Tales of the New Teen Titans #3
Tales of the New Teen Titans #3 is the third chapter of a four-issue 1982 limited series that gave DC's most popular team of the era something then virtually unheard-of in mainstream superhero comics: an entire issue devoted to a single character's personal history told in their own voice. This issue delivers the definitive in-continuity origin of Garfield Logan as Changeling, connecting his Doom Patrol childhood — his cure from Sakutia by an experimental serum, his adoption by Rita Farr and Steve Dayton, the deaths of the Doom Patrol, and his bitter feud with former guardian Nicholas Galtry — to the New Teen Titans era, explaining for the first time in one place precisely why the shape-shifting hero abandoned the name Beast Boy. The miniseries as a whole is credited with pioneering the solo-origin anthology format that DC revisited as recently as 2023 with Tales of the Titans, a direct spiritual sequel. Issue #3 in particular is the canonical source text for Changeling's backstory across every subsequent Titans continuity.
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Tales of the New Teen Titans was a four-issue limited series published from June through September 1982 — a companion piece to the ongoing New Teen Titans title that writer Marv Wolfman and penciler George Pérez were producing at the height of the book's popularity. The framing device — the team on a camping trip in the Grand Canyon, telling their stories around a campfire — was Wolfman's way of retrofitting coherent origin narratives onto the newer Titans characters who had arrived without fully elaborated backstories. Issue #3 was penciled by Pérez and inked by Gene Day (each issue in the miniseries received a different inker), colored by Adrienne Roy, lettered by John Costanza, and edited by Len Wein, with Joe Orlando as executive editor. The issue also includes a Changeling pin-up by Pérez.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: August 1982; part of a four-issue limited series (Tales of the New Teen Titans #1–4, June–September 1982) that spotlighted Cyborg, Raven, Changeling, and Starfire in that order.
- Story title: 'The Changeling.' The entire 25-page issue is devoted to Garfield Logan's origin, narrated by Changeling to his teammates during a camping trip at the Grand Canyon.
- Provides the first consolidated in-continuity origin for Changeling (Garfield Logan), tracing his history from contracting the disease Sakutia in Africa, being saved by his scientist father Mark Logan via a green-monkey serum, the deaths of his parents, his time with the Doom Patrol under Dr. Niles Caulder, and his adoption by Rita Farr (Elasti-Girl) and Steve Dayton (Mento).
- Explains on-panel why Garfield abandoned the 'Beast Boy' name: his former legal guardian Nicholas Galtry — who had been embezzling from the Logan estate and twice tried to have Gar killed — had assumed the costumed identity of the Arsenal and mocked the 'Beast Boy' name so thoroughly that Gar wanted no further association with it.
- Full creative team: writer Marv Wolfman, penciler George Pérez (cover and interiors), inker Gene Day, colorist Adrienne Roy, letterer John Costanza, editor Len Wein, executive editor Joe Orlando.
- The issue features appearances (via flashback and framing sequences) by a large ensemble including all New Teen Titans members present at the campfire — Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, Starfire, Cyborg, and Raven — as well as flashback appearances by the core Doom Patrol roster: The Chief, Elasti-Girl, Robotman, Negative Man, and Mento.
- Reprinted in: New Teen Titans Archives, Volume 3 (2006); The New Teen Titans, Vol. 3 trade paperback; and The New Teen Titans Omnibus, Volume 1.
- The miniseries served as the direct template for DC's 2023 four-issue anthology Tales of the Titans, with that series' covers by Nicola Scott explicitly paying homage to Pérez's original covers.
Cast · 40 characters
Full credits
Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
Origin of Changeling.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).