Teen Titans #18
Teen Titans #18 marks the debut of Leonid Kovar, the Soviet super-teen who operated under the codename Starfire — later renamed Red Star when the Wolfman–Pérez era introduced a more famous character sharing that name. His creation was a genuine creative gambit for a Silver Age DC book: placing a proud, ideologically committed Soviet hero alongside American teenagers and forcing them to work past mutual suspicion and Cold War distrust to defeat a common enemy. The issue also carries significant creator-history weight as the first professional comics credit for Len Wein, who would go on to co-create Wolverine and the All-New X-Men at Marvel. That combination — a politically daring new character and a landmark career debut — makes this a genuinely meaningful artifact of late-Silver Age DC storytelling.
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The story, titled 'Eye of the Beholder!', was co-written by Marv Wolfman and Len Wein, two lifelong friends who had been making regular Thursday pilgrimages to DC's offices as teenagers and producing sample stories for the editorial staff. DC editor Joe Orlando hired both as freelance writers, and Teen Titans #18 was the result of that opportunity — functioning simultaneously as Wolfman's early professional work at DC and Wein's very first published comics story. Interior art was handled by penciler-inker Bill Draut, with Nick Cardy providing the cover and Dick Giordano editing. The cover date is December 1968 (on-sale date November 1968), placing it squarely in the twilight of the Silver Age.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Leonid Kovar, the Soviet super-teen debuting under the codename Starfire (later renamed Red Star to avoid confusion with the Wolfman–Pérez character of the same name introduced in New Teen Titans #1, 1980).
- Co-written by Marv Wolfman and Len Wein — this issue is Len Wein's first-ever professional comics credit, predating his co-creations of Wolverine and the All-New X-Men by several years.
- Story titled 'Eye of the Beholder!'; art by Bill Draut (pencils and inks), cover by Nick Cardy, edited by Dick Giordano.
- Cover date: December 1968 (on-sale: November 1968); published by DC Comics as part of Teen Titans Vol. 1.
- Leonid Kovar's origin: his archaeologist father took him to investigate what appeared to be a crashed meteor in Russia, which turned out to be an alien spacecraft; accidental activation of the ship's device bombarded him with alien energy, granting him superhuman strength, speed, and pyrokinesis.
- The character's Soviet identity is central to the story's tension — Kovar's Starfire is a reluctant partner who cooperates with the Teen Titans only out of patriotic duty, and the ideological friction drives the plot.
- The villain, André Le Blanc, is a jewel thief whose surname is an apparent allusion to Maurice Leblanc, the French author of the Arsène Lupin gentleman-thief stories.
- The issue has been reprinted multiple times: in The Best of DC Vol. 1 #3, The DC Universe by Len Wein (2019), and Teen Titans: The Silver Age Vol. 2 (2018). Leonid Kovar also appeared in the Teen Titans animated series (2003–2006), where he was reimagined as Red Star, voiced by Jason Marsden.
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Reprints
Reprinted in The Best of DC #3 (1980), Gigant #8/1984 (1984), The Official Teen Titans Index #1 (1985), Showcase Presents: Teen Titans #1 (2006), The Silver Age Teen Titans Archives #2 (2014), Teen Titans: The Silver Age Omnibus #[nn] (2017), Teen Titans: The Silver Age #2 (2019), The DC Universe by Len Wein #[nn] (2019), Superman Presents Tip Top Comic Monthly #49
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