In the late 1960s, there was the start of a generational shift in the comic book industry. In the 25 or so years that comic books had been around, the writers had remained mostly steady. Comics were written by people who either started working in comic books as they were invented, or writers who worked in science fiction or the pulps before comic books began. In other words, none of the people who were writing comic books were actually fans of comic books, since they were already adults when comic books began.

The late 1960s, though, began to see the first comic book writers who grew up on comic books. Probably the most famous example of this trend was Roy Thomas, hired by Stan Lee to basically be Marvel's other writer. Thomas had famously done his own comic book fanzine, Alter Ego, before working in comics. Thomas' hire soon led to a groundswell of young writers working at Marvel Comics in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

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Meanwhile, over at DC Comics, the changeover was a bit slower in the making. Two writers, though, that tried to change things were best friends Len Wein and Marv Wolfman, who began taking the DC Comics weekly tour of their offices every week in the mid-1960s, when they were still teenagers. They kept pushing to get writing assignments, and eventually Joe Orlando hired the pair to write an issue of Teen Titans in 1968 for editor Dick Giordano.

Dick Giordano had only recently been brought over to DC from Charlton Comics on the recommendation of Steve Ditko, so Giordano ("only" in his late-30s, so practically a baby by DC Comics editorial standards of the time) was more receptive to new talent than some of DC's other editors. In their first issue, Wein and Wolfman introduced a Russian superhero, Red Star, which was quite a rarity at the time...

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Basically, what you had here were two progressive 20-year old guys who wanted to try to change the world, and an editor in Dick Giordano who was not opposed to the notion. Once Red Star was approved, Wein and Wolfman decided to follow up by introducing a black superhero in the pages of Teen Titans #20.

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How Neal Adams Defended Wein & Wolfman's Story, and Wein's (Eventual) Payback

Wolfman recalled to Jon B. Cooke in Comic Book Artist #1, “Len and I, being young liberals, didn’t understand why there were no Black super-heroes-though neither of us were Black-but we lived in the real world and there were certainly Blacks all around New York. So we proposed a story featuring a Black super-hero. Dick Giordano, the editor, loved it. At that time, the company was still being run by the original owners and Dick gave this story to Irwin Donenfeld, Vice President of the company, who also loved it.”

So the two young men wrote the story and regular Teen Titans artist Nick Cardy began to draw it. The basic premise of the story was that the mob was using the rage of the era to incite and then manipulate the direction of a black gang in the city. A new superhero named Jericho showed up and he preached the power of peace over violence. In the end, it would be revealed that Jericho was actually the brother of one of the members of the gang!

The story was shaping up fine and the cover was even produced for the issue...

In the time between the story being approved and the issue actually being published, however, DC had gone through a change at the top. Out were the Donenfelds and in was Carmine Infantino. Infantino caught one look of the issue and squashed it. Infantino recalled to Cooke, "“I remember looking at it and I rejected it totally. Giordano had okayed the job, I believe, but after it was done, I thought it was so terrible that I wouldn’t print it. It was simple as that. I don’t remember any specifics about it now, but I know that I just didn’t like it so I had to use my best judgement.”

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Wein, though, recalled differently, "At the last minute Carmine got gun-shy and was afraid that we wouldn’t be able to sell the book in the South and that all these terrible things would happen. So he just pulled the issue and said, ‘Nope, we’re not going to do it.’ This was less than a week before the book was supposed to ship to the printer."

In stepped Neal Adams, only seven years older than Wein and Wolfman, but much more established at DC as one of their hottest artists. Adams argued that the two writers be allowed to re-work their story. Infantino wasn't having it. What's particularly amusing is that Adams didn't even like the story! He felt that it was far too harsh of a political statement, but he felt that it could be edited to make it work. Adams recalled, "I was sought out by individuals as the ‘defender of the faith' and I was handed the script by an irate Len and Marv with the request to read it and see if there was anything wrong with it because Management was being crazy and they stopped the job. I read it and felt that it was going way overboard in that it offended White people just as People of Color had been offended for hundreds of years-this was not cool; I could defend it, but not in the face of total rejection. This was a comic book medium and this was the Teen Titans!… [the story] was simply too much! First I offered to edit it down to try and save it, but my edit was rejected.”

So instead, DC used blue tint on the cover to obscure the black characters and Adams just very quickly wrote and drew a story to replace the one that Wein and Wolfman wrote, with a lot of the basic ideas remaining in place, only with the gang being a white gang (and "Jericho" now being "Joshua")...

Here are Nick Cardy's original pages for the original reveal of Jericho's identity...

The situation more or less forced Wein and Wolfman to move to Marvel Comics, although they each still got a little work at DC. Once they began working for Marvel, that opened up more work back at DC (which is how this stuff usually works - prove someone else wants you, and suddenly your original employer wants you even more).

Wolfman amusingly later introduced a Teen Titan called Jericho, just as a little sort of payback for the incident.

While a minor incident overall, it showed the sort of forward-thinking writing that both Wolfman and Wein would soon be known for.