I started with Avengers #211 as a beginning point for this cover. I always loved "membership drive" issues in team comics and that issue is probably my favorite. Who better to join the team (whether the Avengers like it or not) than the DNAgents, a team that intrigued me back in the day but never seemed to break through to the big time. I thought they were poised to do so with the unofficial team up that they had with DC's New Teen Titans (a thinly disguised team by the name of The RECOMbatants appeared in NTT), but and actual crossover never wound up happening.
DNAgents! I haven't seen anyone bring them up in a long time. One of the better comics of its time -- beaten, of course, by Crossfire, another one nobody ever talks about!
ReplyDeleteCool cover!
ReplyDeleteI thought I read somewhere that DC was trying to do a Titans/DNAgents team-up, but couldn't and had to change the name close to the last minute...
I had that issue of NTT. Man, comics were great back in the day. I go in the shops now and think, did I end up on Bizarro world somehow?
ReplyDeleteAh, the DNAgents, one of my favorite indy books from the 80's. There was a NTT spoof (the Youngblood, IIRC) that showed up in the same month that the RECOMbatants showed up in NTT - the issues were supposed to be released on the same date (this was planned and coordinated by the authors of the two titles), but the DNAgents issue got delayed by a few weeks, and as a result several people accused NTT of ripping off the DNAgents , not realizing it was an unnoficial crossover between the two titles, in the same manner as the original 'crossover' between the JLA and the Avengers, when the JLA fought the Champions of Angor, and the Avengers fought the Squadron Sinister.
ReplyDeleteThat issue of New Teen Titans was one of my last ones. I remember that summer (Crisis on Infinite Earths had ended months earlier) I could sense the quality of DC Comics declining, not just Marv Wolfman's writing. It was a sign of things to come. Four years later (1990), it was over, and I was excessively buying either independent titles or serious graphic novels like Maus. I was done with superheroes.
ReplyDeleteThe DNAgents always reminded me of the Metal Men. They were both teams of artificial beings; Tank was Iron, Surge was Mercury, Rainbow was Tina, and Sham was very obviously Tin. Amber didn't fit the pattern, though.
ReplyDeleteThe DNAgents vs the New Mutants!
ReplyDeleteDon't forget that the DNAgents/Teen Titans team-up was a two-way street. While the TT was dealing with the RECOMbatants, the DNAgents encountered a group of adolescent superheroes called Project Youngblood in their own book.
ReplyDeleteWhoops -- I missed Knightsky's earlier comment, which said the same thing I just said.
ReplyDelete