Updated Mar 19, 2025! The definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for Teen Titans, Titans, & Young Justice comic books in omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated March 2025 with titles scheduled for release through November 2025.
In 1965 the Silver Age of comics was in full swing, with all of DC’s iconic heroes starring in their own titles as well as in the the Justice League.
One element that DC generally lacked at the time was the youthful energy of Marvel’s Silver Age titles, which included hip young heroes like Spider-Man and The X-Men alongside more iconic DC analogs like The Avengers or Thor. It wasn’t that they lacked for young characters. It seemed the every DC hero had a teen version of sidekick. They hadn’t been assembled all in one place.
That changed with The Brave and The Bold (1955) #54 in 1964, which combined Golden Age creation Robin (Dick Grayson) with the more recently-made sidekicks of Kid Flash (Wally West), and Aqualad. Their next appearance in issue #60 added a formalized version of Wonder Girl (Donna Troy) and gave the group a name – “The Teen Titans.”
After just one more anthology series appearance (in Showcase (1956) #59), the Teen Titans graduated into their own title in 1966. While many other teen heroes appeared, only one became a more permanent member – Speedy, Green Arrow’s sidekick. The team-up was revived in 1973 and then shuttered in 1978 as the heroes felt they were growing too old to be “teens.”
Marv Wolfman and George Pérez reawakened the franchise in 1980. In an astounding act of creation, they introduced team mainstays Cyborg, Starfire, and Raven in a preview story in DC Comics Presents (1978) #26, where they also reintroduced Beast Boy as “Changeling.”
Wolfman and Pérez would become synonymous with the Teen Titans for the next decade in the same way Chris Claremont was with the X-Men, who the Titans rivaled in popularity. Along the way the co-writers introduced Slade Wilson as Deathstroke and changed Dick Grayson to Nightwing. Their characters made it through Crisis on Infinite Earths relatively unscathed as DC chose not to rock the boat of their most-popular team franchise. [Read more…] about Titans, Teen Titans, & Young Justice – The Definitive Collecting Guide and Reading Order