New Teen Titans/Tales of the Teen Titans question

[shaxper]

Hey guys,

I've been trying to go back and read the old New Teen Titans adventures post Judas Contract lately and have run into a problem. I know that New Teen Titans (vol. 2) was published concurrently with Tales of the Teen Titans starting in late 1984, so I tried reading both at the same time. However, the events of New Teen Titans (vol. 2) seem to take place roughly a year after the events of the concurrent Tales of the Teen Titans issues, going so far as to reference an event in New Teen Titans #2 that happened in an issue of Tales of the Teen Titans that was still six months away. What's the deal? Can anyone explain why this happened or what the appropriate order for reading these titles is?

Thanks in advance!

[Allan Harvey]

As I recall, DC was trying an experiment by having a kind of hard cover/softcover deal with a few popular comics. New Teen Titans ran stories that were set one year ahead of Tales of the Titans. After one year, Tales... began to reprint the New Teen Titans stories -- which by then were in the proper chronology.

So. Read the Tales... first, then go read the New Teen Titans baxter book.

[spoon_jenkins]

Yeah, the events in vol. 2 take place about a year (in our time) after the same issues of Tales of the New Teen Titans published in the same month. So I believe TotNTT #45-58 were published at the same time as NTT (vol. 2) #1-13, but TotNTT #45-58 all take place between NTT (vol. 2) #1.

DC was switching a number of titles over to the deluxe Baxter paper format. The idea was also to continue publish those titles in the regular paper format with stories reprinted from the Baxter title, but the stories wouldn't be reprinted until a year after (I guess to make a lot of people buy the Baxter format rather than wait). But they continued to produce new stories for a year in both titles so that there would be a year's worth of vol.2 stories before Tales changed to reprints.

[spoon_jenkins]

Darn it! I got beat to the punch. I may as well add a fun fact.

Legion of Super-Heroes didn't follow the timeline scenario of the other Baxter paper comics. Instead, the stories in the two LoSH titles took place roughly simultaneously for 12 months until the reprints kicked in.

[shaxper]

Thanks, guys. That's very helpful. This must have been very confusing for fans at the time, and very demanding for Perez and Wolfman to handle all that precise continuity planning.

I wonder if this was an early basis for DC's recent One Year Later stint.