This is "Look Back," a feature that I plan to do for at least all of 2019 and possibly beyond that (and possibly forget about in a week, who knows?). The concept is that every week (I'll probably be skipping the four fifth weeks in the year, but maybe not) of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue (often in terms of a larger scale, like the series overall, etc.). Each week will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first week of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second week looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third week looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth week looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago.

I was a bit delayed catching up in all of my Reasons to Get Excited at the end of November, so I missed a few Look Backs, so I'll catch up with the last few ones for November before moving on to December. Today, we look at November 1969's major change in the Teen Titans' status quo in Teen Titans #25 by Robert Kanigher and Nick Cardy (as an interesting little note, do note that the featured image is actually of the cover for the NEXT issue of Teen Titans, but I used it because it fit the topic better than the cover for Teen Titans #25).

In the very first month I began doing these Look Back features, the 1969 edition was a Teen Titans issue. In that entry, I wrote about how Dick Giordano had come over to DC from Charlton Comics and Giordano tried to do a bit of a youth movement at DC as well as try some new ideas with Teen Titans, really shake stuff up. Amusingly, though, while Giordano initially tried to do so with younger writers, one of the biggest status quo shifts actually occurred with one of DC's most veteran writer at the time, Robert Kanigher, who had been working steadily for the company for over two decades at this point in time.

Kanigher had just recently lost the assignment of writing Wonder Woman, a title he had been in charge of for over 20 years and when he was removed from the book, it was part of a new approach that involved Wonder Woman getting rid of her costume to fight crime as just Diana Prince, with no costume OR superpowers.

Ironically enough, then, two years later, Kanigher was the writer when the same thing was done with the Teen Titans!

Teen Titans #25 opens with the Teen Titans questioning their place in the world and their very status AS superheroes. We flash back to them at a discotheque when a young woman comes up to them and reveals that she knows all of their secret identities. Her name is Lilith and she wants to be a Teen Titan. She then warns them of impending death. The Titans head to a protest of a peace activist who had recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Titans try to keep the protest peaceful, but when violence breaks out, they get involved and in the chaos, the peaceful doctor is shot...

He dies and the Justice League shows up to tear the Titans a new one for being so bad at being superheroes...

At their lowest point, Lilith shows up again, now accompanied by the mysterious Mr. Jupiter, the wealthiest man on Earth, who wants to fund the Titans in a NEW approach to being heroes...

Robin can't do it, because his costume is too important to DC's licensing (his real reason is that he was starting college, but we all know the behind-the-scenes reason why Robin wasn't about to drop his costume)....

The others agree, but insist on not using their costumes OR their powers and Mister Jupiter explains that that is what he wanted all along (huh? He wanted them to not use their powers? For serious? Why recruit Kid Flash or Wonder Girl if your plan is for them to not use their powers?)

Hawk and Dove join the team and they now all wear non-descript uniforms for their new mission as NON superheroes!

While, of course, this is basically a rehash of the whole Diana Prince as Wonder Woman deal, it's still a pretty bold move for the Teen Titans. It did not last long, but that's a story for another time.

If you have any suggestions for November (or any other later months) 1994, 1969 and 1944 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we're discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.