Dawn of DC: Why the Titans Are Replacing the Justice League in 2023

They say the night is always darkest before the dawn, and that’s certainly true in the DC Universe. Last year’s crossover epic Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths kicked off with the deaths of nearly every member of the Justice League, forcing younger heroes like Dick Grayson and Jonathan Kent to lead the charge against an overwhelming evil. But even though they were successful and heroes like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are once again back in action, that doesn’t mean the Justice League is returning. 2023 is instead the year of the Titans.

That was one of the biggest developments in the final chapter of Dark Crisis. The League is on indefinite hiatus right now. In its place, Nightwing and his long-time partners are becoming the DCU’s first line of defense against all threats. The former teen sidekicks are now calling the shots.

That’s basically the setup for DC’s upcoming Titans series, which debuts as part of the Dawn of DC relaunch in May 2023. The series is helmed by Nightwing writer Tom Taylor and Wonder Woman: Year One artist Nicola Scott. Also debuting that month are Green Lantern, by Flashpoint Beyond’s Jeremy Adams and Xermanico, and Cyborg, by Morgan Hampton (The Milestone Initiative) and Tom Raney (Threshold).

IGN had the chance to speak with both Taylor and Scott to learn more about this bold new era for the Titans and how the series builds on the fallout of Dark Crisis.

From Earth 2 to Titans

Taylor and Scott are easily two of the biggest names at DC right now. Taylor wrote the majority of the wildly popular Injustice: Gods Among Us comic, and more recently has been reinventing characters like Nightwing and Jon Kent in their respective solo series. Scott, meanwhile, has tackled everything from Secret Six to Wonder Woman: Historia.

However, this isn’t the first time the two have worked together. They originally collaborated on DC’s Earth 2 series during the heyday of the New 52, and Titans offers the two a long-awaited chance to rekindle their creative partnership.

“Tom and I had such a good time working on Earth 2, kind of putting it back into the shape that we felt like it needed to be, and sort of bringing in a flavor that we both agreed on,” Scott tells IGN. “Tom and I see a lot of characters and a lot of storylines in a really similar way, and so there have been these moments over the last decade where we’ve talked about the possibility of a thing. We’re always considering each other as an option, but timing or schedule or whatever doesn’t work out. But this is one of those times where I feel like it’s a real alchemy of all the right ingredients coming together, because it’s the two of us getting to work together again on a bunch of characters that we both have a really similar affinity for and love for, and we’re getting to showcase them at the peak of their story, their life story, as they take over from the Justice League and become the big team on campus.

“We’ve been talking about this, it feels like… well, certainly for months, maybe years,” Taylor says. “We’ve been talking about this idea that we want the legacy heroes not just to step up but to lead. So the Dawn of DC is not just about this new change of direction, it’s also about these legacy characters finally stepping into the shoes that we’ve been promised for decades. We’ve always said that the Titans will step up and become the premiere team, and we’re like, “Oh, when?” And now we get a chance to do that.”

The Optimism of Dawn of DC

Dawn of DC could be compared to previous publishing initiatives like 2015’s DC You, 2016’s DC Rebirth and 2021’s Infinite Frontier. As in those cases, the goal is to appeal to both new and current readers with fresh jumping-on points and new #1 issues. Dawn of DC in particular takes a “back to basics” approach to the DCU, and part of that, as Taylor explains, invovles shifting away from the darkness and cynicism so common in modern superhero comics.

“We wanted to show heroes being truly heroic and changing things in a huge way. That was part of the brief with Nightwing, where I’d said I want to not just to change the character, not just to show that he can beat up a bad guy, but how he can transform an entire city and how that can be a beacon of hope for other cities, for other people to go, ‘Oh, look what they’ve done over there.’ And the crown of that, the final piece of that, was putting Titan’s Tower there and truly transforming the skyline as well as changing the corruption, getting rid of te corruption, getting rid of the homelessness, doing all of that. But then bam, Titans Tower is there, and bam, they’re the new premier super team of the DCU.”

As Taylor points out, the new status quo for the Titans springs very directly out of Taylor’s work on Nightwing. Nightwing #100 served as the culmination of a running subplot in Taylor’s run. Having inherited billions of dollars from the late Alfred Pennyworth, Dick Grayson has been struggling to figure out how to do the most good with that fortune. Dick ultimately chooses to buy the ruins of Bludhaven’s supermax prison and rebuild it to become the new Titans Tower. It’s as if the Justice League decided to make Arkham Asylum the new Hall of Justice.

Surprisingly, though, Taylor revealed that this wasn’t the end point he had in mind when he began writing Nightwing. It’s a development that sprung up organically during discussions with Dark Crisis writer Joshua Williamson about the future of the DC line.

“But it feels organic, that’s the thing,” Taylor says. “It feels like the right thing to happen, especially at the end of Nightwing #100. That really caps what we’ve been building towards and then – bam – we get to launch this.”

Scott adds, “That’s when storytelling is at its best, when it can be surprising and also absolutely what the next step should be.”

The Classic Teen Titans Roster Returns

The Titans and Teen Titans have undergone a great many changes over the decades, but the classic Marv Wolfman/George Perez New Teen Titans series remains the gold standard for the franchise. That’s what makes the new Titans book so noteworthy. Rather than build a roster comprised of both traditional faces and newcomers, the new series is sticking to the classics. The series reunites Dick Grayson with Beast Boy, Raven, Starfire, Cyborg, Donna Troy and Roy Harper. They may be older and wiser than they were in the ’80s, but that well-honed family dynamic is a major driving force of the series.

“They just want to be a positive force for good,” Taylor says. “It’s not just about, we are going to fight the next thing that comes, it’s also, okay, let’s look around and see if there’s other injustices that we can fix. It’s a difficult one because we have obviously the family element. We have this group of friends who’ve grown up together and they’re moving in together for the first time since they were kids. So we have this sort of weird roommate dynamic of, who’s doing the dishes? But then we are going to be fighting giants at the same time, and there’s massive threats and there’s… I don’t want to say betrayals, all of these things. Well, you see it the first issue, anyway.”

“It’s the Justice League, but in a Titans kind of way,” Scott adds. “Because they are, unlike the Justice League – who know and respect each other really well – the Titans are intimately, emotionally connected to each other because of their childhood, because of sort of being the sidekicks in the clubhouse. They have this history of being really entwined in each other’s lives and that speaks to a way more intimate approach to how they approach whatever catastrophe, whether it be galactic scale or a more domestic scale. Their way of handling those situations is so different.”

Scott continues, “It feels like a lot of superhero storytelling across all mediums over a little while now has been the superheroes kind of being the core of the problem, actually, that they’re all getting in each other’s way and that they’re not being as responsible citizens as they want and need to be. Especially DC characters, who are, by their nature, sort of these iconic symbols for truth and justice. There’s been a lot of dropping the ball because of whatever dramas are created to create interesting storytelling. Tom has always really understood how to keep that kind of drama out of it and make them feel like they’re actual heroes responding to actual catastrophe that does affect people, that they haven’t caused.”

“Tom has always really understood how to keep that kind of drama out of it and make them feel like they’re actual heroes responding to actual catastrophe that does affect people, that they haven’t caused.”

Beast Boy and Deathstroke

Of all the Titans members, Beast Boy is the one carrying the most personal baggage following the events of Dark Crisis. He was brutally beaten and shot in the head by Deathstroke in the first issue. Though Gar survived that ordeal, he still carries the physical and psychological scars. Unsurprisingly, that’s going to play a big role in the new Titans comic.

“I mean, he was shot in the head. Having dealt with Nightwing being shot in the head for a long time, we didn’t push that to the side either. We mocked it sometimes, but it obviously affected him in a lot of ways,” Taylor says. “And for Beast Boy, he’s in a really, from a writers point of view, he’s in a very interesting place, but he’s certainly traumatized. But fortunately he has someone as amazing as Raven on his side and in his life, and I think Beast Boy’s trauma, but also the response to that from Raven, is a very big part of this book. The two of them are amazing together, and writing them, for the first time, has been just wonderful. I’ve realized, “Oh, it’s these two, here they are, here’s our heart.” And you’ll see that in issue #1.”

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean Deathstroke himself will play a major role in the series. Dark Crisis left Slade Wilson in a dark place, mourning the loss of his family (mostly due to his own failings) and clinging to life afer being drained of the serum that gave him his powers. For now, at least, Taylor and Scott are content to leave Deathstroke to wallow in his own misery.

“Slade is not factoring into the series at this stage, is what I’ll say,” Taylor hints. “Slade was such a big part of Dark Crisis that we sort of went, ‘Okay, that was a huge story involving him and particularly for him and Nightwing.’ Obviously the Titans Academy was blown up during that, so we’ve gone, ‘Okay, that Slade story’s just been told, we are going to tell another story for now.’ Whether Slade shows up, we will see.”

The ultimate goal is to craft a book that plays on the deep nostalgia for the classic New Teen Titans while also embracing the wide potential of Dawn of DC. The heroes are familair, but the challenges they face in the eyars to come are anything but.

“The story we are creating is very big, and it’s not just big, it grows and grows and grows exponentially,” Taylor says. “So it’s one of those things where, it’s the Titans, so you want small stories, you want that interplay and you want soap opera, but at the same time, they’re stepping into the Justice League’s shoes, so the threats have to be big. So there’s lots of familiar things with this group, with the Titans in general. There are lots of familiar things that you’ll remember, that you’ll love about the Titans, but then where it goes, where we’re building to, the size of it is huge. I can’t say anything, I can’t spoil it, but it’s a much, much bigger story than it looks like on the surface, and everything is connected.”

Teen Titans #1, Green Lantern #1 and Cyborg #1 will all hit stores in May 2023. Until then, brush up on what to expect from DC in 2023 and all the biggest comics of 2023.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.