An interview with Tom Grummett

When I discovered that Tom Grummett was appearing at the Montreal Comiccon, I felt like I had won the lottery. Not only was Grummett the Teen Titans penciller from the late 80s to the early 90s, but he had also worked on the Death and Return of Superman story line from the early 90s, and a spin-off title [Superboy] that I was avidly collecting at the time. Interviews with Tom Grummett are far and few on the internet (but we did find a few — see links below), so I felt incredibly lucky to sit with the man himself.

I want to thank Mark Belkin (who is a more knowledgeable Teen Titans fan than I) for accompanying me in this interview and helping me drive the questions home when they may not have always been very clear.


Justin: Thanks for agreeing to chat with us, Mr Grummett. We wanted to start with your late 80's DC comics material. We couldn't find too many interviews about your work on Teen Titans. You were drawing The New Titans v1 from, I think, #58 to #100...

Grummett: ...around #100, yeah.

Justin: ...and that was a BIG run. That was one of your first major DC works. You were picking up the series after George Perez had left... and I remember that being a really good run. You were penciling during the Titans Hunt story line and you were also credited for introducing a few characters, too — you were there for the introduction of the Team Titans, and you have a co-credit [with Marv Wolfman] on the creation of Pantha, Baby Wildebeest and there's a few other characters I'm drawing a blank on...

Grummett: Phantasm

Justin: Phantasm? You did Phantasm? You designed him? [surprised]

Grummett: Yeah

[This is news to me. Prior to this interview, while doing research, there was no information about Tom Grummett creating Phantasm — which is a shame since I always found Phantasm to be one of the more interesting members of the New Titans. -J]

Phantasm. New Titans #73 (1990). Pencilled by Tom Grummett and inked by Al Vey.

Justin: You were also at 'the summit'. I remember talks about a big 'hush-hush' Teen Titans summit where the plan was to totally revamp Teen Titans. The idea was "we want to turn this into a really successful franchise book, so we need some ways to 'shake it up'".

Mark: How did it lead from your starting out and then how did it lead to the summit?

Grummett: I guess what kinda happened is, over time, the book became more and more popular with the fans. It's very difficult for a book that starts off with a huge fan base, and then has it's fan base sort of trickle away over time, to suddenly start getting a whole NEW fan base. It can happen, though. And I guess that's kinda what occurred. At the time, I guess the thinking editorially was "okay, we've got a lot of people buying New Titans, we should try and expand that and turn it into a franchise. Either we can maybe draw in more fans, or get fans who were already buying this one book to possibly buy two books". So I'm pretty sure that was what the impetus was: to kind of, for the first part, try launching the second title and then trying to further maintain that, and see if we could run a Superman-style or Batman-style franchise.

Justin: Mike Carlin was editing The New Titans at the time, right?

Grummett: Mike was the editor for the first two or three years that I was working on it. Now he may have been the official editor beyond that point, but the guy I tended to work with the most was Jonathan Peterson. When I first got on the book, he was the assistant editor.

Mark: And so, with the Titans Hunt — the story arc where they were eliminating a lot of the Titans — were you part of the decision-making on who got altered? Such as Cyborg becoming less of a human, and some of the other deaths? How did that work editorially? Did you have a lot of input on that?

Cyborg the war machine. New Titans #78 (1991). Pencilled by Tom Grummett.

Justin: To further that point, to me it seemed liked the goal of Titans Hunt was to cull down the Teen Titans roster... I always imagined you guys sat down and decided "there's too many card-carrying Teen Titans running around, we want to trim it down to the original core and bring it back to the 1980's New Teen Titans v1 #1 line-up"...

Grummett: I don't believe that was actually the way it worked. I think it was a conversation that Marv Wolfman had with either Jonathan [Peterson] or Mike [Carlin], and somebody blurted out the idea "well how about a story where someone is picking off the Titans one by one and no one knows who it is?"

Mark: Well everyone thought it was Deathstroke, but...

The New Titans v1 #72 (1991). Cover by Grummett.

Grummett: Yeah. So, it really got Marv fired up with this idea. At that time we would mostly work together via phone and we would talk over different ideas about how this would unfold. When you start with an idea that someone is slowly picking them off one-by-one and you don't know by who or anything like that. And then you start working out who's behind it. To be perfectly honest, right at the beginning we had no idea.

Justin: Oh really?

Grummett: Not a clue. And as time went on, it kind of grew organically into the thing it finally became. There's lots of pros I've talked to who have said "That Titans Hunt story line... it was GREAT".

Justin: I think Jericho really ended up drawing the short straw on that one. Why was that? Did you guys just not like him anymore, or...?

Grummett: That totally came from Marv.

Mark: He birthed him, and then he took him back.

Grummett: Yeah, that kind of thing.

Jericho. New Titans #79 (1991).

Mark: How was it working with Marv, because he'd already been on Teen Titans since 1980 and he'd worked through Crisis On Infinite Earths and now it's 1989... was he already burned out on Titans? Did he still have energy going into it? How did that work towards 1989 working on the Titans?

Grummett: I think Marv would be able to answer that better than I could. My experience with working with Marv was: George [Perez] had come back to the book for issue #50. This was a big deal. Work progressed for a few months that way until George got into a car accident. What with recovery and pain medication and who knows what (I don't even know), he felt that he was unable to continue on the book - but he would do layouts. So, the job was offered to me: working from George's layouts I would pencil the book. I worked that way through the Lonely Place of Dying story arc — where Tim Drake became Robin — so there was a cross-over with the Batman books at that point. I would get the layouts from George and the scripts from Marv, I would work away on these things. And then finally George decided to just leave the book entirely — hopefully because he felt it was in good hands. So he left ME behind with Marv. I'm a NEW guy and suddenly I'm working with Marv Wolfman and it's ALL me.

Justin: Those are big shoes to fill.

Grummett: Well exactly. It was a little intimidating in the beginning. Marv and I did a panel a few years back, and we were talking about that, I said "so here I am, slight case of flop sweat, working on this book with you — now all by myself — with no George Perez to hold me by my hand to guide me through it and I found Marv was very generous and he listened to my ideas" and he said "eh, you knew what you were doing".

Justin: Were you getting to add input to story ideas?

Grummett: Absolutely!

Justin: I'm curious what you specifically brought to the title?

Grummett: This was so long ago... it was usually stuff would come up in the course of a story and I'd get the plot and I'd maybe get an idea of the way a scene should unfold, and I'd phone up Marv and he's say "sure! do it!". It'd be like that.

Justin: Team Titans. You guys brought back Terra. Was it you that suggested bringing back Terra for Team Titans — or should I say "the clone of Terra"...?

Grummett: That I don't even remember. There was a big room with a lot of people in it. [laughs]

[I asked because Grummett is co-credited with the creation of Terra II (aka Doppelganger Terra). -J]

Terra II. New Titans #86 (1992). Pencilled by Tom Grummett.

Justin: After The New Titans you did some work on the Superman books. Which was huge. Although I grew up reading comic in the 80s (and this spilled over into the early 90s) one of the biggest events, for me, was The Death of Superman. I remember it being ALL OVER the media. Superman died, and that was all well and done, but then they had the four potential Supermen who could be replacing him. I knew for a fact it that neither Steel nor Superboy would be revealed as the replacement. I figured it was either the Eradicator or Cyborg Superman. I was positive DC was going to keep the Eradicator as the new Superman. That was the whole gimmick — 'which of these four is the REAL deal?' — not realizing that the original Superman would evidently return. You created Superboy. That was yours. You designed Superboy with a kind of 90s/Gen X/punk-type look... do you have memories of working on that character?

Grummett: Oh yeah! Oh yeah! I remember that [Superman] Summit. The summit meeting where we had to come up with how we were bringing Superman back. There was no question that Superman was coming back.

Mark: If Jean Grey's coming back, then anyone's coming back...

Grummett: Well, yeah. From the time we decided to do this Death of Superman story line, he was coming back. As far as we were concerned, EVERYONE in the industry knew it, and all the fans knew it.

Justin: In my defense, I was twelve years old. I was still naive enough to believe *anything* could happen... [laughing]

Poster from Adventures of Superman #501 (1993). Pencilled by Tom Grummett, inked by Doug Hazlewood.

Grummett: What we didn't realize was that a lot of people thought we were taking Superman away from them forever. And for some reason, that thinking pervaded throughout the whole thing. Of course Superman was going to come back. Of course it was going to be Clark. It wasn't going to be the Eradicator, it wasn't going to be Steel, it wasn't...

Justin: My point is that it was a REALLY good hook. It re-invigorated my interest in DC comics (and the Superman franchise) by a hundredfold.

Grummett: It was a tremendous hook. It was four people claiming to be Superman. It was like Elvis sightings. That's the way we looked at it. None of these guys were actually going to be [Superman], because they couldn't be. They couldn't be Superman because none of the WERE Superman. They had mysterious connections TO [Superman], but none of them were going to be able to take over his spot. At least that was our theory.

Justin: Did you raise your hand to volunteer the Superboy idea? "I'd like Superboy to be one of the four contenders"

Grummett: Actually, in reality, it was Jon Bogdanove and [Jackson] Guice who threw out the name 'Superboy' and I responded with "Don't call me Superboy!". There was a little back-and-forth between us about who was actually going to do this Superboy character and they said "You know what? You guys do it. You seem to have some ideas for this one — really good ones — we've got some other ideas we'd like to play with" and they came up with Steel.

Page from Adventures of Superman v1 #500 (1993). Pencilled by Tom Grummett and inked by Doug Hazlewood.

Justin: When you were creating Superboy from scratch, did you have a model? Was it based on some actor/celebrity at the time?

Grummett: Nope. I actually drew the original sketch of Superboy, fully-formed — the way he looked in the comic book — on an airline napkin on the flight home. As soon as I got off and back to my studio and was settled in again, I re-drew it with the jacket, without the jacket, front and back, faxed it in to Carlin and said "this is what I think he looks like".

Mark: Was the success of Superboy then what led you to work on Robin? Is that editorial's decision of having one artist of a youthful superhero moving onto another youthful superhero or was there no connection at all?

Robin v4 #6 (1994). Cover pencilled by Tom Grummett and inked by Ray Kryssing

Grummett: I believe I took on the Robin book because the Tom Lyle mini-series' were all done and they decided to launch an ongoing. I think the thinking out there was that I was the 'teen' artist, because I'd done 'Teen' Titans and Superboy...

Mark: ..."so give him, Robin"...

Grummett: Right. "He'll do Robin, too". I got to do both.

Justin: You did Superboy for a LONG time, from 1994 up to 2001.

Grummett: Issues 1 to 26 before Karl [Kessel] and I went off the book, and then we came back on again with issue 50. [The reason for the hiatus was because] Karl had run out of ideas on what to do with Superboy but then came up with a bunch of new ideas and asked the editor, who said "sure! you can come back!".

Justin: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today, Mr Grummett.

Grummett: My pleasure.

Tom Grummett poses with two Teen Titans cosplayers at the 2016 Montreal Comiccon

I had about a thousand more questions to ask about his work on Teen Titans, Superboy and Robin (and even a few Marvel comics projects he had work on afterwards), but Saturdays at comiccons are typically the busiest for artists and I didn't want to take him away too long from the rest of his fans. I'm just grateful we got this. Thanks again for your time, Mr Grummett.

-Justin


As promised... Links:

• Alvaro's Comicboards.com - An interview with Tom Grummett by Randy "MSL" Burtis & Michael "Dermie" McDermott (2005) (talks briefly about Teen Titans, much time spent discussing his work on Marvel's Thunderbolts)
• Superman '86 - '99: Tom Grummett Interview! by Don Sparrow (tightly focused on Grummett's Superman work)
• Tom Grummett - The Man Who Helped Kill Superman (by ArtistsInCanada) March 31, 2003
• Johnathan Peterson: New Directions for the New Titans (An interview by Bill Walko [from The Titans Companion, 2005])
• Comics Scene #24 [1991]: “Of Titans & Terminators” by Kim Howard Johnson

JLA/JSA 1982 Annual cross-over (aka Making Time Travel Great Again)

[Mark Belkin wants you to know that his political satire does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of DC in the 80s. -J]

A crazed arrogant fascist hell-bent on controlling the world. It’s a theme that many of us are happy is left to the past, and in our fictional stories. Not something at all that we are facing in our lives today. Ummm... and... well... why is any of this relevant today? Because DC in the 80s is reviewing the 1982 five issue storyline that happened as part of the annual Justice League of America and Justice Society of America cross-over, and they fight a time traveling would be fascist! That’s why it’s relevant. No other reason.

The Justice League of America (Earth 1) and Justice Society of America (Earth 2) cross-overs began in the summer of 1963, in Justice League of America #21 and #22, and continued until the summer of 1984, when Crisis on Infinite Earths ended every multiverse crossover... FOREVER.

Until Zero Hour? Maybe? I honestly don’t remember what happened in Zero Hour. That’s where Hal Jordan kills people, right?

I spent 2015 collecting every JLA-JSA cross over, and have every issue except Justice League of America #21 (1963). That one has been tricky to come across in decent condition AND not have someone charging way too much for it. You just know how much you would pay for a certain issue, even if you really, really want it. It’s the principle of the thing.

The 1982 cross over was extra special because it featured the Earth-3 Crime Syndicate of America who were the evil version of the Justice League of America. The group consists of an evil version of the 5 most popular Justice Leaguers. I think you can figure out the Who’s Who of which evil doppelganger is which:

No love for Barracuda, White Martian, or mustaches?

This was the first time the complete 5 person Crime Syndicate had appeared since they were defeated in Justice League of America #22, which came out in the summer of 1963. DC sat on the complete Crime Syndicate fighting the Justice League for 19 years, not using them again until 1982. Really? Maybe somewhere between Starro attack #7 and gorillas on every cover they’d find some time for this amazing plot device of an evil mirror image of the JLA, but I guess not.

The 1982 cross over was also special in that it included not only “1982 Earth-1”, but also “1982 Earth-2”, and an additional “1942 Earth-2”, and then the return of “Earth-3”, and, AND, it even included Earth-Prime. That’s our Earth! The Earth you’re in now! Where no one has superpowers, people read comic books, and ice cream sandwiches melt super-quick. Except this Earth-Prime had Superboy. And in the first issue of the crossover Earth-Prime is nuclear devastated by a comic book villain. Other than that, it’s our Earth. Speaking of comic book villains, imagine giving a guy the nuclear codes who’s kind of nutty, hates a lot of people, and is a complete megalomaniac. Hard to imagine you say? Well that’s what this cross-over was all about. Let’s begin.

Check out everyone on the left reacting at themselves get hit in the middle. Superman and Firestorm are shocked, Hawkman is all “I remember this.”

Look at that George Perez cover on 1982's Justice League of America #207. Stare at its perfectness. You can’t look at any George Perez cover from the 80’s and not want to instantly give the comic book person all your money. He didn’t illustrate the inside, which is always heartbreaking. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the “different comic book cover and inside illustrator” thing. It’s like someone singing on the single, and the rest of the album being a different singer. You always feel a bit cheated.

The story is written by Gerry Conway (Firestorm and Spider-Man fame), and illustrated by Don Heck and Romeo Tanghal. Don definitely had a Sal Buscema feel to him. Don’t know who came first and Google™ seems so far away right now. The story tries to weave in 7 different time periods on 4 different Earths. Keep up because “comic book time traveling huh?” is about to begin. This will be the part some people stop reading because it gets confusing. That’s cool.

So 1982 Earth-1 Justice League (JLA) is teleporting over to 1982 Earth-2 Justice Society (JSA) for their yearly party. At these parties Superman shows off how alpha but super-nice he is, Firestorm hits on a female JSA member, and Red Tornado struggles with "not being a real boy". Instead of the 1982 Earth 2 JSA appearing, 1982 Earth 3 Crime Syndicate appear instead! Battle ensues and Crime Syndicate wins. Meanwhile 1982 Earth-2 JSA get sent to 1982 Earth-Prime and find that it’s been destroyed by nuclear bombs! And Green Lantern’s ring tells him that it was destroyed by Per Degaton. Who’s Per Degaton?

He’s a real estate mogul who’s failed at a lot of businesses and bullies... oh wait, sorry, I mean he’s a lab assistant to a professor Zee, who along with a bunch of other scientists created a time machine in the 40’s. Per Degaton steals the time machine and travels through time, changing events, so that he can eventually take over the world. To build a wall so they can’t take errr jubbbs. Or just take over the world.

So 1982 Earth-1 JLA get sent to 1982 Earth-2 and find out the world has been taken over by Per Degaton. They travel back in time to 1942 Earth-2, but the JSA isn’t there, instead they find the "1980’s throwback to the 1940’s DC group": the All-Star Squadron. Yay! The All-Star Squadron was the idea of the all-star Roy Thomas when he started working for DC in the early 80’s. Instead of just re-hashing the JSA, he decided to use EVERY 40’s character DC owned in a new team book. He literally used ALL THE HEROES in the group.

Sarge Steel is like “I totally don’t remember being in an hour glass”

All-Star Squadron #14 had a cover by Joe Kubert, who is a legend, and interiors by Adrian Gonzalez and Jerry Ordway. Ordway is one of my top ten favorite artists, and his style shines through. The issue starts off with the 1942 Earth-2 All Star Squadron (ASS?) saluting a ruling Per Degaton right before they fight each other 'Roman Coliseum' style. It’s revealed to be a dream of Degaton, who is super whiney about remembering lost memories of his last fight with super heroes. He shoots his boss Professor Zee, steals his time machine, gets caught in a time storm and ends up in 1982 Earth-Prime. Reagan is President! Beat It is a hit song! Breakin’ 2: Electric Bugaloo has yet to come out! So Degaton goes back in time (backwards from 1982) and runs into the Crime Syndicate in limbo. Some Squad Goal meetings later, Degaton decides to go to the Bay of Pigs crisis in 1962, steal some Russian nuclear warheads, and use them to take over the world, while checking people’s religions before they enter the US to keep out a particular one. Or just take over the world.

Here Per Degaton is adding a word to everyone’s name to make fun of them. Illegal Superman, Little Power Girl, No Firebrand

The story sort of confused me from here (JLA #208). I’m pretty sure that 1982 Earth-1 JLA and 1942 Earth-2 All-Star Squadron meeting Earth-2 Franklin Roosevelt in the White House, but in future issues they made it seem like he was Earth-Prime FDR. Superman and Zatanna really sweat FDR in this one. “No wonder he was re-elected 3 times, the man is electric!” – Zatanna. I’ve seen Youtube™ FDR speeches, I liked him and all, but 'electric'? The important part of this issue is that the Russians and Castro thought Kennedy stole the nuclear warheads, and JFK thinks they hid them for a surprise attack. So JFK TOTALLY PUSHES THE RED BUTTON TO NUKE RUSSIA AND IT KILLS HALF THE EARTH’s POPULATION. Just going by what I know, I really don’t think JFK would have done that. It would take someone who is super macho about everything, with very little intellectual curiosity about the consequences. Someone who has a history of constant failures, a very thin skin, yet the bravado to do anything he wants, without much thought of the future.

In part 4, All-Star Squadron #15, the All-Stars, JSA and JLA all team up to fight the Crime Syndicate. So the math goes like this, one All-Star person, one JSAer, and one JLAer team up to fight one Crime Syndicator, each of which has a certain amount of warheads they are protecting. You’ve read comics right? 3 heroes versus 1 villain, protecting the weapon. Who wins?

In the conclusion to Justice League #209, FDR in 1942 questions whether inventing a nuclear bomb is worth it. Here’s the cover:

"Who’s world is this, the world is yours, its mine its mine its mine."

Everyone’s mouths are super open on this cover. I mean come on, it’s just one guy. He can’t mess things up that much? It’s not like Per Degaton retweets white supremacist factually incorrect memes about minorities, amiright? This issue continues the 3-on-1 drubbings, with Huntress kicking Owlman’s butt and Zatanna beating Per Degaton with the spell “Ria traped” spell. So they wipe Per’s memories and send Degaton back to 1947 and back to being a frustrated assistant. Because he won’t regain his memories or anything like that. And they put the Crime Syndicate back in time storm limbo, where they won’t escape or anything like that. And then 1982 JSA and 1982 JLA party it up. The highlight being Power Girl telling Firestorm “Put your arms around me, I need some holding. Now what was this about wanting to get me alone-?” This 5-part story ends with Power Girl totally macking Firestorm. No wonder Killer Frost is so angry.

Overall it’s a decent read. Go out and buy all 5 issues. It’s easy, got some weird moments, and has tons of characters. And I think the villain has red hair and almost takes over the world, but in the end didn’t get it done. Loser!

Join me next time when I review the story where Earth-1 Wonder Woman and Earth-2 Green Lantern face off for leadership, and even though they’re from the same set of super heroes, people refuse to back Wonder Woman if she were to win. Sure Wonder Woman is down with the Justice League and made some questionable decisions, while Green Lantern is Justice Society, and has been pretty clean in his time as a hero. But when they fought the Injustice Society of America, they did the same moves 93% of the time. Wonder Woman pretty much won, but Green Lantern is still popular with a lot of people, but they should probably start getting along because Per Degaton is time traveling and stealing nuclear warheads and stuff. I personally think Green Lantern would make a good second-in-command Captain. But that’s me.

-Mark

Mark Belkin is a freelance writer and one helluva guy. Look for more articles from Mark in the future!  

Cosplay male pin-up: Nightwing

Nightwing was cosplayed by Brian Milne (aka Test Subject B Labs) and photographed by David Ngo (aka DTJAAAAM) at FanimeCon 2013.
 
We couldn't just post the above photo without adding the next photo to compliment it. Also taken at FanimeCon 2013, but this time by Emilia Mccabe (aka iizel). This photo has Brian Milne posing with Skip cosplaying as Robin.




The New Teen Titans ongoing series (which debuted in 1980) saw Dick Grayson evolve from Batman's teen-aged sidekick to a competent young adult who would lead the Teen Titans (and arguably be known as one of the greatest leaders in the DC Universe). Actually, the whole series is about these former sidekicks and young adults 'coming into their own' which is what made the New Teen Titans so appealing to fans - kind of like those 1980s teenage 'coming-of-age' films John Hughes was so well known for.

Of all the different iterations of Nightwing out there, THIS is my favorite costume. This is the costume Dick Grayson wore when he debuted his NEW Nightwing persona back in Tales of the Teen Titans #44 (1984). I honestly can't visualize the 1980s Teen Titans without Nightwing in the group pic. (Maybe it's the garish blue costume? I don't know.)

The big "reveal" from Tales of the Teen Titans #44 (1984)

Regardless, this particular costume is affectionately known as the "Disco Nightwing" costume thanks to the body-hugging properties of the outfit, the flamboyant patterns, the HUGE pointed popped collar and the open neckline that starts at the chest (designed as a nod to Grayson's circus roots, I'm sure), but the similarities to the 70s Disco suit are undeniable.

The Disco Nightwing is a difficult cosplay to pull off correctly, and what I like the most about these pics is that this is exactly how I would've imagined Dick Grayson to look if he were a real person and existed throughout the 1980s. How old was Dick when he first donned the Nightwing costume? Well, it's kind of tough to say - series creator Marv Wolfman places Grayson somewhere between the ages of 16 and 18 years old when he first began leading the New Teen Titans as Robin, so I'd be guessing Grayson becomes Nightwing sometime in his early 20s (the whole Crisis On Infinite Earths thing makes it difficult to gauge an actual age).

For anyone who didn't catch it, David Ngo's photo is a clever jab at all those 'posterior shots' Nightwing is so famous for - Nightwing has consistently been voted as having one of the nicest backsides in comics and is frequently being positioned in panels to exploit that. David Ngo takes a lot of fantastic cosplay photos and we plan on showcasing more of his work in the future.

Emilia Mccabe's photo is brilliant because a) it features Nightwing with Jason Todd Robin*, b) they are both in a fighting stance and kind of look how I'd imagine if Dick Grayson and Jason Todd were about to throw down against you, c) Skip (cosplaying Robin) looks exactly how I'd imagine a 12 to 14 year old Robin would look in juxtaposition to a twenty-something year old Nightwing, and d) the color filter on the photo makes it looks like it was taken from sometime in the 80s. Absolutely smashing.

We managed to track down Brian Milne and ask him about this very kick-ass tribute to Dick Grayson and his love of the Teen Titans.

"I chose that Nightwing because I grew up loving the original Teen Titans. When I was putting that costume together I was originally working on the 90s Knightfall-era costume but I decided to switch it up", Brian told us.

Born in the late 80s, Brian grew up with a brother who was ten years his senior who was already well-experienced with comicdom, and thus he was raised on 80s and 90s comics along with old sci-fi and horror movies (which are basically the best things to be raised on).

When asked about his favorite Teen Titans story line and if he's still reading the title: "Favorite story line is a tricky one [laughs]. I always loved the entire Judas Contract story line, that was one of my faves. I haven't been reading the newer stuff due to always being busy." Brian is a HUGE Teen Titans fan and even went so far as to show us a photo of his comic book collection.

And then we asked him when he thought the series peaked? [I volunteered that I thought it was just before the early 90s when baby Wildebeest joined the team. -J] Brian replied "For me it was around the same time. I did like the reboot series featuring the new team led by teen Atom. The one right after Zero Hour."

Brian's favorite Robin (Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, or Tim Drake)? "When I started Drake had just become Robin and Dick was already Nightwing, so Tim had a bit more of an edge there. Along with the new costume made by Neal Adams."

And finally: "The Classic Nightwing suit took me about a week to make from beginning to end. The toughest part was laying out the little black elastice into place for the chest details - that took a day on it's own."


We were also lucky enough to also get a hold of Skip and ask her about her cosplay choice. Skip is a MAJOR BatFamily fan and told us "I chose Dick Grayson/Robin because I love the character and I think the costume is really funny (like all costumes from the 80s). I'm a huge fan of the BatFamily and Batman comics. I've been following the comics since I was very young and it would almost be easier to say which comics I haven't read! My favorite comics would probably have to be Nightwing: Year One and the Impulse series from the 90s. I also really enjoyed Batman: No Man’s Land and Dick’s run as Batman with Damian as his Robin before the reboot. Like I mentioned, it’s almost easier to say what I haven’t read and it’s really hard to pick a favorite!"

iFanBoy.com wrote a really in-depth history of Dick Grayson (with images) that we couldn't help feel inadequate if we didn't include: http://ifanboy.com/articles/dc-histories-dick-grayson-robin-i-nightwing-ii-batman-iii/

*Skip later told us that she was actually cosplaying Dick Grayson Robin in that photo. I'm choosing to overlook that. Dick Grayson and Jason Todd being photographed together is more comic accurate, and why crush our fanboy dreams of having Nightwing posing with the angriest pre-teen ever in a vintage photograph?