13th Dimension: George Perez's first DC work - FirestormFrom 13thdimension.com
FLASH #289 (Sep 1980)
DC Comics
Excerpt: And what was interesting in working on that book with Gerry Conway — the creator, with Al Milgrom, of Firestorm — is that he was giving me the same exact scripts he gave Al. … So basically I have to draw this without looking like I’m drawing Al’s book now.
So, I deliberately couldn’t look at Al Milgrom’s artwork so I could pace it my way, lay it out my way, have the angles being my interpretation of it, but I thought, “Gerry got paid twice now.” (Laughter.) This is the same script! But it was fun.
What was interesting is that if you saw the credits on the ...
Posted by Vu Nguyen
I personally feel that the inking outside of Al Vey's, ruined the look
of George Perez 's art on Games. It looked muddy , rough and messy. Al
Vey or preferably George himself should have inked the entire book. I
would like to see the scans of the ashcan book. How many do you have? Is
there a Web page that has all 80 pages posted for viewing?
Answer:
According to the people who produced the book - only 15 were made...
and the cover scan was courtesy of Marv Wolfman (so he probably own one
of the copy). If you aren't familiar, this Ashcan contain all 80 pages
of George Perez's pencils that he originally produced in 1988 (with
some pages inked by Al Vey). In 2011, Marv Wolfman and George Perez
(with the help of new inker Mike Perkins) finished and published the
story in NEW TEEN TITANS: GAMES GN (Sep 2011).
Update: the Erik pages were originally published online on January 2001.
TEEN TITANS (Unpublished page from "Games") art by George Perez, colored by Tom Smith
From
Tom Smith
George-Perez.com have been following the lead from Mark Metz
(email), since October 26, 2003. Also note that the artwork used by Wizard (as well as other websites) was colored by Marcus Mebes.
5: I NEVER said the current stories in
Titans suck. First, I don't read the book and haven't since I got off
it. That's just my policy. Since I haven't read it I obviously can't
make any comment on it. Second, if I did read it and didn't like it I
would still never say anything like that. It's not my style. The most
I'd say (if I read it which I don't) is that it isn't my approach, but
that's acceptable because I didn't follow the style of the writers who
preceded me on the book and I wouldn't expect anyone to mimic what I
did.
#4: With a new editor in place who would let me do the Titans the
right way, I would have cured Vic and Raven. Brought Joey back to life
(I maintain that the Joey we saw after issue #50 wasn't the real one
but a clone who came out of the Wildebeest clone stories). The Titans
would have become friends again and the nastiness owould have been
gone.
#3: DC seems to have absolutely no interest in my doing any Titans stuff. All my pitches have been rejected.
#2: In case the story ever does get published I think this should stay a secret.
#1: I have high res scans of the original art but again, there
seems to be no interest as I don't get any responses to any of my
proposals to do this. Go figure.
Replying to:
Hi,
I know you might really be tired of this questions on this topic, but here they are:
1) Do you think DC would be interested in finishing the GAMES story
and publishing it? Maybe have a penciller like Phil Jimenez finish the
remaining 16 or so pages. As memory serves I think maybe 80 pages has
been don already.
2) You mention before one of the characters died? Who is it? Maybe
the story could be an elseworld story or whatever, so we don't need to
look into continuity... even though it's pretty screwed up already.
3) I really enjoy your story in LEGENDS OF THE DC UNIVERSE #18 and
the special #1, and even in the Titans #50. Do you think DC would make
give you a couple of titans project in the future, or if you have any
pitch for a Titans story, maybe an elseworld story picking up at a
certain poin in titan continuity. Like maybe Jericho and Kole are going
steady, Dick choosing to leave earth and be with his wife Kory,
Deathstroke running for president,...etc etc.
4) Given a chance, how would you continue writing the Teen Titans after the events of #130?
5) I do agree with you that the current stories in the Titans suck!
Erik
February 16, 2003 | Wolfman's "What The--?" (Feb 16)
How did the entire concept of the Teen Titans came about? Was it DC's intention for it to complete with the X-Men
or was it a surprise hit? Had you and George Perez always had the idea
of Cyborg, Raven and Starfire, back in Marvel? Why did DC not include
firestorm within the Teen Titians. Who had come up with the concept of
Nightwing.
You’re not asking for much, are you? Seriously, I
get this asked a lot and I may have even answered a version of this
before here, but since folk don’t generally go through the back date
archives, here we go again: Titans came up because I had
decided to leave Marvel and move over to DC. Back then you could only
work for one company, not both. Len (see above) was an editor at DC at
the time and though I was given a number of assignments when I got
there, I really wanted to do my own thing. Len and I had written a Titans story way back in the first series (the Russian Starfire (later Red Star) story and I always had a love for the Titans
concept. I came up with a bunch of characters – more on this in a
moment – then Len and I pitched it to the Powers That Be.
Unfortunately, they didn’t want a new Titans series because they didn’t
like the previous one. They had no thoughts about doing a DC version of
X-Men, no matter what people think. Nor did I, by the way. Despite Len – who created the New X-Men being my editor – I was never much of an X-Men
fan and doing a DC version of that book never crossed my mind. I wanted
to do a ‘family’ book. Frankly, in my mind I wanted to do a DC version
of the Fantastic Four, which, as Stan Lee himself has always admitted, was a Marvel version of the J.L.A.
Anyway, the Powers That be asked us why they should publish a new Titans
book when the last series didn’t do well, and we replied, with no false
modesty, “Because we’ll do it better.” I guess they agreed because they
not only greenlit the book but an introductory story that appeared in DC Presents #26.
At this point I ran into George Perez up at Marvel and offered him the
book. He said yes thinking it would be dead 6 issues later. 16 years
later I got off the title and it’s still running today, with most of
the characters intact, albeit in a somewhat different form.
As
for how the individual characters were created, that’s harder to say. I
gave the group a lot of thought. I knew I’d want to use original Titans
members Robin, Wonder Girl and Beast Boy (with a new name) in the new
group. Kid Flash would probably appear but I wasn’t all that
enthusiastic about him. My feeling has always been that writers have to
pull back on that character because if you use him properly in a group
book he’ll not only get to wherever they’re going faster than the other
can, but he will probably have already solved the problem. In short,
he’s too powerful for a group dynamic. I also didn’t want to make
Aqualad a regular member because if you use him you are forced to use
water stories to fit him in.
I prepared a list of new
characters. I wanted an alien, and that became Starfire. I wanted an
athlete and that was Cyborg and finally I wanted an empath which became
Raven. Obviously, it wasn’t as simple as that, but the work to create
those characters, and to come up with a back-story I could keep mining
whenever I wanted to, would take much too long to explain. Suffice it
to say I spent a lot of time working out the characters so they would
blend together both emotionally and power-wise before I gave the
character descriptions to George to design. One he did I refined what I
wrote and, as they say, the rest is history.
1.) I'd like to see a series of columns describing how you came up with the new characters you introduced in NEW TEEN TITANS.
Starfire, Raven, Cyborg, and the ones who came later like Deathstroke,
Terra, Kole, and so on. What prompted the idea for each character, what
was involved in fleshing them out as characters, and what kind of
response you initially got from DC about them all. Did the finished,
published product closely match what you'd originally intended? If not,
how much different did the end result come out to be? I know you said
you didn't want to spend a lot of time on "behind the curtain" stuff,
but I am always curious about how much of a writer's ideas make it to
the printed page, and when something is rejected or altered, why the
editor felt that was necessary.
2.) In a similar vein, I remember that some years ago, you and George Perez were supposed to do a TITANS
graphic novel that never did show up. Since the odds of it ever being
finished and published are about the same as my chances of becoming
Miss Universe, I wonder if you might clue us in on what the plot would
have been?
...
Okay, continuing from the above – I came
up with Deathstroke pretty much right after I came up with the Titans.
I knew Deathstroke would be in issue #2 but his son would appear in
issue #1. The genesis of Deathstroke came very fast. I wanted a very
moral character who was also a criminal, a sort of Batman for the
mercenary world, complete with his own Alfred. Unlike Alfred, however,
I wanted his partner to be his mentor. That’s where Wintergreen came
from. His name, of course, came from the gum, just as Princess
Koriand’r’s name came from the spice, coriander. She was the spicy
Titan, after all. I wanted Slade Wilson to be the kind of character
that you never could fully understand. You would also never know which
side he would be on because he operated by his own very strict code of
conduct. Slade would be troubled by what he had to do, but he was also
caught up in a web of his own creation and was unable to break free.
Simply, I wanted to create an antagonist who would be as well defined
as the Titans themselves. Only mistake I think I made with him is
having him have a physical relationship with the 16 year old Tara
Markov. That was wrong.
Which leads to Terra. That was easy.
George and I wanted a Titan who betrayed the others. We also wanted to
play against every reader conception of who characters are. George and
I knew her whole story before we began and we knew she would die. We
set the story up with her trying to destroy the Statue of Liberty to
show she was the bad girl, but we knew if George drew her as a cute kid
everyone would simply assume she would be ‘turned’ from the dark side
because that’s the way it was always done which is why that wouldn’t be
the way we did it. Tara was insane and stayed that way right until the
moment she died. By the way, she IS dead. I don’t know what other
writers will do with her – if anything – but if they want to honor the
original series they will leave her dead. The Terra from Team Titans
was – as stated – some kid the villain kidnapped and physically and
mentally altered her into looking and acting like the original. But she
was NEVER the real Terra.
One last note: I came into DC with
Terra the same day Mike Barr came into DC with Geo-Force. Both had
earth-shifting powers. It would have been unfair for one of us to get
rid of our character, so we decided to make them brother and sister.
Finally,
Kole. Because other editors were not pleased that they were asked to
come up with characters to kill in the Crisis, I realized I’d have to
come up with somebody to knock off as well, if only to assuage their
feelings somewhat. I came up with the crystal powered Kole who was
named after and drawn to look like a real person we knew. The problem
was, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, who drew the Kole issues did a magnificent
job and I grew to really like the character and wished I hadn’t created
her to die. But if I were to play the game nicely, she had to weave her
last crystal.
As for “Games,” the graphic novel George and I
began way back when. George drew about 80 pages of the best Titans work
he ever did before going into artist’s block on the Titans. I kept
trying to convince DC to let another artist finish the last 30 pages,
but for reasons that have never made sense to me they have always
refused to do so. Every so often I bring it up again and the answer is
still no. Why? I can’t imagine. There are 80 pages done. I’d have to
dialogue the job and much of it would need to be inked, but I think
even if it now had to be an Elseworlds book – or at least a Hypertime
story – that people would flock to buy a hardcover Perez/Wolfman Titans
book. What do you think?
January 25, 2003 | Greenberger's Answer to "Games"
TITANS: GAMES was intended as a 96+ page
graphic novel that George never finished. He partly never finished it
because the story was never to everyone's satisfaction, if I recall.
Once the project was shelved, many of the story elements were taken
from the GN and used in the monthly. So, when the issue of finishing
the book came up at some point, we realized how poorly it would compare
with the stories done to date and it was decided by TPTB to keep it
shelved.
January 12, 2003 | WoW Cover (Apr 03)
From NEW TEEN TITANS vol 3, #42 (Apr 88)
TITANS TOWER (letter page)
Apr 88
NEWS! NEWS! Just today, Marv handed in
his contract for a Titans graphic novel to be produced by Marv and
George Pérez. It'll feature the Teen Titans and the Titans of Myth.
This will take at least a year to produce, but it's definitely going to
be worth waiting for!
Thanks, Mike. I'd love to see DC print
all George's an my Titans, and with a second Archives edition coming
out soon, as well as the Titans Baxter reprinting, they are on the way
to doing just that. I'd also love for them to finally finish and print
the Titans graphic novel George and I started so many years ago. He
completed about 80 pages of incredible art and we can always get
someone else to finish it up and then have me write it as planned.
Marv,
DC just announced that The New Teen Titans Volume 2(1984)
issues 1-5 will be collected into a Trade Parerback. Did you write a
intro for the new TPB? I always like the introductions that provide a
little behind the scenes info on the project. Just wondering.
posted 12-04-02 04:31 by Marv Wolfman
No, I was not asked to write an intro to the Trigon storyline. On the other hand, I did write the intro to the second Titans Archives edition.
It is possible they asked George, which would make sense as it was, in
many ways, his swan song on the Titans. He did do approximately 80
pages of a 120 page Titans graphic novel - that I think is still the
best Titans work he ever did - but that has never seen print and to
date there seems to be no interest in having me finish writing it and
him - or someone else - finish drawing it. Even with another artist it
would still be 80 pages of Perez/Wolfman Titans.
As for the Trigon collection - I don't
know too much about it. But I, too, hope it's printed as least as well
as the original which was beautiful.
Letters, We’ve Got Letters!
Sunday, October 6
By Marv Wolfman
From: kpierc72@earthlink.net
How did the entire concept of the Teen Titans came about? Was it
DC's intention for it to complete with the X-Men or was it a surprise
hit? Had you and George Perez always had the idea of Cyborg, Raven and
Star fire, back in Marvel? Why did DC not include Firestorm within the
Teen Titans. Who had come up with the concept of Nightwing?
I will assume you’re asking about The
New Teen Titans and not the original group. I don’t know who created
that group – it could have been the editors or the writer, Bob Haney.
Maybe someone out there knows? As for my group, I was leaving Marvel
and coming over to DC (in those days you could only work for one
company and not both) and was getting my assignments. My only request
was no team-up books, so, naturally, I was assigned to DC Presents and
Brave & Bold, both team-up books. Therefore, my first order of
business was to get off those titles.
Len Wein and I had written a story or
two for the original Teen Titans way back in the late 60s, and I always
had a warm spot for those characters, so I asked Len – who at this
point had become an editor at DC – if we could revive the title. I went
home and came up with the characters, so, no, there was not always a
Starfire, Cyborg or Raven. You can read my introduction for the first
Teen Titans Archives to see how they came about. Len and I went into
publisher Jenette Kahn’s office and pitched my idea. Jenette said she
did not like the previous version of the Titans and therefore wasn’t
hot on the idea, but we said we’d do it better. Honestly, that’s all we
said. Jenette, who trusted us, said fine.
As I fleshed out the characters I ran
into George Perez at the Marvel offices. I mentioned to him that I was
working on a new version of the Titans and would he be interested in
drawing it. George thought the book would last maybe a half dozen
issues, and there was a chance he could also draw the Justice League,
which was the book he really wanted to do, so he said yes. George then
designed the look of each and every one of the characters.
We showed Jenette what we had done and
she liked it so much she decided we should do a 16 page original Titans
story that they would put in free in DC Presents #26 to get people
interest.
NEW TEEN TITANS: GAMES ASHCAN
2001
Publication is 80 pages, plus covers
Self-published by a fan, printed by color photocopy.
Features entire 71 pages of art for unpublished graphic novel, pencilled by Pérez, with first 30 pages inked by Pérez and Al Vey
Also includes 8-page plot by Pérez, based on the mutal plot with Marv Wolfman.
Limited to 15 copies for creative team and select audience only.
Check out
Titans Tower: Games for more details on the unpublished "Games" Titans Graphic Novel. As always be sure to check on Titans Tower for the latest in all things Titans.
(excerpt)
Juggling Schedules
[from Comics Scene Magazine #11, 1990]
Perez is
now co-plotting The New Titans, plotting Wonder Woman and doing layouts
for Action Comics. However, comics fandom hasn't seen the last of full
Perez pencil art. He has a major work due out sometime in 1990: the
long-awaited Titans graphic novel, Games.
"I'm
working on it right now. I'm trying to produce four pages a week so
I'll be done by the end of January," Perez reports. "They're being
inked by Karl Kesel and colored by John Stracuzzi. There's no firm
release date. There have been so many that have come and gone that I
want to play this a little closer to the vest. That's my fault, nobody
else's. By producing on a four-pages-a-week schedule, I'm not forcing
somebody else to do their part in a hurry. Karl's not going to get 120
pages to ink all at once: 'You have two weeks!' " he laughs.
Titans Lost and Genes Found Dateline: Saturday, July 21, 2001
By: ARNOLD T. BLUMBERG
(excerpt)
"I didn’t know we were already referred
to as legends," said Wolfman at a San Diego Comic-Con panel. "It’s
like, we’re not around any more, but we’re remembered fondly."
Their legendary status hasn’t slowed
them down one bit. During the course of a one-on-one panel (a concept
that left both creators a bit stymied as to how to proceed), Wein and
Wolfman discussed their beginnings as teenagers breaking into the comic
book business and the path that led them through both major publishers
(at that time) and even into the frontiers of television animation.
Wolfman also elaborated on the never completed TITANS graphic
novel written by Wolfman and illustrated by George Perez, a project
that – like many in the industry – faded into the background and still
lingers in the minds of fans and creators alike.
"George drew 80 pages of [an 120 page
story] and hit an artist’s block," said Wolfman. "He literally could
not draw another picture of the Titans. Having been in a writer’s
block, I totally understand. He just hit a wall on it. I said, ‘Let’s
get so and so to finish it up.’ For reasons that have escaped me for
fifteen years, DC just decided to write it off. I would love to finish
it. It was the best Titans story we had ever come up with."
Although that project may be doomed to
never see the light of day, for Wein and Wolfman, the future looks
particularly bright. After decades of creating highly regarded comics,
they have sold their very first feature film, and the convention
attendees were some of the first to hear about their new take on
superhero movies.
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