The Teen Titans show is one of the most iconic animated offerings from DC. It is in the same league as the studio’s other animated shows such as Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League. Animator Glen Murakami, who also worked on the aforementioned shows, worked on Teen Titans as a showrunner and brought the comic book team to the forefront.
While the Teen Titans began in the ‘60s, the comic book did not gain fame until its ‘80s revival in the form of Marv Wolfman and George Pérez’s The New Teen Titans, by which the show was inspired. Murakami revealed in an interview that DC wanted a do-over from the comics in the show as they were primarily a response to Marvel’s X-Men.
Glen Murakami Revealed Why He Chose To Make Teen Titans More Kid Friendly
Though DC’s animated shows were primarily targeted towards children, shows such as Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League dealt with more mature and darker themes that attracted an adult audience as well. To focus on one key demographic, Teen Titans bosses Sam Register and Glen Murakami made sure to make the show kid-friendly.
Murakami mentioned in an interview with Animation World that the team intentionally switched gears and made Teen Titans more appealing to kids and adults alike to give a change of pace from the previous DC animated shows. He said,
“After working on those shows since 1991. 10 years of working on those shows it was kind of nice to move in a different direction with superheroes. The show is more for kids, but I don’t think it excludes an adult audience. I think Teen Titans is lighter and has humor, but I wouldn’t say that it’s a parody or a spoof, and I don’t think we’re making fun of the essence of the characters.”
The showrunner also mentioned how it was not that hard to change his mindset from dealing with mature themes in Batman and Justice League to softer themes in Teen Titans. He mentioned that Sam Register and he made it a point to keep the younger demographic in mind while crafting stories and making sure the characters were relatable to the kids.
Was Teen Titans DC’s Answer To Marvel’s X-Men?
When the Teen Titans show began airing in 2003, the superhero team was not the crème de la crème of team-ups in comic book history. There were other more popular teams such as the Justice League, Avengers, Fantastic Four, and the X-Men. In fact, many considered at the time that the Teen Titans were a response to Marvel’s X-Men comics.
Both teams featured odd-ball characters who were shunned from society for their ‘mutations’, assembling at a singular place to team up and work towards the good of humanity. While Teen Titans consist of younger superheroes, X-Men consists of both young and old superheroes with mutant powers. There was even a crossover between the two groups in the ‘80s called The Uncanny X-Men and the New Teen Titans.
CBR compared many similarities between the two IPs, which proved that the Teen Titans borrowed many prominent superheroes and arcs from the X-Men. The article mentioned how Jericho was first labeled as a ‘mutant’, a term which is often avoided in DC canon (they are called ‘metahumans’ instead). It also mentioned several similarities between characters such as Starfire and Jean Grey, and Changeling and Wolverine.
Teen Titans showrunner Glen Murakami also confirmed that the superhero team was a response to the X-Men. He said to Animation World about changing and distilling many of the comic book storylines in the show,
“David Slack, the story editor, and I even talked to Marv Wolfman about it. He said, ‘You know, if I was doing the Teen Titans today, I would do them completely differently than how I would have approached them in the 80s’. Because in the 80s the Titans were sort of a response to what was going on with Marvel Comics and the X-Men.”
Though X-Men itself has been long debated to be a rip-off of DC’s Doom Patrol, many pieces of evidence suggest that the Teen Titans were a response and recreation of Marvel’s mutant superheroes.
