Tales of the Teen Titans #42
Tales of the Teen Titans #42 opens 'The Judas Contract,' the storyline broadly regarded as the creative peak of Marv Wolfman and George Pérez's celebrated New Teen Titans run — a multi-part thriller that had been building since the subplots seeded in New Teen Titans #2. The issue delivers the first (cameo) appearances of Joey Wilson and his mother Adeline Kane-Wilson, characters who would become permanent fixtures of the Titans mythos, and sets the table for Dick Grayson's imminent reinvention as Nightwing in the arc's concluding chapters. Its central narrative gambit — presenting a quiet 'day in the life' issue whose domestic scenes are simultaneously surveillance footage being used to destroy the team — was a structural novelty that pushed against the era's action-first conventions and demonstrated how long-form, character-driven comics storytelling could reward patient readers. The Judas Contract as a whole permanently altered how the industry thought about traitor storylines, sustained deception arcs, and the possibility of killing off a young supporting character with no heroic redemption.
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Wolfman and Pérez developed 'The Judas Contract' through close, iterative collaboration — Wolfman has described plotting sessions at a diner near Pérez's apartment, bringing ideas that Pérez would then freely interpret and expand visually. Terra had been designed from her introduction (New Teen Titans #26) to be irredeemably villainous: Pérez confirmed in interviews that the creators planted dramatic irony throughout her every appearance, knowing she would die unrepentant — a deliberate subversion of reader expectations shaped by the Kitty Pryde template at Marvel's X-Men. Pérez also claimed particular creative ownership over Jericho, working out the character's design, muteness, powers, and personality largely himself and insisting that Joey's emotions be conveyed entirely through visual storytelling rather than thought balloons. The issue was edited jointly by Wolfman and Pérez, with Dick Giordano serving as executive editor and Tom Condon as managing editor, and went on sale January 17, 1984, carrying a May 1984 cover date.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First (cameo) appearance of Joey Wilson (later Jericho) and his mother Adeline Kane-Wilson — both created by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez.
- Written and edited by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez; art by Pérez and Romeo Tanghal; inks by Dick Giordano; colors by Adrienne Roy; executive editor Dick Giordano.
- Titled 'The Judas Contract: Book One — The Eyes of Tara Markov!' — the issue's narrative gimmick structures everyday Titans scenes as surveillance photographs being compiled by Terra for Deathstroke.
- The arc is the payoff of a subplot begun as far back as New Teen Titans #2, making this issue the culmination of years of foreshadowing involving Deathstroke and the H.I.V.E.
- Dick Grayson appears throughout without a costumed identity, having retired the Robin name before this arc begins — his transformation into Nightwing occurs later in the arc (Tales of the Teen Titans #44).
- The controversial sexual relationship between the adult Deathstroke and the teenage Terra is an element of the arc that Pérez later acknowledged in interviews as statutory rape, a deliberately transgressive creative choice intended to cement Terra's story as one with no comfortable redemption arc.
- The issue has been reprinted in multiple collected editions: the 1988 New Teen Titans: The Judas Contract trade paperback (reissued in 2003 and 2017), The New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol. 2 (2012) and Vol. 3 (2018), The New Teen Titans Vol. 7 (2017), and DC Finest: Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (2025).
- An animated adaptation, Teen Titans: The Judas Contract, was released in 2017; the storyline also formed the backbone of the second season of the Teen Titans animated series (2003–2004).
Cast · 19 characters
Full credits
Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
Terra gathers intelligence for the Terminator.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).