Historical Flashback

After discussing this in the last entry, thought I'd track down some art reminding us of what a big moment this was in comics at the time. Here, in "X-Men & Teen Titans" in 1982, the two ultra-popular teams from two different comic companies meet for the first time. Great art by Walt Simonson (with inks by Terry Austin), though I remember being miffed at the time that Perez hadn't done the art for this thing.

This was a cool story and all (written by Claremont, so you can tell whose book was selling better), but I also recall feeling kind of ripped off by them just pretending the X-Men and Titans existed in the same universe (and just hadn't run into each other until now). When you're as big a continuity cop as I was (and am), this just ticks you off and kind of negates the whole story. It wasn't until the JLA/Avengers crossover a couple of decades later that the two companies finally got it right (and that was WAS drawn by Perez). If you're about to remind me about "Marvel vs. DC", I said JLA/Avengers was when they got it RIGHT. Ugh.

Another interesting historical fact. This oversized issue had really crap binding. It was about three times as long as a regular comic, with a thicker cover, but I guess they figured a couple of standard staples would do the trick. It didn't. Your cover would keep coming loose. Being a collector, I think I had to buy it about three times. Finally got one properly stapled and didn't open it (that's what immediately started the cover problem) and sealed it greedily in a mylar comic bag. Hey, those were selling for up to $20 each not long after it came out!

Great geek moments here for me included Wolverine fighting Deathstroke the Terminator, Starfire hearing Colossus speaking Russian and laying a big kiss on him to absorb the language (like she was able to) and Kitty getting miffed about it and referring to her as a "hussy" (hey, Kitty was the one sitting there thinking Gar Logan was cute, so she had no high-ground to get mad at Pete!), and the first post-death return of Phoenix, even though it was an imaginary story. And she was brought back to team up with Darkseid, no less! We would later get the real return of Jean (for a while), but this was a pretty dramatic moment.