Nov. '86 - Teen Titans Spotlight # 4

Writer: Marv Wolfman
Artists: Ross Andru & Larry Mahlstedt

I always thought the Teen Titans comic had lost a lot of its excitement around this time so I was surprised when this comic started. The Titans must have still been a big seller since they were awarded this spinoff title and made the first appearance in Action Comics when it would soon become Superman's team-up title under John Byrne.

This series started off with a Starfire two-parter that dealt with apartheid in South Africa. This Spotlight on Jericho was much more the traditional super-hero story. It gave us more background on Jericho, revealing a past girlfriend believed dead. I enjoyed the character of Jericho though a mute character in a comic is tough. They never showed his thoughts and he never spoke so Wolfman always did a lot of narration in the comic to tell us what Jericho was thinking rather than the reader 'hearing' it from him directly.

In this Spotlight, Jericho's old girlfriend's father was a bad guy who faked his death and his daughter's death because they were wanted by the Hive. The fake deaths were planned by Jericho's mother who never told her son that his girlfriend was really alive. The girlfriend comes back for help when the Hive finds her.