Was (Donna Troy's husband) Terry Long a Mary Sue?

[Kid Kyoto]

http://the-isb.blogspot.com/2006/02/...ncredibly.html

A middle aged divorced school teacher who gets an Amazon Princess and hits on her hot teammate?

Was he a Marv Wolfman or George Perez analogue?

[Johnny Triangles]

http://the-isb.blogspot.com/2006/02/...ncredibly.html

A middle aged divorced school teacher who gets an Amazon Princess and hits on her hot teammate?

Was he a Marv Wolfman or George Perez analogue?

He had to be, no one would create such a douchariffic character without some type of special attachment to him. People always speculate why X-Men went on to stratospheric heights and New Teen Titans petered out? Terry Long is a perfect example. A dorky sap like that wouldn't last a second as a supporting character in X-Men. As a kid, I tried New Teen Titans, saw that guy and immediately realized I could never respect a team that had a member who married that guy. Never got another issue again until the mid-90s.

[Johnny Triangles]

http://the-isb.blogspot.com/2006/02/...ncredibly.html

A middle aged divorced school teacher who gets an Amazon Princess and hits on her hot teammate?

Was he a Marv Wolfman or George Perez analogue?

He had to be, no one would create such a douchariffic character without some type of special attachment to him. People always speculate why X-Men went on to stratospheric heights and New Teen Titans petered out? Terry Long is a perfect example. A dorky sap like that wouldn't last a second as a supporting character in X-Men. As a kid, I tried New Teen Titans, saw that guy and immediately realized I could never respect a team that had a member who married that guy. Never got another issue again until the mid-90s.

[Kid Kyoto]

More on him
http://the-isb.blogspot.com/2006/02/...ls-creepy.html
Apparently others had the same thought.

Now I know what he was supposed to be, he was supposed to be the normal guy man on the street window to the TT's world but, yeah a divorced professor marrying one of his hot teen students... no, not good.

[BetterThanYou]

More on him
http://the-isb.blogspot.com/2006/02/...ls-creepy.html
Apparently others had the same thought.

Now I know what he was supposed to be, he was supposed to be the normal guy man on the street window to the TT's world but, yeah a divorced professor marrying one of his hot teen students... no, not good.

How else are chicks supposed to get a degree though?

[Bill Angus]

It's been a long time since I read Titans, but I don't remember Terry ever being Donna's teacher. When they were shown dating/engaged, he was a professor, but she was a successful fashion photographer.

I don't remember how they met (if it was ever addressed), but I think his schoolastic expertise had something to do with ancient Greece (hardly something Donna would bother studying in the pre-crisis timeline).

I don't remember ever having a problem with him as a character (beyond his apparent inability to deal with ex-wife).

*** PAUSE to read the blog quoted.... ***

Just a couple more things to add (with quoting Chris's Invicible Super-Blog)

1) Terry is a divorced ex-college professor who was unable to gain tenure due to severe writer's block.

When Terry and Donna married he was still a professor. The writer's block issue came up after the wedding, I believe (in fact, I'm fairly certain it was quite a bit later. I think this came up after both Perez & Garcia Lopez had left the baxter book).

2) Having a failed marriage makes you a loser? Isn't the divorce rate up to 50% these days?

Granted, it sounds as though they really pushed the character into gutter sometime after I'd stopped following the book...

Anyone know who wrote the 'working in a bookstore planning to become a writer' thing? That sounds like something done after Wolfman had left, likely by some writer who wanted Donna to date some other super-hero rather than a 'normal' guy.

[Greg Hatcher]

Was he a Marv Wolfman or George Perez analogue?

Offhand I'd say no. If you look at the first run of Titans up to the wedding and the first ten issues or so of the Baxter book, what you see is Terry presented as being aggressively, well, normal. His every appearance was designed to proclaim "I'm a regular guy in a super world, just interested in getting along with everybody." I think he was Marv Wolfman's idea of rebelling against the X-Men angst-up-to-eleven relationships. He definitely liked Wonder Girl the best, and he designed Terry to be as perfect and conflict-free as she was, so it would be plausible for her to be with him. Unfortunately, when you see it in print, pasting Wonder Girl's Titans-era personality onto a young collegiate guy just makes him look like every jackass 80's psych major trying to 'relate' to girls on the Berkeley campus. During the original run, Terry and Donna are both sugary-sweet to the point of causing diabetes.

But "Mary Sue" is missing the mark, I think. Terry's whole thing was to be Not Super. That was his reason for being. He was in no way an avatar for Marv OR George-- for one thing, both guys are a lot hipper, a lot more emotional, and generally a lot more interesting than Terry Long ever was.

[the film freak]

http://the-isb.blogspot.com/2006/02/...ncredibly.html

A middle aged divorced school teacher who gets an Amazon Princess and hits on her hot teammate?

I forgot him. You'd think Donna Troy would have no trouble meeting better guys in college. Maybe she went to Wesley.

[Kid Kyoto]

Just to be cynical, she was orphaned before she really knew her parents, was raised on an island of immortal, superhuman beautiful women and reminded all the time that she was not one of them.

Her powers were a gift from Amazon tech that she got later.

Then she was sent back to the man's world and had no friends except for a couple of other sidekick heroes who were presumably off limits.

So the idea of her falling for an older professor who shows interest in her is not out of bounds.

Less cynically, he was an interesting character for his time, his divorce was something off-hand and normal, the fact he knew Donna (and some other folk's) secret IDs was a pretty major step out of the silver age and into a more mature comic universe.

Anyway, I still vote Mary Sue, because all the other Titans seemed to think he was SUCH a great guy instantly, the halmark of an Mary Sue.

[Reptisaurus!]

CAN supporting characters be Mary Sue?

Strangely, the plural of Mary Sue seems to be Mary Sue. Typing anything else just felt WAY weird.

[Sean Walsh]

Question: how many people inb the Titans and DCU gave a crap when he and his kids drove off a cliff?* You'd think such a likeable guy's freakishly horrifying death would send them all in a tizzy?

Yet Byrne sent them to their deaths without much hub-bub...




* Sadly, their death merely reminds me of this: "O'DOYLE RULES!" ;) :p

[Johnny Triangles]

Question: how many people inb the Titans and DCU gave a crap when he and his kids drove off a cliff?* You'd think such a likeable guy's freakishly horrifying death would send them all in a tizzy?

Yet Byrne sent them to their deaths without much hub-bub...




* Sadly, their death merely reminds me of this: "O'DOYLE RULES!" ;) :p

When did he die? I'm sure alot of people cared in a celebratory way. I'd have bought the issue just for that.

[Sean Walsh]

When did he die? I'm sure alot of people cared in a celebratory way. I'd have bought the issue just for that.

During Byrne's run on WONDER WOMAN, I believe, in the midst of his redefining of Donna Troy...

[Matt Algren]

During Byrne's run on WONDER WOMAN, I believe, in the midst of his redefining of Donna Troy...

I was really surprised they did that off panel. She just got a phone call from someone telling her that her ex and toddler son were killed in a car accident. IIRC, Terry's other kid was in the car too.

It was weird. I kept expecting them to show her going to a funeral or using the accident for a story, but it just kind of happened and then was over. Donna got pouty for a couple issues of Green Lantern, but that was about it.

[Lorendiac]

It's been a long time since I read Titans, but I don't remember Terry ever being Donna's teacher. When they were shown dating/engaged, he was a professor, but she was a successful fashion photographer.

I don't remember how they met (if it was ever addressed), but I think his schoolastic expertise had something to do with ancient Greece (hardly something Donna would bother studying in the pre-crisis timeline).

I don't remember ever having a problem with him as a character (beyond his apparent inability to deal with ex-wife).

I agree that he was never Donna's teacher. And he was nowhere near middle-aged when they started dating. I'm going to try to paraphrase a couple of key scenes from memory.

I believe that when the other Titans threw a surprise birthday party for Cyborg, some of the conversation went like this:

DONNA: So you're 19 today. Join the crowd.

TERRY: Harrrumph! Nineteen! Children!

DONNA: Terry, you're just jealous because you're practically middle-aged.

TERRY: Hey! 29 isn't 'practically middle-aged!' Is it?

Also, a year or so later, there was a scene where he's just wrapping up a lecture on campus, and as the bell rings and other students leave, one cute blond girl approaches him and asks if he ever gives private tutoring. He says blankly, "Private tutoring?" and she says sweetly, "You know. Just you and me . . . and the Greeks, of course."

Terry gets the real message at that point, and starts to say politely, "I'm sorry, Sally, I really am, but I make it a strict policy never to--"

Then he gets interrupted. Donna speaks from offstage, and when he turns around and looks, she's holding up one hand so that the diamond ring flashes brightly. (He gave her that ring in a previous issue, asking her to marry him, and she stalled for time, saying she needed to think it over before she could give a definite answer. Wearing the ring was her way of making it clear that yep, she now had a definite answer for him.)

Terry says brightly, "You're wearing the ring!" (Is that man brilliantly perceptive or what?)

Sally says in horror, "The ring?"

Then Terry and Donna go into a clinch while Sally furtively slinks off, realizing she really isn't wanted or needed. (Mercifully, I think that was probably the first, last, and only time we ever saw her.)

So Terry was only 29 at the time he was dating Donna, instead of a middle-aged man old enough to be her father. And he apparently had a strict policy of never dating his own students -- therefore, Donna was not one of his students. That seems to scuttle some of the criticisms that have been leveled against him in this thread.

P.S. Just now, I finally followed Kid Kyoto's first link to a blog entry about him. Chris's self-described reactions to the scanned panels are so ridiculously unfair to Terry that I suspect it's all meant to be tongue-in-cheek.