The New Titans #73

Feb 1991 · DC · 1.75 USD; 2.25 CAD; 1.00 GBP

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“Paradise Lost”

★ 1st appearance — Pantha

About this Issue

The New Titans #73 is the opening chapter of the pivotal 'Titans Hunt' arc's third installment and serves as the double-debut issue that introduced two characters who would reshape the team's identity throughout the early 1990s: Pantha, a ferocious, morally ambiguous feline hybrid created as a deliberate 'anti-member' counterpoint to the team's traditionally close-knit dynamic, and Phantasm, the masked alter ego adopted by the long-unpopular Danny Chase as a last-ditch bid for reader investment. Both debuts arrive mid-crisis — the Wildebeest Society's systematic assault on everyone connected to the Titans — giving the issue a sense of genuine stakes rather than a routine introduction. Pantha in particular proved durable enough to survive into events like Infinite Crisis, Blackest Night, and DC Rebirth, making this the ground zero for a character whose complicated legacy stretched across fifteen-plus years of DC continuity.

writer Marv Wolfman · artist Tom Grummett · inker Al Vey · colorist Adrienne Roy · letterer John Costanza · cover Tom Grummett, Al Vey

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History

The issue was written by Marv Wolfman, pencilled by Tom Grummett, inked by Al Vey, colored by Adrienne Roy, lettered by John Costanza, and edited by Jonathan Peterson — the same tight creative unit responsible for the entire 'Titans Hunt' run across New Titans #71–84. Peterson had come aboard as a newly appointed editor specifically to arrest what Wolfman himself acknowledged was a period of stagnation and writer's block; Wolfman, Grummett, inker Al Vey, and outgoing editor Mike Carlin reportedly met for three days to map out the ambitious new direction. Pantha was conceived by Wolfman and Grummett as a morally complicated survivor of Wildebeest Society experiments — ambiguous in origin, hostile in personality, and deliberately unlike the earnest heroes around her — while Peterson envisioned an editorial backstory in which she had once been a normal human, a mystery that was never resolved within the run.

Trivia · 8 facts

First appearance of Pantha (designated 'X-24'), created by writer Marv Wolfman and penciller Tom Grummett; she appears in shadow/silhouette in this issue and fully in New Titans #74.
First appearance of Phantasm — Danny Chase, a pre-existing Titans character first introduced in New Teen Titans Annual Vol. 2 #3 (1987), who fashioned a makeshift disguise (hockey mask, bolt of fabric, voice modulator) to go undercover after being presumed dead by the Wildebeest Society.
The issue carries the story title 'Paradise Lost' and is the third chapter of the 'Titans Hunt' arc (New Titans #71–84), written by Marv Wolfman with art by Tom Grummett and inks by Al Vey.
Editor Jonathan Peterson is credited; Peterson was the driving editorial force behind the 'Titans Hunt' shake-up, having pushed Wolfman and Grummett to reinvent the title after the creative team acknowledged the book had fallen into a rut.
The Wildebeest Society massacres civilians in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and pursues Danny Chase — the plot mechanism that triggers both character debuts in a single issue.
Pantha was deliberately conceived as an 'anti-member' — morally ambiguous and bitter — to contrast with the Titans' usual camaraderie; editor Peterson also held editorial plans for a future story revealing and then re-concealing her human origins.
Danny Chase's Phantasm identity carries a noted design resemblance to the villain in the 1993 animated film Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, though no direct creative influence has been confirmed by Bruce Timm or that film's team.
Pantha went on to appear across decades of DC continuity, including a prominent death at the hands of Superboy-Prime in Infinite Crisis (2006), a resurrection in Blackest Night: Titans (2009), and a return in Tales of the Titans (2023).