- Here's a bit of
superhero history for you. Okay, so, the original Teen
Titans team was created by Bob Haney and Bruno
Premiani during the '60s, with a frequently changing
roster consisting mainly of Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Wonder Girl, and a handful of other young superheroes. Their series drawn largely
by artist Nick Cardy, lasted until 1973, but by all accounts that first comic run wasn't super popular, and the series died off. The Teen Titans tried to make
a comeback a few years later, but their revival was again
unsuccessful and short-lived. The team just wasn't resonating with readers the way that DC had hoped. (knocks at door) It seemed that try as they might, nobody could make the Teen Titans work until artist George Perez
and writer Marv Wolfman stepped up to the plate,
took their best swing, and absolutely knocked it out of the park with their brand new take on the team that premiered as The New Teen Titans at the start of the '80s. Under these two talented gents, the Teen Titans roster
added the core characters I'd wager most people
associate with the team today. Starfire, Cyborg, Raven, and Beast Boy, who, in addition to Robin,
make up the main players we've seen across
animated movies, cartoons, and, now, live-action shows. Third time's the charm, it seems. But here's a question for you. After back to back failures,
why would DC Comics take yet another chance
on the Teen Titans? And why did it resonate much
more the last time around? Well, it all began when
Marv Wolfman started writing for DC Comics after making a dramatic exit from the publisher's main
competition, Marvel Comics. And you have to understand, this wasn't just another case
of a comic creator jumping between publishers looking for work. Marv Wolfman was the editor-in-chief
of Marvel at one point. He was at the top of the food chain, but the company was so
stressful and chaotic and a pure nightmare to work at, that he abandoned ship
to write Teen Titans for the competition instead. So what the hell was going on at Marvel Comics during the '70s? Well, the story involves a
sinister comic book dictator, Stan Lee drunk on Christmas wine, devastating levels of regret, and-- (bell dings) Plenty, good Lord, plenty of office drama. (phone rings) Hello? Oh, no! How are you doing, you wonderful nerds? Scott here, and this is gonna
come up a lot in this story, so it's worth noting for context that during a large chunk of the '70s, Marvel was just flying
through editors-in-chief. Every time Marvel put
someone new in charge, they got overwhelmed after a few months and passed it on to someone else. It happened so much, that Marvel made fun of themselves in their own comics for it. Roy Thomas passed it on to Len Wein who passed it on to Marv Wolfman
who only filled that role for about one year between 1975 and '76. - [Marv] I was having some
personal situations at the time, and I was tired of
fighting the business side. I just wanted to do more creative things. I love being an editor,
and I'd have no problem as an editor-in-chief today,
but when I was in my twenties, and going through a lot of
the personal stuff as well, that became too much of a hassle. - You know what, that's pretty fair. And with all that weighing on him, Wolfman quickly passed the role
of Marvel's editor-in-chief onto Gerry Conway who passed
it on to Archie Goodwin who finally passed it on to Jim Shooter. And remember, all of this rapid changing of the guard at Marvel happened between just a couple years, 1974 to 1978. Not a great look for the company, but you know what, Jim
Shooter was now in charge, that young up and comer. What's the worst that could happen? Jim Shooter was a bad, bad man. Okay, I'm exaggerating
a little bit, obviously. He's probably a perfectly
fine human being. It's just that everybody
hated working with him, and every picture of him
looks like his sinister plot to destroy the world is
coming together quite nicely. (laughing maniacally) Other than that, he's fine. I bring Jim Shooter up because
it was this specific conflict between him and Marv
Wolfman that eventually led to the New Teen Titans revival,
so let's talk about him. Shooter's legacy is
endlessly fascinating to me. Under his rule, Marvel
had a ton of successful and iconic comic runs like Claremont and Byrne's Uncanny X-Men, Miller's Daredevil, and,
uh, New, New Universe? Is that a, that's not a great example. Forget I said that. The point is that, yeah,
Jim Shooter's reign as editor-in-chief
produced some good things and some terrible things,
but at the end of the day, his approach to running the company did help revitalize Marvel Comics. It's just that he did so by
being strict and controlling, and everyone hated him for it. During the nine years he
was in charge of Marvel, he had very public spats with the artists and writers who worked under him. It wasn't great for the
morale around the office. - [Roy] Jim wanted total power, and I felt he had ambition enough to dance on all our graves. - [John] I fear I am one of those artists who is heavily impacted by the environment in which he works. The work suffers if I am not happy, and in those final years
of Shooter's reign, I was most definitely not happy. - [Chris] Everything
that has been done to us in the past years has
been from the attitude, here, my boy, have a lollipop. It's been a parent dealing
with an unruly child. We're not children, we're
people, we're creators. It's about time we stood up and made them take notice of that fact. - So people didn't like
the guy, to say the least. Which is why you might be wondering how he in the world was Jim Shooter able to rise to power at
Marvel in the first place? And that's where the
story gets interesting. This is literally just
more coffee, by the way. You see, Jim Shooter had been working in the comics industry since
he was a literal child, but by the early '70s,
he had left the field to work on advertising and other odd jobs, just wasn't very fulfilling, and Shooter wanted to
work on comics again. Its just that he needed
a way back in, you know? And guess who hired him. - [Marv] I made the
mistake of hiring somebody who never should have been hired, who rose up through the ranks
and became editor-in-chief. I knew pretty quickly he was somebody I did not wanna work with. - Yep, during his brief
stint as editor-in-chief, Marv Wolfman offered Jim Shooter a job in an editorial position at Marvel. He would go on to regret that decision. Hi. So, it takes me a while
to make these videos. I wrote and recorded
this entire next section that you're about to see a month ago, before the news came out
about Stan Lee's passing. And I just wanted to give
you a head's up there because I'm about to make fun of him for some of his silly life decisions. Honestly, I think he
would've wanted it this way. But I'm still debating If
I wanna make a full video about my thoughts and
feelings towards Stan Lee. If you wanna see something like that, maybe leave a comment below. But, I just wanted to give
you a heads up right now before we continue on
because it is kind of timely. That's an unintentional pun, I think. Either way, let's just jump
right back in to the video. I'll set the stage for you. The year was 1976 at Marvel Comics. After Marv Wolfman stepped
down as editor-in-chief, came Gerry Conway who held
the job for about a month and a half, Jesus Christ. But then Archie Goodwin
took over shortly after. Okay, how much of this
company's budget is designated to all these nameplates? Can somebody please hold
this office for longer than. At this time, Jim Shooter
was an associate editor working directly with Stan Lee. Stan Lee hated how Archie
Goodwin was running things, so he and Shooter concocted a secret plan to flip Marvel's leadership around. Basically, give Goodwin some nonsense job that sounds prestigious,
while promoting Jim Shooter to the role of Marvel's
new, new, new, new, new editor-in-chief the following year. Turns out, surprise,
surprise, it's pretty tricky to keep a secret around these offices. Now, I'm not saying that I
know who spilled the beans, but let's just say secretaries
are not the best people with whom to entrust secrets. Wait. (keys clacking) Oh, yeah that actually
makes a lot of sense. The point is, Archie
Goodwin quickly found out about Stan Lee and Jim
Shooter's plan to remove him, and he was furious. - [Jim] His read was that I
had stabbed him in the back. Even though he was gonna
get a raise and title, he just basically told me to go to hell. Yeah, maybe because you
conspired against him to take his job out from under him, Jim. Maybe that's why, Jim. Either way, the plan worked,
and Jim Shooter was soon to fill the role of editor-in-chief at Marvel by the end of '77. But an unexpected death in the company would put the announcement on hold, until Stan Lee got drunk
at a Christmas party. John Verpoorten had been
Marvel's production manager for seven years. He worked with the entire creative staff, coordinating between
writers, artists, letterers, and anyone else working to
produce Marvel comic books in the '70s. He was selfless, running a secret plan to make sure that
struggling artists were paid even before their work was turned in. And on December 19th, 1977, John Verpoorten was found
dead in his apartment, alone, at the age of 37. It was a shock to everyone at the company. Stan Lee wanted to announce Jim Shooter as the new editor-in-chief
of Marvel before Christmas, but now, it just didn't
seem like the right time. It would be best if they waited. Let people have a chance to grieve before forcing more change on them. But alcohol's a funny thing. - [Jim] Stan and his wife Joan had been to another Christmas party, and I guess they had a
glass of wine or something. And Stan just blurted
it out, hey everybody, Jim is gonna be the new editor in chief. Archie and his wife are
sitting there shooting daggers at me with their eyes. You could have heard a
pin drop, no applause. - The following morning, Jim Shooter receives a phone
call from Marv Wolfman. This is the guy who
rehired Shooter at Marvel. The guy who gave up the
editor-in-chief position to focus on writing comics, and now he was working under
the very man that he hired. Wolfman doesn't congratulate
Shooter over the phone. He doesn't even say hello. He only says six words. What are you going to do? It didn't take long for comic creators to jump ship and find work elsewhere including Marvel's biggest
competitor, DC Comics. - [Marv] I was playing
in a regular poker game with the DC and Marvel people
back then we were all friends, and I mentioned, would there be interest in my coming over to DC? I knew the characters, et cetera, and I was told, absolutely, yes. So I told Marvel that I would
not be renewing my contract at the end of its time period, which was December of '79,
and that I was gonna leave. - Marv Wolfman, the once
editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics, left for DC because of a hiring decision that he made and regretted. And as you can expect, Jim Shooter wasn't bitter about it at all. - [Jim] When Roy Thomas's
contract came up, he wanted things that, which
we didn't want to give him. Even though DC was not
offering those things, he felt obliged to go over there because he couldn't get what he wanted. Um, uh, same sort of
thing with Marv Wolfman. Those guys both are very talented and they're both very good. I think uh, I think stylistically,
uh, they belong at DC. They're, uh, they kind of
come from a different school than Stan and I come from and
so that doesn't bother me. I don't think we've been
hurt by that at all. - That was great, Mason.
- I'm Jim Shooter. - Stay classy, Jim. When Wolfman got to DC
Comics, he made one request. He had just wrapped up a 14-issue run on the series Marvel Two-In-One, a book all about pairing
Fantastic Four's The Thing with other fun characters
from the Marvel Universe like Thor, Spider-Woman, Daredevil, and in an exciting crossover that rarely ever happens, Mr. Fantastic. But honestly, it was a fun concept, its just that, after
writing over a dozen issues, Wolfman was getting tired
of these team-up books. He hated team-up books,
they just felt artificial. If he was gonna take the
jump from Marvel to DC, Wolfman requested that
they do not make him write any more team-up books. So, naturally, the first
two series they gave him were The Brave and the
Bold, a Batman team-up book, and DC Comics Presents,
a Superman team-up book. It was torture. So Wolfman decided that instead of working on these artificial team books, he'd just make team book of his own, complete with characters that
had powers and personalities that made for organic,
entertaining stories. Wolfman proposed a
revival of the Teen Titans with a mix of some old characters
and some new characters. But there was a bit of
resistance from the higher-ups at DC who remembered the poor reception of the original Teen Titans comic. - [Jenette] Why do you wanna do this? The last one didn't sell,
and it wasn't very good. - [Marv] We'll just do it better. We'll do it better than anybody. Why doesn't everybody shut the (bleep) up 'cause we'll do it better. - Artist George Perez was brought on to design the new characters and illustrate the very first
issue of the new Teen Titans. Perez had also just left Marvel where he was drawing The
Avengers and had his sights set on drawing Justice League comics for DC. But he fell in love with
the New Teen Titans so much while working on them, that he wanted to stick
around on that title. When the first issue hit shelves, fan reaction was negative, obviously. Comic book nerds tend to be
resistant to change of any kind, and this New Teen Titans book threw away most of the original team. Wolfman thought Kid Flash was
too powerful to need a team, so he was cut from the new
squad after a few issues. He thought Aqualad was too
dependent on ocean stories, and that Speedy really
couldn't do anything that Robin couldn't already do. Again, these are his words, not mine, so don't yell at me in
the comments about it. That's not gonna stop you. (chuckles) But honestly, this new team
they assembled was just, I mean, it was just
brilliant, it was brilliant. They made a team where every member is a different genre of story. You want space adventures,
here's Starfire. How about more grounded sci-fi
stories with a city setting? There's a Cyborg for ya. You want a detective story,
can't forget about Robin. You want grand tales of mythology? Wonder Girl's right there. You want a supernatural horror mystery? That's so Raven. It was awesome. It had something for everyone. It was better. And its influence is still felt today when the Teen Titans
pop up in cartoon shows, and animated movies, and beyond. And I, at least, think it's
fun to turn back the clock and see how a series of
events can fall like dominoes and lead to unexpected
and wonderful creations like the Teen Titans. A bunch of behind the scenes
drama at Marvel no less, made it a miserable place to
work by nearly all accounts, and it led to creators turning that misery into creativity elsewhere. Because staying just
wasn't worth the trouble. And as I'm sure you know, when there's trouble,
you know who to call. ♪ When there's trouble, you
know who to call, Teen Titans ♪ ♪ From their tower they can
see it all, Teen Titans ♪ Thank you to everyone who provided a voice for this video, there was a lot of them. And these are all wonderful YouTubers who I encourage you to go check out. Their channels will be linked
in the description down below. Specifically, I asked you guys on Twitter who you'd want to hear voice the duo of Marv Wolfman and Jim Shooter, and a ton of you suggested
Mr. Sunday Movies and Nick Mason who absolutely crushed it. I even had them record a bunch of lines that were never intended
to be in the final video, because like Jim Shooter, I,
too, like to abuse my power. Jim Shooter was a violently sweaty man. (laughing) If he'd been touched, looked like he had been fished out of
the grossest, saltiest ocean. - That is mean.
- That's so mean. - Is that a real quote?
- Yeah. If you are new to the channel,
hit that subscribe button. We are almost at half
a million subscribers which is awesome, I'm
super excited about that. And if you wanna be extra awesome, consider supporting
these videos on Patreon so I can continue buying dumb props. It's also where all of
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pledge $15 or more per month will get a personalized
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it's gonna be a fun time. Go check it out, link in the description. But first, I need to especially
thank Cristoffer Lange, Lori Thames, Everett Parrott,
John Duffy, Jonat Campos, Jonathan and Megan
Pierson, Jonathan Lonowski, Sonali Manka, Amanda
Trisdale, Ariella Kelley, Dave Weston, Devin Gosslin, Eliza, wow, Elisabeth Diamond, sorry,
KayleeKez, Luis Orozco, Matias Tironi, Shawn
Griffin, Ali K, Aragix Spel, Bart Labeda, Chris
Osborne, David H. Adler, David Holley, Denny
Sandberg, Dr. Trace Belcher, Jamie Price, Jeff Dumas, Jenny Huapaya, Matt Valentin, Matthew
Jeanos, Matthew Pruitt, Michael Lipinski, sorry,
there were too many Matts in a row, I got screwed up on that one, Natalie Englund, Nathaniel
Naranjo, Stephen Temple, Tim Shannon, Will
Padilla, Zach Van Stanley, Zachary Bahar, and the
rest of the wonderful nerds who support us over at
patreon.com/NerdSync. This could be you, this
could be your name. And hey, you know what, I
enjoyed hanging with you today and this party doesn't have to end. Click or tap right here for something else that YouTube wants you to watch. Thanks for watching. My name is Scott, reminding you to read between the panels and grow
smarter through comics. See ya. - [Marv] It's me, Marv Wolfman. I'm definitely a human like you and not a terrifying wolf man. (bleep)
