Marv & George on "The Judas Contract"
The Forward to the JUDAS CONTRACT Trade Paperback plus interview highlights
The Judas Contract Trade Paperback: Marv Wolfman's Introduction
The stories reprinted in this volume are among my favorites of the one hundred-plus Titans stories that I've written to date over the past eight and a half years. They work on several levels, the least of which is as good adventure stories.
To explain how these stories were written and drawn would, to me, prove uninteresting. Sitting side-by-side with artist and co-plotter George Pérez, hashing out concepts, rejecting concepts, coming up with new ideas, discarding them, etc., etc., etc. is the process by which most of the better Titans material was created. Instead, I'll use this small space to let new readers of the Titans know the story to date and how the character of Tara Markov was created.
There was an attack on the Statue of Liberty The Teen Titans flew from Titans Tower, situated on an island in New York's East River, to find Miss Liberty under siege by a young girl who called herself Terra. Terra was quickly subdued, and she explained her name was Tara Markov, that she had the power to control the earth itself, and that she had been led astray by terrorists and supposedly was following their command. The Titans saw Tara as a wise-mouthed child, lost, alone, and confused. They did not realize she was a deadly spy sent to infiltrate the Titans by one of their greatest enemies-Deathstroke, The Terminator.
When The New Teen Titans was first published back in 1980, many fans thought that we were simply 'ripping off the idea from Marvel's X-Men comic.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. I had written the Teen Titans in its first incarnation in 1969 and have had a fondness for the group ever since. When I came to DC Comics in 1980, I wanted to return to that title, bring it up to date, and add a new cast of characters to fight alongside some of the original members.
But the accusation that we were an X-Men clone continued, even though the X-Men writer, Chris Claremont, once stated at a comics convention that the only similarity was that we were both working on former cult titles and had made them more popular than before.
Still, some die-hards refused to give up. Now, I love puncturing balloons, and I decided if some fans thought we were an X-Men clone, then why not play with them a bit? The X-Men had just introduced a new member to their group, a young 14-year-old cute-as-a-button girl with incredible powers. I'd do the same. I'd play her first as a villain, then seemingly reform her and have her join the Titans. Only I'd have her constantly lie to the Titans, change her stories, do suspicious things, and, in general, make her a louse. I could do that, I knew, because comic book convention would demand that readers ignore all the evidence and assume she was a good girl. Alter all, the X-Men's Kitty Pryde was a heroine, so even the lying, cheating, conniving Tara Markov had to have a heart of gold.
Right?
Wrong. From the very beginning Tara was conceived as a villainess. It was the first time a member of a super-hero group ever proved to be a spy (not a traitor-she was always working for The Terminator). Playing on the comic readers' expectations worked.
The Tara Markov story threw everyone for a loop. Reader response ranged from hailing the stories as a Titans high point to "How dare you make her evil," (as if I had ever given the readers any reason to think she wasn't) to "For what you did to Tara Markov, I am going to kill you." We sent that death-threat to the police. Unlike our pen-and-ink created heroes and heroines, the writers and artists of the Titans are all too mortal.
This, then, is the story of Terra and The Terminator. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as George Pérez and I enjoyed creating it.
The Judas Contract Trade Paperback: George Pérez's Introduction
Ah, memories.
Has it really been five years since Marv Wolfman and I sat down in a small restaurant and gleefully plotted the birth and death of a cute little teenaged girl? Has it been that long since that fateful meeting in Dick Giordano's office when it was decided that a famous caped crusader's sidekick was going to hang up his mask and at last be his own master, and that we would also retire a certain teenage speedster? And was it so long ago that Marv and I racked our respective skulls trying to come up with a concept for a new hero for whom we had only a name and a parental history? Has it really been five years since The Judas Contract? I've always liked the name The Judas Contract. When Marv came up with it, I thought that it had a certain grandeur, a certain significance to it. And when I learned that DC Comics was reprinting the multi-issue saga, my mind flooded with waves of nostalgia, pleasant memories which always seem to arise when I think of my original tenure as co-creator, co-plotter, and artist on The New Teen Titans.
So it is that I recall how, after two years of establishing Titans as a bona-fide hit for DC, Marv and I sat across from one another in that diner booth and he told me about this new character he had just invented: a 15-year-old named Terra. She was to be the first new Titan to join the team since the inception of the series, but she would also be the first to die.
Thus was The Judas Contract born, although it would be over a year before that actual storyline would take place. Other inges were in the offing. the creation of The New Teen Titans, Marv and I had sworn not to make it a junior version of The Justice League of America, which is what the Titans were in the 1960s. (I used to call it the Justice Little League.) The of a group of kid sidekicks banded together to fight crime always invites comparisons between them and their adult mentors. Also, the freedom of utilizing a character fully is compromised when he is also being used concurrently in his guardian's own series.
Thankfully Cyborg, Raven, and Starfire were all-new heroes created specifically for Titans (I can still remember the words of artist/editor Joe Orlando when he saw the original design for Starfire: "I think you should make her hair longer." Boy, did I take that suggestion to heart!). Wonder Girl was never really a sidekick to Wonder Woman, and Changeling's roots to the then-defunct Doom Patrol series were non-hampering. That left Kid Flash and Robin. Kid Flash was easy. Robin was the tricky one. For over forty years, he had been the popular swashbuckling partner to the mysterious Batman. In fact, Batman without Robin was considered as unthinkable as Holmes without Watson, Robin Hood without Little John, Minneapolis without St. Paul! Yet Robin was the team leader, the linchpin of the Titans. When Marv Wolfman, then-Batman writer Doug Moench, and I sauntered into Executive Editor Dick Giordano's office to discuss Robin's fate, I actually thought we'd lose the rights to use the Titans' leader. Was I wrong. Goodbye, Robin/Dick Grayson-hello, Robin/Jason Todd!
Then there was Jericho. Marv wanted to introduce a new member to the Titans to replace the departed Kid Flash. However, he had the character's name (an unused character who was to have appeared in the original 1960s Titans series) and the notion that he would be an offspring of the villainous Terminator, but nothing more. After weeks of pounding our heads against the walls, we had all but given up. We couldn't think of anything for Jericho. Then it hit me. Overnight, I came up with the concept, personality, and design for Joseph William Wilson, the newest Teen Titan.
Joseph, or Jericho, was the first Titan I ever designed solely and as such, he was more of an artist's character than a writer's character. By making him mute (and forbidding poor Marv the use of thought balloons for the character), I was forced to convey Jericho's personality through body language and facial expressions. Such subtle nuances would have been unthinkable for me when I first started the series in 1980, but Marv was so confident in my improved abilities that he accepted my version of Jericho, who was a lot tougher for him to write.
That still left us with Dick Grayson. Dick has an incredibly vocal fan Following, particularly among females. There was no way we could keep that character out of the group indefinitely.
So, during the run of The Judas Contract, Dick Grayson's new crimefighting identity was established. Nightwing was born. Though neither Marv nor I were originally crazy about his new name, in the long run, it seems to have won the fans' hearts. Those who considered themselves Robin-Rooters have proudly followed Dick's new career as avid Wingnuts.
So here I am, hunched over my word processor, reliving the glorious yesterdays which went into the tales unfolded for you in the following pages. It was a time of growth for me. My maturation as an artist can be traced back to these stories. My new career as a writer was born from the many brainstorming plotting sessions through which Marv and I sweated during those days. I am grateful to the Titans and to Marv and all those who supported the effort.
Thanks for the memories.
George Pérez Talks About Tara
[Comics Interview #50, 1987]
GEORGE: [...] Tara, she was made to be killed; she served her purpose. That was it.
ANDY: You didn 't get any attachment to Tara?
GEORGE: No, because I knew we were going to kill her. So I deliberately used all the things to make her as likeable and cute as possible, so people would never believe we were going to kill a sixteen-year-old. And she was a sixteen-year-old sociopath. She was one of our cleverest gimmicks; we deliberately created her in order to lead everyone astray. So we couldn't build any fondness for her, 'cause we knew full well what her whole motive for existence was. Her existence was basically to keep the stories interesting; we were tossing a curve that no one would have expected.
ANDY: You didn 't even love to hate her, huh?
GEORGE: No. I loved handling her, because she was such a good idea. But she was an idea. Not as much a person. She was there to show exactly how much their humanity can be one thing they have to be careful about, the Teen Titans have to be careful about. . . they can be too trusting, or their own weaknesses can be used against them.
Jericho, I personally... I created Jericho, I came up with the power, the idea of the mute and everything else. So I have a much more personal feeling about him. One regret I have for Jericho is that I left before I could ever really do anything with him. But I would like to do more with him; I think he has a lot more of the love element in him that he can show with the other Titans, because he's there as a listener and he's compassionate, he's really, really a nice guy. And Marv brought in that darker edge to show that he was a good fighter and he has a history, too; he remains nice through just about everything that happens to him, and that gives him a very strong. . that's something Marv did very well.
Marv Wolfman Talks About The Judas Contract
[Marv Wolfman Interview - Amazing Heroes #50, 1984]
Michael Hopkins Talks to the co-creator and writer of the Teen Titans: Marv Wolfman
The story of Terra was far different than what many expected, and its shattering culmination in the third annual brought many interesting aspects to light. "George and I knew exactly where it was going. She was set up specifically to make the readers think that we were doing a Kitty Pryde story [laughs], and then suddenly switch it on them when it was revealed she was a traitor. Lead the readers to think that she was going to reform, as every person has ever done here. Then, of course, not only not have her reform, but have her die. The reader was, we hope, taken by surprise. You notice DC did no publicity whatsoever that she died.
"I enjoyed playing the game for two years," Wolfman says. "Whenever anyone would ask 'ls a Titan going to die?' I said no. [laughs] And I was honest about it, because in my mind she was never a Titan, and she wasn't even a traitor. She was a very sick person. At the same time, we knew we could sell 50,000 more copies if we had said a Teen Titan dies in the annual. We weren't interested in that. We wanted the shock of the story.
"People did not know where it was going. Not even the diehard Titans fans who I see at conventions, who have magazines about the Titans that I read. All of them speculated that Terra was going to reform at the last minute and turn on the Terminator. Of course we had that in there, too, but for a totally different reason. The cover was created specifically to let you wonder which side she was going to take, not realizing that she was going against both."
An aspect that's particularly noticeable is the path that leads to Tara Markov's emotional and physical suicide. The fact is, as the story states, she has no reason for being what she became. Yet it's interesting to note a curious parallel between Terra's roots and the roots of Wonder Girl, namely that they're both bastard children. In exploring this, we see how simply and ingeniously Wolfman and Pérez have utilized traditional story devices while avoiding their
cliched traps.
"What we didn't want to do is state that beause she was this or because she was that, she was evil," Wolfman says. "There are people who are just not nice. They could be brought up in the best situations or whatever, it won't make a difference. Wonder Girl was brought up in an identical situation, only she turned out good. There was absolutely nothing in Terra's background that should have made her the type of character she was."
