A
comic book introduced by
DC Comics in
1964. It started out as the
sidekick comic, with
members including
Robin (of "
Batman and..." fame),
Kid Flash (
the Flash's sidekick),
Aqualad (
Aquaman's sidekick),
Wonder Girl (
Wonder Woman's sidekick), and
Speedy (
Green Arrow's sidekick). Back in the
1960s and
1970s, the book worked very hard to sound
hip, but usually just sounded like a really
square grownup's idea of what
teenagers sounded like.
In 1980, the comic was revived by writer
Marv Wolfman and artist
George Perez. The
membership of the
team was much more varied this time around, with members including
Robin (later
Nightwing),
Kid Flash,
Wonder Girl, and a bunch of new members, including
Changeling,
Cyborg,
Raven,
Starfire, and several others. This
comic was much better written and more
popular than the previous one -- the only comic more popular in the 1980s was "
The X-Men".
* This team had some of the best storylines in comics, taking on villains like
Trigon,
Deathstroke the Terminator, the
Fearsome Five, and
Brother Blood, getting betrayed by a masquerading psychopath named
Terra, and tracking down Wonder Girl's
origins.
Several more
incarnations of the
Teen Titans have come and gone in the ensuing years, often wavering between the original members, all grown up, members of the '80s team, all grown up, or completely new members who no one has ever heard of. For a while, the Titans included a bunch of
human/
alien hybrids, led by
the Atom, who had been mystically de-aged to his teens.
The version of the team introduced in 2004 was designed to piggyback on the success of a new
animated cartoon on
Cartoon Network. This edition of the Titans included some members of the '80s team (Cyborg, Starfire,
Beast Boy, and a de-aged Raven) along with the latest crop of
teen sidekicks, like the new Robin, the new Superboy, the new Wonder Girl, the new Kid Flash, and the new Speedy.
*(Of course, the Titans and the X-Men
did crossover in 1982, when they took on the combined might of
Darkseid and the
Dark Phoenix. Only thing I remember 'bout it was
Changeling and
Kitty Pride necking on the teleporting
Moebius Chair...)