Red Hood is one of the best stories in the Batuniverse with great art by Doug Mahnke that you should be able to find in finer comic book stores.


The animated version is not as good because - as usual - they felt the need to leave out a lot of stuff ( mostly because they have not included it in previous animated movies and they think the audience gets confused by stuff they themselves don´t know ) but it´s good enough to watch it.



We continue with the second episode of this series and I can´t believe it has taken me this long. I don´t know why but I really took a shining to it.



And finally, closing out things Today here is another classic issue of The New Teen Titans by Marv Wolfman, George Perez and Romeo Tanghal.



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To the stables, Robin.

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