At the end of the 1960s, youth seemed to be running wild in a way it never had before.
The 20th century had already transformed America’s idea of youth by redefining some of them as “teenagers.” As Grace Palladino says in Teenagers, for much of America’s history there was no uniform teen experience: a blue-blood kid, a farmer’s boy, the child of a small business owner would live lives that had little in common.
After K-12 schooling became the norm, kids across the country, from a variety of backgrounds found themselves sharing a common environment (high school) and lifestyle (student). They were suddenly a demographic with their own tastes, their own style, and a desire to fit in with what the other teens were doing or what marketing claimed they were doing. Parents have always worried about rebellious youth; now they worried more. Suddenly their kids were taking cues from other teenagers instead of their families. Suddenly it was cool not to grow up like your parents, to listen to different music, to want different things.
That intensified fears that kids would go down the wrong path. It could happen so many ways. An error in raising them. 
Reading that corrupter of youth, the comic book. Listening to rock-and-roll, the dreaded “race music.” Giving in to the lusts of the flesh. Americans constantly worried that kids were running wild, particularly during the supposed crisis of juvenile delinquency in the 1950s.
The post-WW II Baby Boom meant that by the late 1960s there were more teenagers running around than ever before. That amped up parental worries and fears by several megatons. Drugs and sex were everywhere, man — what if your kid got hooked on horse, killed themselves on a bad acid trip or got pregnant having stoned sex? What if they dropped out and became hippies?Or god help us, what if they got into … politics?
In the early years of the decade, Time magazine assured its readers that college students were not activists — they wanted to complete their education, get a job and a family, then join the Establishment, just like their parents. By the end of the decade, nobody bought that. It seemed like kids were protesting everywhere and everything: racial discrimination, sex discrimination, the war in Vietnam, the capitalist system. Most kids weren’t taking to the barricades, but it didn’t feel that way.
Fears of a youthquake where the kids completely overturned the established order cropped up in a lot of fiction. Logan’s Run. Wild in the Streets (1968). GAS! or It Became Necessary to Destroy the World In Order to Save It (1970). The big youthquake comic, Prez, was a few years in the future —
—but by the end of the 1960 comics, with their new interest in relevance, were already telling stories of youthful rebellion.
As you can see from that page above, the first chapters of the Tablet Saga in early 1969 treated student protesters as worthy of respect. They might be radical but they had a legit cause — a low-rent dorm for poor Empire State students — that doesn’t touch on any bigger, more sensitive flashpoints like the Vietnam War. They’re angry but reasonable, just as the administration turns out to be reasonable: the students get their dorm.
The protesters in Captain America #120, Stan Lee and Gene Colan’s “Crack-Up on Campus,” don’t get as much respect. The story starts with Nick Fury hypnotizing the currently unemployed Steve Rogers to apply for a college teacher’s position. There’s no reason given why Nick doesn’t tell Steve that Modok is manipulating campus protests for AIM’s sinister ends. I presume the problem was that if we heard Nick’s explanation, the story would lose its big reveal (which wasn’t that big).
We soon see the college dean is a sensible, practical chap, in contrast to Mart the Angry Young Man.
We never learn what Mart is protesting about. What matters is that he’s refusing to make nice, refusing to negotiate, not finding a middle ground. Of course, as he’s being manipulated by Modok, nobody can accuse Stan and Gene of having uncool anti-protest attitudes — they’re only objecting to protesters controlled by supervillains. We end with everyone on the same page.
We don’t learn what the radicals in the Robin backup stories in Detective Comics #394-5 (Frank Robbins, Gil Kane) are demanding either.
They make demands but we never hear them. As Dick points out in the panel below, their goals may be legitimate but their methods aren’t — faking a police assault on their movement to make themselves into martyrs. Robin, of course puts a stop to that. They come off much worse than Mart Baker did.
Based on Robin’s actions here you might think that teen sidekicks, at least, can be trusted. “The Titans Kill a Saint?” (Robert Kanigher, Nick Cardy) in Teen Titans #25 shows you’re wrong.
The Titans decide to enjoy a night on the town, out of costume. At a local discotheque they meet that “Enigma of the East,” Lilith.
As Lilith doesn’t look at all Asian, I’m baffled by her nickname. I suppose it could have been “No, we meant East Hoboken” but more likely there was some kind of artist/writer miscommunication. In case you were going to ask yes, girls dancing in cages like that was a real thing back in the day. But man, in contrast to the girls, the Titan guys look pretty square in their suits.
Lilith warns the heroes they will open death’s doorway later that night. Foolishly they give this as much weight as I give the Pisces hororoscope in the daily paper. Alas, when they attend a lecture by Arthur Swenson, modern-day saint —
— a protester draws a gun, the Titans try to disarm him, the gun goes off and hits Swenson.
The Titans get defensive when they see Lilith again —
—though they have a point about her being cryptic. Then their mentors show up and boy, are they pissed.
Clearly the Titans are no longer the cool and groovy kids of Bob Haney’s run. They’re going to have to grow up, but fortunately there’s a wise old rich guy who can help them do it — Loren Jupiter, idealist gazillionaire.
The Titans agree to take on these Big, Big Challenges but only after renouncing their costumes — they’ll don them again when they’re fit to be heroes. Except Robin, who opts out — after all, he has a backup series to keep going.
Much as people mock Bob Haney’s efforts at hip, ginchy dialog — I certainly do — his stories were way better than Kanigher’s heavy-handed attempt at relevance. The Justice League sound so unlike themselves I think if I’d read this when it came out, I’d have suspected Mr. Jupiter was using LMDs to con the Titans into working for him. I know DC was unhappy with that Marv Wolfman guy’s writing on Teen Titans but looking for another young writer rather than the 50-plus Kanigher would have been a better choice. Hell, much as I think Stan Lee’s writing has lost a lot of its mojo, he writes way better young people than Kanigher. Small wonder Marvel was still kicking DC’s butt.
Wolfman and George Perez would retcon this reboot out as they hated the Titans being under adult supervision. I can’t say I blame them.
Images top to bottom by Nick Cardy, Pat Masulli, Jerry Grandenetti, Jim Mooney, Colan x 3, Kane x 2, all Titans material by Cardy.
