In four years and 50-plus issues of "The New Teen Titans," Marv Wolfman and George Perez set a high standard for the former Silver Age team of superhero sidekicks. Although they finished their run with the wedding of Donna Troy and the ultimate defeat of the interdimensional demon Trigon, "The Judas Contract" is undoubtedly the pinnacle of that era.

With the announcement at Comic-Con International of an animated adaptation of "The Judas Contract" -- 10 years after the first such announcement, not that it matters -- it's a good time to revisit what made that storyline so memorable.

Backstory

Groundwork

Published originally in issues 42-44 and Annual #3 of "Tales of the Teen Titans" (May-July 1984), "The Judas Contract" is a pretty straightforward story. During a transitory period for the team, new member Terra betrays almost everyone into the hands of some deadly foes, namely Deathstroke and the H.I.V.E. (Hierarchy of International Vengeance and Extermination, but you knew that). Nightwing and new recruit Jericho mount a rescue and the team escapes. However, Terra dies during the battle. It's efficiently paced: Issue 42 sets out the character dynamics, Issue 43 shows how each Titan is taken, Issue 44 provides some additional backstory, and the Annual is the final confrontation. It should adapt fairly well into a direct-to-video animated movie; we'll get into those specifics later.

Nevertheless, "Judas" is probably appreciated best within the series' larger context. Its first paperback collection also included issues 39-41, three issues that featured Kid Flash's retirement and the Titans' first mission with a costume-less Dick Grayson. Moreover, Terra had been part of the book since Issue 26, and had been a Titan for more than a year by the time "Judas" started in earnest. Finally, it's hard to overestimate the role of comics culture generally in the buildup to "Judas" (not to mention its aftermath). In the mid-1980s, fans and comics professionals communicated largely through snail-mail letter columns, fanzines and convention encounters. While Wolfman and Perez had introduced Terra knowing exactly who she was and what she would do -- even toying with fans' expectations by teasing both her innocence and her possible ulterior motives -- the vast majority of "Titans" readers had no idea what was going to happen prior to each issue.

Made Possible By a Grant

In particular, "The Judas Contract" provided big payoffs for two long-running subplots, each of which went back to the series' first issue. The "contract" itself belonged initially to young hothead Grant Wilson, one of the more unwittingly pivotal figures in Titans lore. When Starfire escaped slavery and crashed on Earth in Issue 1, Grant found her and brought her to his apartment. Not only was that apartment trashed in the inevitable battle between the Titans and her alien captors, but in Issue 2 Grant's long-suffering girlfriend broke up with him.

Vowing vengeance, Grant went to the H.I.V.E. (after all, that's what the "v" stands for), a collection of criminal scientists who turned him into a super-powered assassin called The Ravager. The H.I.V.E. then hired Ravager to kill the Titans (hence, the titular "contract"). Spoilers: He didn't, not even with the help of fellow super-assassin Deathstroke the Terminator. Instead, Ravager's new powers burned him up from the inside, especially when he was trying to evade Starfire's starbolts. Accordingly, he died fighting the Titans - and from Deathstroke's point of view, the Titans had killed him by not stopping Starfire sooner.

She's Just Not That Into You

Wolfman and Perez structured their "New Teen Titans" run so that each Titan was the focus of at least one arc. In issues 14-16, the team fought the Doom Patrol's old foes the Brotherhood of Evil, who had killed most of the Patrol several years before. Because Gar "Beast Boy/Changeling" Logan had been a sometime member of the Patrol, and because his adoptive mother Rita Farr was the Patroller known as Elasti-Girl, he was still pretty bitter over their deaths. That Doom Patrol arc gave him closure, but "The Judas Contract" would toy with his emotions in new and equally painful ways.

The series established early on that Gar was the youngest Titan. While Robin, Kid Flash and Cyborg were in college (and Wonder Girl was already a professional photographer), Gar was around 16 when the series began. As such, he acted a lot less mature, although some of that was indeed an act to cover up his negative emotions stemming from the Doom Patrol's fate. Thus, Gar tended to tell awful jokes, leer at women, and generally refuse to take anything too seriously. That set him up for a wrenching end to his would-be relationship with the group's newest member.

Issue 26 introduced 15-year-old Terra, aka Tara Markov, half-sister of the Outsiders' member Brion "Geo-Force" Markov. Thanks to super-science, both possessed earth-controlling powers. Terra could throw around (or ride on) big chunks of rock, and could even tap into far-off volcanoes. When they first met, Changeling stopped Terra from destroying the Statue of Liberty; but apparently she had no choice. In Issue 28 she told the Titans that terrorists had kidnapped her parents. After the team confronted the terrorists -- who revealed, in a forebodingly dark turn, that her parents were dead -- it paved the way for Terra to join the team in Issue 30. That worked out well for Gar, because he wasn't the youngest anymore (Terra turned 16 in Issue 34) and, more to the point, he tried very earnestly to win her heart. After the two shared a kiss in Issue 42, however, it all started to go south very quickly.

The Stage is Set

Issue 34 revealed that, from the beginning, Terra had been spying on the Titans for Deathstroke. Luckily, the team members had decided not to let her in on all their secrets -- like, say, Robin's secret identity -- right off the bat. That changed at a Titans meeting in Issue 39, when Wally left the Titans and Dick gave up the Robin identity. The changing of the guard ended Terra's probationary period, giving her full access to everyone and everything, which naturally she shared with Deathstroke.

Those of you still waiting for "The Judas Contract" to start may want to get a snack or go to the bathroom, because for issues 40-41 Wolfman and Perez felt compelled to wrap up a somewhat-obtuse set of subplots involving Brother Blood, the tiny criminal-controlled nation of Zandia, and (tangentially) the Brotherhood of Evil. Much of these issues felt recycled from the initial Brother Blood storyline in issues 20-21. In both arcs the Titans infiltrated Blood's Zandian headquarters and were captured. In Issue 21 Robin had been tortured by The Confessor, who shared a codename with a Joe Walsh song; in issues 40-41 Dick was disguised as reporter "Joe Walsh" and wound up mind-controlled. Blood then wanted him to throw the kill switch and ice his teammates, but before he could do so the Zandian army decided it had had enough of this arc and attacked Blood's fortress. That was fine with Blood, who wanted to look like a martyr. The two-parter didn't have much to do with setting up "Judas," so I'm not especially concerned with it.

The Payoff

Where Terra was concerned, however, the feeling wasn't mutual. In Issue 39 she called them "sanctimonious do-gooders" behind their backs and practically counted the minutes until she could deliver them to the H.I.V.E. When it all went down, Deathstroke ambushed Dick Grayson and captured Starfire, Wonder Girl, Cyborg and Changeling using booby traps, but Terra attacked Raven personally because each trusted the other the least. Before that, though, Wolfman and Perez told Issue 42 using Terra's perspective, showing both how deeply she had infiltrated the Titans and how much she despised them.

That perspective shifted to Dick for Issue 43. After escaping Deathstroke's attack, he pieced together how the other Titans were taken: a package-bomb for Starfire, sleeping gas for Wonder Girl, an electrified chair for Cyborg, and (several years before "Seinfeld" killed Susan) having Changeling lick drugged envelopes. Dick met Deathstroke's ex-wife Adeline Kane and her son Joseph Wilson at the end of the issue, setting up the exposition-heavy Issue 44, which mostly dealt with the Terminator's origin.

The short version is, he and Adeline were both Army officers (she was one of his instructors) until he volunteered for an experiment that a) made him a super-soldier but b) put him in the hospital and c) proved to be unstable, at least at first. He left the military and became a big-game hunter, and unbeknownst to Adeline, a mercenary. Those chickens came home to roost when a group of rival thugs attacked Adeline at home and kidnapped Joseph, then a little boy. Deathstroke rescued Joseph, but the boy's throat was cut in the process and he lost the ability to speak. Enraged over her husband's recklessness, Adeline tried to kill Slade, but only shot out his right eye.

Because Adeline had already advanced the plot by telling a disbelieving Dick that Terra was the Titans' traitor, he suited up for the first time as Nightwing and got ready to rescue his friends. Adeline insisted he take Joseph along, as he had the power to turn invisible and intangible and take over people's bodies just by making eye contact. (She named him "Jericho" presumably because he could tear down those metaphorical walls.)

Thus, in Annual #3 Nightwing and Jericho infiltrated H.I.V.E.'s Rocky Mountain stronghold and were doing pretty well until they ran into Terra. She clobbered them with a rock-shower, but she didn't know enough about Jericho to put a blindfold on him. He took over Deathstroke and set the Titans free, and in the melee Terra -- not knowing Jericho was controlling Deathstroke, and therefore thinking her partner-in-crime betrayed her -- went nuts.

Terra's ultimate breakdown is the crux of "The Judas Contract," because it goes from being a straightforward adventure thriller into a more nuanced tragedy. Wolfman's narration, just on the right side of being melodramatic, says it all:

The Fallout

Then as now, "The Judas Contract" works because Wolfman and Perez stuck the landing. That narration accompanies a series of vertical panels in which Terra slowly disappears under an earthen maelstrom of her own making. She was an imperfect contrast to the beautiful people in the regular cast, and she hated them and betrayed them gleefully. But in the end Wolfman and Perez seemed more disheartened that she used her powers for evil.

As each later remembered, this definitely didn't go down well with many fans. After all, Wolfman and Perez had set up Terra as an obvious riff on the X-Men's Kitty Pryde (another 16-year-old newbie joining a well-oiled team) to fool readers into thinking she would reform or otherwise be redeemed at the last minute.

For their efforts they received a lot of hate mail -- and honestly it's not hard to see why. Whether it was Alfred Pennyworth, Gwen Stacy, Iris Allen or Jean Grey, killing off established characters was (and is) different from creating a character whose sole purpose is to push readers' buttons by dying tragically, unrepentantly and through no one's fault but her own.

As it happened, Terra came into "Titans" at a point when the regular subplots and characterizations had gotten a little too strident. Starfire was bristling under Earth's unreasonable insistence that she not blast everything in sight (and was also becoming codependent on Dick's mood swings). Raven was struggling against the powerful pull of her demonic heritage. Changeling's obnoxiousness threatened to become outright offensive, even as it vied for attention with his emo tendencies. Terra called all this as she saw it, and that really comes through on a re-reading.

The Adaptation

In Memoriam

Perhaps the best sendoff for Terra, and the one with which the upcoming adaptation should leave viewers, comes from her funeral at the end of Annual #3. The minister observes that "[a] death, any death, diminishes us. But when the one who dies is as young as Tara Markov, all humanity must cry. Life offers hope. And Tara Markov's life and abilities could have given the world so much hope. For she had so much to offer, so much to give."

As the Titans and Outsiders mourn at the gravesite, Adeline Kane and Joseph Wilson watch from a distance. Adeline notes that "there has been enough suffering" while a single tear rolls down Joseph's cheek. The scene shifts to Tara's tombstone, and Wolfman's narration tells us Joseph's "thoughts are elsewhere ... soaring high on a warm spring wind, floating gently in a clear, cloudless sky ... and borne aloft by tomorrow's hopes and dreams that can still come true."