As the Titans take over from the Justice League as DC’s main A-list team, their biggest difference is about to take on a whole new relevance. Nightwing has become the focal point of the universe in the Dawn of DC and the Justice League has disbanded for the time being. That means that the Titans have now taken center stage as DC’s premiere team. Titles like Nightwing have already placed the Titans in a bigger spotlight and their new status is going to be solidified once Tom Taylor and Nicola Scott’s new Titans series hits the stands in May.
Taylor recently did an interview with Popverse where he spoke in depth about what to expect from the early issues of Titans and what it’s like turning the Titans into DC’s main ensemble cast. Speaking about what makes the Titans different from the Justice League, Taylor says:
Part of the thing in taking the Titans and making them the premier team in the DC Universe is that they have to face Justice League-level threats, but we also have to give people the Titans that they love. That means smaller, intimate moments, and you’ll occasionally see them in their civvies sitting around a couch together and chilling out in a way that you wouldn’t see Clark and Bruce just hanging out in a home watching TV– you will with the Titans. It’s about balancing those two things out.
The Titans are Friends, the Justice League are Allies
Taylor highlights a major difference between the League and the Titans: the fact that the Titans consists of actual friends. This is a fact that has been expressed in the comics for years in subtle ways, but also stated outright. In Titans Annual #1 by Dan Abnett and Minkyu Jung, the Key transports four members of the Titans and four members of the Justice League underground, all unaware of where they are or how they got there, and going at each other’s throats trying to figure it out. The Titans are more willing to trust each other while the League members are convinced everyone is an imposter. Wally West points out the obvious – unlike the League, the Titans are a close-knit group of friends who understand each other on a deeply personal level.
The DC Universe Is Being Protected by the Ultimate Friend Group
Highlighting this distinction really puts into perspective why it was so easy for the League to disband preceding the Dawn of DC era. After all, it would be much harder for the team to break up if they were friends who hung out all the time or lived together, like the Titans have. Meanwhile, the Titans are often depicted as living together and frequently seen hanging out together, both in costume and in their civilian lives. The team even became the faculty of a school to train the next generation of heroes, and constantly meet up whether or not there are supervillains to defeat.
Titans Together!
That isn’t to say that the League are unfriendly with each other, but their relationships certainly aren’t on the same level as the Titans. If nothing else, the DC Trinity have always been portrayed as being the closest out of any member of the League, but in a story like Brad Meltzer’s Justice League of America #0, the trio is shown to slowly drift apart the bigger the League becomes and the more they experience ups and downs. The Titans, on the other hand, have remained consistent since their 1964 debut. There was a time when the Justice League were everything DC’s Universe needed – a collection of the strongest heroes in the world – but as DC walks into the modern era, it needs a cohesive, cooperative team: DC needs the Titans.
Source: Popverse
