Hey, forget about The Killing Joke for now, because there’s much better stuff on the way from DC and Warner Bros. Animation. We already know of Justice League Dark, the next film that stars Hellblazer John Constantine and several other supernatural heavyweights as they tangle with Ra’s Al Ghul before he can destroy the world.
But the film after that? DC is dipping once again into their archives, to finally bring the Teen Titans to the direct-to-DVD small screen in an adaptation of the landmark storyline The Judas Contract. Which totally has nothing to do with breaking the law. Let’s rewind the clock a bit. It’s the 1980s, DC Comics is doing some great business and they’ve got a hot new comic book on the stands: The Teen Titans.
Writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez re-imagined the former sidekicks of DC’s greatest heroes as a new team who dealt with big threats and had bigger personalities to match. And it worked magically. Thanks to a core team that included Beast Boy (Or Changeling as he was known as back then), Cyborg, former Robin Dick Grayson, Starfire, Raven and Kid Flash, the series was a hit.
Around the third year however, things changed. Kid Flash and Grayson quit the team over various issues that they were working through and left a void in the squad that needed to be filled. Enter Terra, an earth-bending powerhouse who somehow filled that emotional gap and became a part of the Teen Titans family. Adventures were had by all and good times were ahead. Only not.
It later turned out that Terra was a mole, planted into the team by a vengeful Deathstroke who was still kind of upset about the fact that his son had died while fighting the Teen Titans as part of a contract for HIVE. Deathstroke wanted revenge, picked up the contract and pretty much dismantled the team from the inside out.
It’s a genuinely good tale, that still mostly holds up today if you can ignore the fact that Terra wasn’t even legal enough to drink and was flirting with Deathstroke. But the mini-series also revealed the origin of Slade Wilson, created an opening for Dick Grayson to become Nightwing and the team was never the same again afterwards.
That’s the story that’ll be getting a DC Comics Animation treatment, and after the superb Justice League Vs. Teen Titans from earlier this year, I can’t wait. Now if Judas Contract is adapted for that in-universe team of Teen Titans, some serious story-bending will need to be done, but I’m keen to see it realised. Especially if Ron Perlman returns to voice Slade again.
Teen Titans: The Judas Contract drops in the next US spring season, after which it’ll be followed by “Batman and Harley Quinn: A Bruce Timm Original,” later on in that summer.
Last Updated: August 2, 2016
