Comic Book / New Teen Titans

From the beginning.....

...to the Terror....

..to the final fight

The New Teen Titans is the name of the collective Teen Titans saga that consisted from the 80s right up to the mid 90s.

Overall, the series consists of three separate runs (well, technically four). You have Volume 1 running from 1980-1984, Tales of the Teen Titans (which follows on from Volume 1) running from 1984-85, and Volume 2 which ran from 1984-1996, as well as the two side series: Tales of the New Teen Titans and Teen Titans Spotlight. Volume 2 would get renamed to "New Titans" around issue #50. This is due to the fact that DC decided to publish 2 Teen Titans books at the same time. Vol 2 starts chronologically 6 months after the events of Vol 1 #40 with Tales of the Teen Titans continuing Vol 1's story until those 6 months were explained.

Teen Titans issues and story arcs with their own pages include:

• Volume 1
  • Who Is Donna Troy? - Issue #38
• Tales of the Teen Titans
  • The Judas Contract - Issues #42-44 and Annual #3
  • We Are Gathered Here Today - Issue #50
• Volume 2/New Titans
  • The Terror of Trigon - Issues #1-5
  • The Origin of Lilith - Issue #7
  • Who Is Wonder Girl? - Issues #50-55
  • Titans Hunt - Issues #71-84
  • Total Chaos - Issues #79 (Prologue), 90-92
  • The Darkening - Issues #97-100
  • Terminus! - Issues #104-107
  • Forever Evil - Issues #119-121
  • Crimelord-Syndicate War - New Titans #122
  • Meltdown! - Issues #127-130

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Tropes in General

• '80s Hair: Starfire, oh so much.◊
• 90% of Your Brain: Deathstroke/Terminator was said to use all of his, which in his case meant enhanced senses and reflexes, mostly.
• Aborted Arc: "The Children of the Sun", were a group of children born from the Titan of Myth Thia who didn't even get to start their intended arc, as the Crisis on Infinite Earth made some radical changes to the mythos, and the Children resurfaced as a cult with no relation to the Titans at all.
• Alien Princess: Starfire and Blackfire are both Princesses of Tamaran. They have humanoid appearances, but orange skin, can fly, and can project star-bolts. They also have superhuman levels of strength (in some stories, Star can go toe to toe with Wonder Woman.)
• Amazing Technicolor Population: The comic has gold/orange Starfire and Blackfire, and green Beast Boy. Of course, both Starfire and Blackfire are aliens and Beast Boy is a mutant.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Beast Boy, Robin, Nightwing, Flamebird.
• Anyone Can Die: The Titans seem to have a higher rate of mortality than other super teams. Even former Titans are prone to dying. No wonder the Titans memorial hall is so crowded.
• Badass Normal:
  • Dick Grayson (Robin and Nightwing)
  • Jason Todd (Robin II)
  • Roy Harper (Speedy and Arsenal)
  • Bette Kane (Flamebird)
• Battle Cry: "Titans Together!"
• Beautiful Dreamer: There is one point during the run when Beast Boy resists the urge to wake Raven because of this. She admits that she liked it, but she's still not interested.
• Big Bad: Trigon the biggest and baddest the Titans have ever faced and, to a lesser extent, Deathstroke who is Nightwing's and Arsenal's Arch-Enemy.
  • Big Bad Wannabe: The H.I.V.E. had no revenge agenda against the Titans, they just attacked them to establish a reputation as an evil group. How did they do that? They hired Deathstroke, who did all the dirty work. The H.I.V.E. never successfully attacked the Titans themselves. Deathstroke finally captured the Titans and sent them prisoners to the H.I.V.E. And with the Titans in their power, they just had an episode of Bond Villain Stupidity.
• Brother–Sister Team: The villains Shimmer and Mammoth, of the Fearsome Five.
• Butt-Monkey: Dr. Light during the Wolfman-Perez era. Even his team betrays him several times, he always has humiliating defeats, and is referenced in-story as such. One of the worst cases was when he was stopped by Wally West and Frances Kane, who had no super hero costumes and fight with hit-and-run tactics while staying out of his sight.
  Dr. Light: I lost with Flash! Hawkman! The JLA! Green Lantern! The Titans! Even the Atom! But this is the final humilliation! I don't even know who has defeated me!
• Canon Discontinuity:
  • Several beloved Titan stories (Who Is Donna Troy?, The Origin of Lilith) were rendered null and void by Crisis on Infinite Earths.
• Creator Cameo: Marv Wolfman and co-workers can be seen popping in and out sporadically of the New Teen Titans stories, not infrequently with some Self-Deprecating Humor. Look for a brown-haired man with glasses and a beard.
• Cute Mute: Jericho. He had his throat slashed as a child, and thus was mute for his entire tenure on the team. Artist George Perez created the character solely to flex his artistry chops, and outright forbade writer Marv Wolfman from ever giving the character thought bubbles, meaning everything about Jericho had to be portrayed through his facial expressions and body language. Amazingly, Jericho became a rather successful The Casanova in-universe despite his communication handicap.
  • Makes sense; if you're mute you figure out how to use, and exploit, body language.
  • He didn't just depend on facial expressions and body language, though - he communicates through American Sign Language (every time Jericho is shown using sign language, when drawn by George Perez, you can be completely sure that the sign is accurate). Besides, when he uses his power and gets inside someone else' body, he can talk through that body.
• Dating Catwoman: Arsenal and Cheshire, Changeling and Terra
• Demoted to Extra: The original Titans West from the '70s vanished when it came time for the New Teen Titans series, due to Marv Wolfman considering all of the characters (except Lilith and Beast Boy/Changeling) to be lame. Karen Beecher and Mal Duncan (who were part of the original East Coast team towards the end of the '70s) were also Put on a Bus, and Duela Dent showed up once as a middle-aged, overweight phony who revealed that she had lied about her origin of being Two-Face's daughter. After the Crisis, Wolfman seized the opportunity to retcon Bumblebee and Mal (now called "Herald") as having been part of Titans West, and attempted to erase Duela from continuity completely (it failed). Caveman G'narrk (who died in a Bus Crash Pre-Crisis) became a case of Death by Origin Story, while Bat-Girl (retconned to Flamebird) and Golden Eagle became even more shallow "joke" characters stuck in a rut of Can't Catch Up (this, similarly, also failed.)
• Disguised Hostage Gambit: An issue of Teen Titans Spotlight has Two-Face kidnapping Cyborg's girlfriend Sarah in order to lure him into a trap. He tapes her mouth shut and dresses her up in a convincing Two-Face costume, hoping that Cyborg will accidently kill her in a fit of rage. Fortunately, Cyborg sees through the ruse at the last second.
• Emotions vs. Stoicism: The chief motif of the Wolfman-Perez run, starting with Raven constantly trying to suppress her emotions in accordance with the teachings of Azarath, while characters like Starfire and, more dreadfully, Trigon revel in them; Dick's refusal to talk about his emotions made his emotional problems worse; the lizardlike, scientifically-minded Psions from the crossover with the Omega Men; the Brain laments how emotional his new Brotherhood of Evil are, etc.
• Fleeting Demographic Rule: Raven becoming evil because of her demonic heritage and the team fighting a group of evil Titans were two plots commonly recycled.
• Flying Firepower: Starfire is a Rubber-Forehead Alien that flies and shoots energy blasts from her hands.
• Hand Blast: Starfire, as well as her evil sister Blackfire, has this as her main superpower.
• Hotter and Sexier: Under the Wolfman-Perez run, the Teen Titans first started undergoing blatant displays of romantic and sexual adventures, nude females and wells for Eating the Eye Candy, as well as introspection into the sex lives of heroes. In particular, the New Teen Titans run had the first display of a young couple post-coitus in a comic and the first overt display of Dick Grayson's sex life, which later writers would follow suit over the decades. Pérez actually stated that some characters like Starfire were meant specifically to exude sexuality. Pérez himself purposely arranged this, such as the case with the Teen Titan Jericho at the time, to emphasize that an expression of sexual appetite and promiscuity doesn't make a superhero less of a superhero.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Starfire, on top of her having no nudity taboo and stripperific outfit, she learns languages through physical contact. Apparently any type of contact will do, but she deliberately chooses kissing as it's "more fun".
• Interspecies Romance: Starfire and Robin I/Nightwing had this going on for quite a while. They not only became engaged, but were almost married over the course of "New Teen Titans" — they broke up when the wedding ceremony was attacked by Raven during The Darkening, currently experiencing Demonic Possession, and she killed the minister before he could officially marry them.
• Jive Turkey: Cyborg talked like a bit of Shaft, and a bit of "normal educated human being". He spoke some words (like "Lissen/Listen") a bit funny for the most part.
• Like Brother and Sister: Dick (Nightwing) and Donna (Troia) are almost patron saints for this trope. When George Perez drew them, they even looked like fraternal twins.
• Love Hurts: Another hallmark motif of the Wolfman-Perez era: the main cast's perpetually torturous love lives.
  • Robin's emotional constipation made him poorly suited for the openly loving Starfire, as well as his moderate fear of her killing instincts.
  • Kid Flash had a Hell of a time dealing with his... thing with Raven, which started with her tampering with his brain to make him do what she wanted and went From Bad to Worse once she tortured him while she was briefly Brainwashed and Crazy under Trigon's influence during the Omega Men arc, despite the story insisting there was also some mutual romantic attraction in there as well.
  • Cyborg had trouble securing lasting relationships throughout all of Wolfman's run; his first girlfriend, Marcy, was not a fan of his extensive prosthetics; he got along famously with Sarah Simms, but kept shutting her out due to his own shame, and ultimately things dragged on so long that she found someone else; and his third major girlfriend, Dr. Sarah Charles of STAR Labs, hit trouble both when she took a job on the opposite coast of the country and during a Wildebeest incident with a STAR Labs spy, where he refused all contact with STAR Labs personnel, her included.
  • Beast Boy's relationship with Terra went up in flames so massive it was one of the most famous franchise stories of all time.
• More Diverse Sequel: The original series created in the sixties starred Robin, Wonder Girl, Aqualad, Speedy, and Kid Flash. All of them are white, with Wonder Girl as the only female. After later being retooled as the "New Teen Titans" to combat Marvel's success with X-Men, this team was similarly relaunched with a more diverse roster. Robin was the only returning member and was joined by Beast Boy (who is also a white male), Raven (a half-demon desi-coded female), Starfire (an alien) and Cyborg (an African-American).
• Please Put Some Clothes On: Dick was saying this to Starfire a LOT during the Wolfman-Perez run.
• Psychosomatic Superpower Outage: During the Wolfman-Perez run, Wally's crippling indecision goes hand in hand with his loss in powers and coronary problems. Trigon himself pins the kid for having a weak heart.
• Shout-Out:
  • Wolfman loves his shout outs. There are frequent references to the Muppets and Sesame Street in the New Teen Titans, occasionally to comics from Marvel, and there are even two Russian villains named Boris and Tasha.
  • In New Teen Titans #15 Dick sings "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" while pulling off a quadruple somersault into a pool.
• Starter Villain: Trigon, ironically enough, who is fought at the beginning of each The New Teen Titans publication and Tales of the Teen Titans. The Final Boss, by comparison, is Brother Blood.
• Tsundere: It's a little bit unclear whether Raven is a type B Tsundere, a Sugar-and-Ice Personality, or both.

Volume One

• And That's Terrible: A narration box on the first page of issue 22 feels the need to inform the reader that Brother Blood is "not very nice" when the same page shows Brother Blood standing triumphant over the unconscious Titans while ordering his underling Mother Mayhem to seal them in the pits and let them die.
• Carnival of Killers: Cheshire debuted as part of one in Annual #2
• Complexity Addiction: Dayton Industries developed a rare element, and the H.I.V.E. wanted it. Toyman prepared a very complex plan, killing members of Dayton's staff with toys, and then attacking the Titans when they begin to investigate (and, of course, they defeat him). Deathstroke had a simpler plan: set the building on fire, wait for everybody to escape, and then get inside and steal the thing. Where Toyman had an epic fail, Deathstroke won, and in just a single page.
• Covers Always Lie: In Issue #16. Starfire wants to kill someone, and Wonder Girl, Cyborg and Robin try to stop her. Actually, it was just Wonder Girl. In fact, Cyborg wanted to help when Starfire run away seeking vengeance, but Wonder Girl pointed that stopping her was something she has to do herself.
• Cruel Mercy: Trigon. Psimon, who betrayed him and secretly aided the Titans to stop Trigon, was sentenced to a Fate Worse than Death. But his servant Goronn, who spreads terror in his name since time immemorial, and was defeated for the first time, does not deserve such punishment. No, a quick and painless death is enough for his failure!
• Death by Origin Story
  • Grant Wilson, the "Destroyer". He became a bounty hunter, died, and his father Slade Wilson inherited his contract with H.I.V.E. to destroy the Titans.
  • Cyborg's mother, Elinore, in the same incident that destroyed half of his body and forced his father to turn him into a cyborg. It was the source of the initial tension between Victor and Silas Stone.
  • The first mystery parents of Donna Troy, who died in an apartment on fire when she was just a baby. If those were her parents And if they existed at all. It's... complicated.
• Death of the Hypotenuse: Starfire fell in love with Dick Grayson as soon as she came to Earth, but he told her that they were Just Friends. So, she fell in love with some other guy instead. This guy was actually instructed by the H.I.V.E. to seduce her and prey on the Titan's secrets, but he fell In Love with the Mark, and tried to cut ties with H.I.V.E. and have a real romance. The H.I.V.E. agent killed him. Starfire never knew the truth about him, she thought that he was killed just for being her boyfriend.
• Decoy Protagonist: When we first meet Grant Wilson and Deathstroke, everything pointed that Grant would be the arch villain of the Titans. He has some basic backstory, a reason to hate the titans (even if a petty one), and his costume was cooler. Deathstroke did not seem to have anything of that, and could be seen as a mere random villain used as a template by the H.I.V.E. to give powers to Grant. Then, the issue ends... and Grant lies dead, Deathstroke rises as the new arch enemy of the Titans, and we even discover some hidden info about him that gaves a new light to the re-read of the story (namely, that he was Grant's father).
• Exposed Extraterrestrials: According to Starfire, Tamaranians don't place much value in clothes (they see nothing inherently unchaste about nudity and they're pretty much Flying Bricks anyway). This is largely her justification for being both an Innocent Fanservice Girl and Ms. Fanservice.
• Faking the Dead: When the Brain and Monsieur Mallah resurface for an arc where the Titans, Mento and Robotman make an effort to confront Madame Rouge and Zahl for killing the rest of the original Doom Patrol, their survival in spite of appearing to perish in an explosion at the end of the original Arnold Drake series is explained when the Brain reveals that he and Mallah saw Madame Rouge's betrayal coming and left dummies in their place as they went underground.
• Fat Bastard: A minor antagonist debuting in the two-part story "Runaways" is an overweight drug lord named Anthony Scarapelli.
• First-Name Basis: Initially, Raven did not call Robin and Kid Flash as such, and neither as "Dick" or "Wally". She called them "Richard" and "Wallace".
• Idiot Ball: When Raven first came to Earth, she went to the Justice League to ask for help in defending Earth against her father. They did not help her: Zatanna sensed a great evil in her. So, she created a new group, reuniting the disbanded Teen Titans. And, as she explained to them, the evil that Zatanna felt is that Raven is Trigon's daughter; even when she completely refused him and tried as much as possible to prevent his arrival. Sounds fine... but she never told that to the League. After all, she never denied or concealed on purpose her relation with Trigon — if it came as a reveal, it was because she usually says very little.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Issue ten has Slade Wilson consult a bald, bespectacled man named Dr. Benson Honeywell, who is clearly a human version of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew from The Muppets. Honeywell even mentions an unseen assistant named Bleeker, an overt play on Honeydew's assistant Beaker.
• Magnetism Manipulation: This is the power of the tragic Frances Kane/Magenta.
• The Mole: Terra. What's hilarious is that at no point in the comic does she ever seem to at all hide he fact that she is constantly lying to and dislikes nearly everyone on the team.
• Narrating the Obvious: Defied during Starfire's first adventure, when the Titans managed to destroy a Gordanian ship. The other ship saw it in their screen, and a mook told it to his captain... who interrupted him and ordered him to shut up. He has eyes and he's seeing what's happening.
• Never Recycle a Building: Figures in Marv Wolfman's story "Who Is Donna Troy?" Apparently a burnt-out building sat in that condition for about 16 years, and Donna's childhood doll was still in a room of said burnt-out building and not carried off for nesting material. This is a key clue used by Robin to track down Donna's origins.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Titans give one to the Justice League for their gross mishandling of the Trigon situation.
• Obviously Evil: The original Brother Blood is Red and Black and Evil All Over, and the few white parts of his costume are skeletal. He has no problem getting on TV and preaching righteousness in full demon getup, which is likely as exaggerated as a Villain with Good Publicity has ever been while being played straight.
• Omniglot: Starfire learns new languages through kissing. In the X-Men crossover, she kissed Colossus when he spoke Russian, motivating Nightcrawler to ask, "Fräulein, sprechen Sie Deutsche?"
• Pitiful Worms:
  • In issue three, Mammoth refers to Robin and Changeling as insects as he tosses them across the room while gloating about their inability to hurt him.
  • During the Titan's first confrontation with Trigon in issue five, Trigon refers to the heroes as insects.
• Poorly Disguised Pilot: The New Teen Titans Annual 2 served as a pitch for Vigilante
• That Man Is Dead: District attorney Adrian Chase is dead. Now there's only Vigilante, and the mob leader Scarapelli must die. Robin is sick of hearing that rap, and reminded Chase that If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!. And, while he said that, Scarapelli tried to kill Robin, but Vigilante tossed him aside in time and killed Scarapelli anyway.
• Teen Pregnancy: Among the teenage runaways in the two-part story "Runaways" is a girl named Lizzie who was driven away because her father was infuriated about her getting pregnant. Sadly, she's one of the teens not shown to get a happy ending after returning home, as her father still disowns her at the story's conclusion.
• Titanomachy, Round Two: In issues 12 and 13 of the Wolfman & Pérez run, Hyperion escapes from his prison on Tartarus and enchants Donna Troy, enlisting her help to free his fellow Titans. They lay siege on Mount Olympus, facing the combined forces of the Greek Gods, the female New Titans and the Amazons, though the conflict ultimately reaches a peaceful conclusion: Athena points out that, since the Titans have long been prophesied to lose the war, they have no hope of winning. Starfire then suggests they return to Tartarus and endeavor to transform the place into their personal paradise, with the Titans stoically complying.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Why hasn't Zatanna apologized to Raven? Her advising the Justice League not to trust her is the reason why the New Teen Titans became a team in the first place. To make matters even worse, she turned the whole team against her moments before Trigon's first appearance.
• Witch with a Capital "B": In issue 13, Robotman refers to Madame Rouge as "that witch" while expressing his desire to get revenge against her for killing the rest of the Doom Patrol.

Tales of the Teen Titans

• Finger-Licking Poison: In "The Judas Contract", Deathstroke captures Gar 'Changeling' Logan by drugging the glue in the envelopes Gar is using to respond to his fan mail.
• Idiot Ball: The Judas Contract would've been far more than a Near-Villain Victory if Deathstroke had trapped and kidnapped Nightwing like all the other Titans rather than saving him for last and challenging him to a fist fight like a complete goon. Several characters talk about how unwise this was, but the Idiot Ball is still the Idiot Ball.
• The Power of Legacy: In the original "Judas Contract" arc, the other Titans gave Terra a hero's funeral, a statue in their hall, and told everyone (including her half-brother, Geo-Force) that she died a hero. The truth was that she was The Mole and Evil All Along.
• Slut-Shaming: Word of God confirms that the first Terra was shown in a sexual relationship with villain Slade Wilson specifically to emphasize how evil she was by showing what a slut she was, despite there being no evidence that she ever slept with anyone else. Add to that that she was 16 while Slade is significantly older and it crosses into Questionable Consent territory since technically Slade is the one who's emotionally manipulating a 16 year old girl. Later on, Slade actually gets written as an Anti-Hero while Terra is the one who eventually dies^note FWIW, the age of consent in California, where the Titans' HQ is, is 18 - meaning Slade is guilty of statutory rape.
• Wedding Episode: Donna marries Terry Long in an example of a fairly mundane wedding which just happens to have a bunch of superheroes in attendance in issue #50.

Volume Two/New Titans

• Anti-Hero Team: The "Titans Hunt" arc introduced the Teen Titans' sister team, the "Team Titans," who were this to the point that one of them took to calling himself Deathwing.
• Author on Board: Several of Wolfman's Teen Titans Spotlight comics focus on the Current Events of the late 80s, including South African apartheid and nuclear power. He would occasionally get political in the main comic, such as having Kid Flash carry a thoughtless anti-Communist grudge, which was, go figure, the one thing Wolfman's Kid Flash wasn't indecisive about.
• Babysitting Episode: Gar and Terra II spent some time in the nineties sitting Baby Wildebeest for Pantha... just in time for Jillian to make an appearance and catch them being all domestic. Terra chases her out of Gar's life and the comic for good.
• Bad Future: A storyline that spawned from the Titans Hunt arc but didn't take center stage until the Total Chaos arc involved a group of Titans going into the past to kill Donna Troy and prevent the birth of Lord Chaos, who created this dystopic world where he controls everything with drugs.
• Bed Trick: Dick was seduced by the shape-shifting Mirage (aka Miriam Delgado) in the form of his girlfriend Koriand'r/Starfire. This was a large factor in them subsequently breaking up. Mirage even goes so far as to taunt Dick for not noticing the difference. It should be noted that this is largely seen as an incredibly racist stereotype since Miriam is explicitly a person of colour (she's eventually revealed during the Changing of the Guard storyline that she's Brazilian) as well as an eighteen year old with many fans agreeing that this characterization of Miriam is extremely Out of Character, similar to Morrison's portrayal of Talia Al Ghul in their run of Batman
• C-List Fodder: Kori's second husband Ph'yzzon and nearly the entire Tamaranean race die in the prologue issue for Final Night (July 1996) when their planet New Tamaran is annihilated. New Tamaran was basically founded in the final issue of The New Titans (February 1996).
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Danny Chase, an obnoxious telekinetic Insufferable Genius and Child Prodigy, was this during his status on the team. Despite being a hard worker and pulling his weight, he constantly disparaged the team for its emotional foibles and lack of cold professionalism. This reached a high point after he informed the team of the death of Jason Todd and callously disregarded the death. Chase' callous behavior combined with Dick Grayson's fears of another underaged child dying from supeheroics led to Grayson booting Chase from the team with very few objections from the rest of the team.
• Kudzu Plot: The 90s began to resemble this after Perez left the title starting with Titans Hunt up until the creation of the supporting titles Team Titans and Deathstroke The Terminator in Total Chaos
  • The infamous Titans Hunt arc started with the Wildebeest Society kidnapping the superpowered Titans (but also going out of their way to do things like murder a bunch of only tangentially-related characters) and leaving a hodgepodge group of Nightwing and the group's relatives to come chase after them because the Wildebeest Society's new leader is one of the Titans who had undergone a Face–Heel Turn, gone mad, and developed new superpowers along with it. The Wildebeest society then blew up Titans Tower, opening up a new plot about a an anti-superhero politician charging the Titans themselves for repairs. The Society then they launch the kidnapped Titans into space, resulting in the group being left with a Soulless Shell of Cyborg rebuilt with Soviet tech and thus under Red Star's supervision. They also recruit Pantha, one of the Society's Mutants, which are being created because the society needs the Ultimate Life Form to serve as a host for the transference, as other, weaker bodies degrade. Waverider (a time-traveler) drops in hoping to find the real identity of Monarch, a villain from the future. Other time travelers (the Team Titans) have also come back to the past trying to kill Donna Troy to prevent another villain from the future from ever existing (as a prologue to their new solo title). When that villain, Lord Chaos, follows them back in time in order to ensure he's born... and then kill Donna Troy himself. Except before anyone can do any of that, Donna Troy, just returned from a crossover with Wonder Woman, gets literally abducted for the finale of the War of the Gods miniseries, a Wonder Woman-based Crisis Crossover. And then it's revealed that Jericho is the leader the entire time.
  • Once that was over, Lord Chaos and the Team Titans took center stage with the Total Chaos Bat Family Crossover, which bounced around between New Titans, Deathstroke, and Team Titans books.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Lilith grew up not knowing at all where did she came from, or the source of her powers. Then, one day, Thia (one of the Titans of Myth) shows up and gave her the "We Can Rule Together" speech.
• Modesty Bedsheet: In the very first issue of The New Teen Titans Volume 2 (1984), Dick Grayson and Starfire are shown waking in bed. Both are barely covered by bedsheets. This scene became controversial both as the first display of a young couple post-coitus in a comic and as the first overt display of Dick Grayson's sex life. Since then, most writers have just run with it.
• One-Steve Limit: With Wonder Woman having such strong relations with the Greek pantheon, it was only a matter of time before the Titans (Oceanus, Hyperion, Coeus, Cronus, Crius and Iapetus and the females Mnemosyne, Tethys, Theia, Phoebe, Rhea, and Themis) were included in DC as well. And where Wonder Woman goes, Wonder Girl will surely eventually follow. But they are not "The" Titans of DC, so this other group was named the "Titans of Myth". And if you think that's confusing, it's even more for Troia, who has been a member of both.
• Public Exposure: Mirage used her illusion powers to disguise herself as Starfire and pose naked for a men's magazine. Starfire was not amused when she found out. See above in Bed Trick for more.
• Put on a Bus: Nightwing is put on one following The Darkening.
• Red Shirt: Kole was created specifically for this purpose. Wolfman was obligated by his fellow creators to kill one off his characters for the Crisis on Infinite Earths because they all had to kill off people they were using for it. He ended up kind of liking her in the end, but a deal's a deal, and he didn't have to wipe out any major character.
• Revisiting the Roots: Starfire has got married and stayed in Tamaran. Nightwing does not want to hear about anything. Changeling tries to stop Mento, who got crazy. Cyborg is in the hospital, after Mento almost killed him. Raven has been missing since The Terror of Trigon. Kole is dead, and Jericho is crying for her. The New Titans are no more. So, who will work with Wonder Girl? Wally West, Jason Todd, Speedy, Aqualad and Hawk. The original Teen Titans are back! (but not for very long).
• Sequel Hook: At the end of the origin of Lilith. She happens to be the daughter of Thia, one of the Titans of Myth, who mentioned in passing that she has several offspring in the world, at strategic positions of modern power (politics, economy, military, etc). And the adventures continues... but that point was not forgotten. At the end of the story, we see the personal assistant of the U.S. President, who takes the phone and calls other people. "Yes. Our mother is dead, but her plans will live on. The sons of Thia, the sons of the Sun, will someday rule the world!". An interesting point for a future story arc... which never took place. Crisis on Infinite Earths took place after it, with its massive cosmic retcon, and the Titans of Myth were completely redefined. The Sons of Thia are not there anymore, and never carried out their plans.
• Stalker with a Crush: That winged man that fell in love with Lilith at first sight.
• Terminator Twosome: In an alternate future, Troia gave birth to a child with godly powers, who became an adult instantly, killed his mother and conquered the world. The Team Titans go back in time to kill Donna Troy and prevent the existence of Lord Chaos. And the one who also goes back in time, to stop them and save Lord Chaos is... Lord Chaos himself.
• Victory Pose On Person:
  • In the third annual, the villain Godiva forces Danny's father John to fight Danny's mother to the point of exhaustion. As John lays on the ground exhausted, Godiva puts one foot on his back performing a Victory Pose.
  • In #98, Beast Boy gets knocked out by someone who looks like Rita Farr. The fake Rita then proceeds to pose on his chest.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Raven spent years knowing that Trigon would eventually assimilate her, and that she would eventually become a demon like him. It finally happened in The Terror of Trigon. Her soul was cleansed from Trigon's evil at the end of the story.

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There have been so many good moments to think about. Moments good and bad. Moments I'd love to live all over again...

...and others I'd pay anything to forget

But I don't think I could change any of them.

I move on, but I don't leave my childhood behind as if it's gone. It can never be gone...

...while it's so alive inside me.

The future's always uncertain, but that's okay. If I'd known what was ahead of me all those years ago, I might have avoided all the bumps...

...but I might have missed all those laughs.

"Take care, guys. You're the best!"

—Nightwing