The New Teen Titans Annual #2

History

The annual was written by Marv Wolfman and plotted collaboratively with George Pérez, with Pérez providing layouts finished by inker Pablo Marcos — the same creative partnership then at the height of its New Teen Titans run. Wolfman has stated that the Vigilante character grew from his earlier Daredevil work, specifically a desire to explore real-world consequences of superheroic violence as the spine of an entire series rather than a single story beat. Edited by Len Wein with Dick Giordano as executive editor, the issue carried a cover date of September 1983 and went on sale May 17, 1983, making it the final annual published under The New Teen Titans title before the series was renamed Tales of the Teen Titans.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance of Adrian Chase as the Vigilante (his civilian identity had previously debuted in New Teen Titans #23, September 1982); Chase's next appearance was in Vigilante #1 (November 1983), the launch of his own 50-issue series.
• First appearance of Cheshire (Jade Nguyen), a Vietnamese-origin assassin and martial artist created by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez; she returned next in Tales of the Teen Titans #51 and became a long-running Titans antagonist and the mother of Roy Harper's daughter Lian.
• First physical appearance of Lyla Michaels (later known as Harbinger) and the second appearance of the Monitor (voice and hands only, in an unadvertised five-panel cameo) — part of Wolfman's multi-title, multi-year pre-Crisis seeding campaign.
• Written by Marv Wolfman (story/script) and George Pérez (co-plotter/layouts), inked by Pablo Marcos, colored by Adrienne Roy, lettered by John Costanza; edited by Len Wein with Dick Giordano as executive editor.
• The story, titled 'The Murder Machine,' continued directly from New Teen Titans #34: mob boss Anthony Scarapelli targets judge Adrian Chase, the Monitor supplies assassins to Scarapelli, the Titans defend Chase, and Chase secretly dons his Vigilante identity to kill the attackers — with only Cheshire escaping alive.
• This is the final annual published under the New Teen Titans banner; the 1984 annual appeared under the retitled Tales of the New Teen Titans.
• The issue has been collected in New Teen Titans: Terra Incognito (DC, 2006/2007), The New Teen Titans Omnibus Vol. 2 (2012), The New Teen Titans Vol. 5 trade paperback (2014 series), and is slated for DC Finest: Teen Titans — The Judas Contract.
• Terra (Tara Markov) appears as a full team member here, placing the annual within the story arc that would feed directly into The Judas Contract.

Cast · 20 characters

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Variants (2)