When Young Adult author Kami Garcia and popular fanartist Gabriel Picolo released Teen Titans: Raven in 2019, DC was new to the realm of YA publishing. Although everyone involved with the book had big plans and high hopes, future installments weren’t a sure thing. After all, the Teen Titans already had an ongoing monthly comic series, a very mature-skewing live-action streaming show and a long-running animated comedy that was one of its network’s biggest hits. Would anyone even notice this more grounded take on the team?
Notice they certainly did. Seven years and five graphic novels later, Garcia and Picolo have returned with the sixth and final installment of the YA Teen Titans series, Teen Titans: Together, which as the title promises, finally unites the full team. To mark the occasion, both creators are embarking on a multi-city book tour, but we were fortunate enough to sit down with them at the DC office for a chat about the new book, the series as a whole and their newly announced follow-up project together before they left.
Your Teen Titans series is DC’s longest running YA series. What is it about these versions of the characters that you feel really resonates with fans?
Kami Garcia: I think that the Titans in general are perfect for teens and even people in their 20s and 30s because they make mistakes. They're figuring things out. They don't have it all figured out yet, and I think that does resonate with people. I mean, I'm in my 50s and I'm still figuring it out.
Gabriel Picolo: I think it relates to older fans as well.
You think so?
GP: I grew up with these characters, so I've been following them for a while. Seeing this new version is really interesting for me, and I get to meet people of all ages when I do shows. They come out and they say, "Hey, this is the first graphic novel I picked up!" but also, "Hey, I've been a fan of these characters for so long." So, I think it's a mixture of both audiences.
Kami, as someone who’s now written quite a few DC YA books, is there anything you’ve learned about bringing DC characters to this particular audience? Anything you’d suggest for YA writers coming to DC for the first time?
KG: For me personally, I think the most important thing is to respect these legacy characters. Even if you are going to make changes to them, you have to respect them. You have to understand what fans love about them, and you have to approach with reverence before you start dismantling Batman or the Titans.
Even more so I think than with prose novels, comics is an aspirational medium. Comics is a commentary on politics, on the world, on what we're all grappling with in a lot of ways. And you need to be thinking about that. It's not a story of one isolated person and their one experience during a breakup. There's always a bigger conversation going on in comics.
Gabriel, you’ve spent years of your life now drawing the Teen Titans, both as a part of this series and just through your own personal art at cons. What keeps it fresh and exciting for you?
GP: I kind of see these characters as if they were my friends. That's part of the reason why it's so easy to draw them hanging out and doing stuff together. I just really, really like these characters. And the more I keep drawing them, the more fun it gets because I can just draw them by heart at this point. I don't even need reference. I would say that they're my comfort characters at this point.
KG: I think one of the things that's also really interesting is, for people who are longtime Gabriel Picolo fans, if you read these books in order… I mean, his art's amazing from the beginning, but there is an evolution. Watching his art from book to book grow and evolve is pretty amazing if you're a fan.
Cyborg joined in the last graphic novel, Teen Titans: Starfire, but we're really getting to see him now in this final book as the team comes together. What role does he play? How does he fit within the mix?
KG: He’s an interesting character. In Book Five, Cyborg and Kori, Starfire, become friends before she meets the rest of the group, so they have a really special kind of relationship. I feel like sometimes he's really mature and grounded, and then other times, he's horsing around with Beast Boy. But in this book, more so than in the last one, you get to see him do his stuff. Like really see him use his abilities.
GP: I see him very much as the brains of the group because he's either helping everyone with planning what they're doing next or doing some really complicated stuff like hacking—
KG: Right, that no one else could do!
GP: Gather intelligence and information, that kind of stuff. I'm not going to say anything further because I'm terrible with spoilers, but he's going to have some shiny moments in this book that were really fun to draw.
Over the course of writing and drawing this series of books, what’s something that’s surprised you about either the series or the characters? Something you didn’t expect at the beginning.
KG: Okay, so one thing that's really interesting is, I'm a longtime Raven fan. She's by far my favorite character. And I think Beast Boy's adorable. He's kind of like my second favorite character. And I was thinking, “I don't know if it'll be as fun to write the other books as it will be to write the first three where it's just Beast Boy and Raven.”
I didn't know as much about Starfire, so I was kind of like, "Is she really going to be that fun to write?" But I was shocked at how much I loved writing the Starfire book. Now I almost like her as much as Raven.
GP: I really like working on more slice-of-life grounded scenes. That was something that I knew before I jumped on the series. One thing that surprised me is that fight scenes are also very fun to draw. They're much more challenging for me. They don't come out as naturally. I really need to look for references and see if the choreography works.
It’s been surprising for me, and I don't know if it was for you, to go to a convention and see kids dressing up as your Titans. It’s not like ordinary, full superhero cosplay. They’re dressing up as your version of the Titans, in street clothes. People show up to show you that they love what you've done.
GP: People show up, yeah.
KG: Gabriel was talking about how crazy it was to see someone cosplay a character he created from scratch.
GP: People come to the shows dressed up. It's very often that they come in groups. That's so much effort!
KG: Yeah, and they wear the—let's call it the casual Teen Titans. They wear the casual version of Teen Titans.
GP: it's an easier kind of cosplay. Our Starfire is really easy to do, right? The NASA shirt and the purple shorts. So, I feel like even people who are not really doing cosplay, they try their first cosplay as one of the Teen Titans.
This is the end of the Teen Titans series, but you’re going to continue working together. How has your creative partnership evolved over the course of the series? How would you describe it now?
KG: I knew pretty quickly that we had lightning in a bottle. You can collaborate with anyone, but it is very rare to have a collaborator where your vision of that thing is so similar and your goal.
GP: At this point, it's just really easy and a very nice workflow for us. I feel like we've been working together on this series for so long and our creative voices are such that we can do that exchange really, really quickly nowadays. It's like she knows how to appeal to my strongest elements in a script.
KG: And that's my goal. I want to write things that I not only know he's going to do an amazing job at drawing, but I want him to open the script pages and be like, "Oh, my God, I can't wait to draw this."
He always gives me a wishlist. I say, "What do you really want to draw in this book?" In Starfire, he was like, "Roller skating, the beach, a lot of eating snacks, and I want Beast Boy to turn into a fish." And by the way, there's no beach scene where that could happen in my outline.
It's like a game for me. Now, how do I get every single one of these things into the script in a way that is not ridiculous? But it's really fun to write something that I know he's going to like to draw.
Your next project together, Young Justice: Kid Flash & Blue Beetle, has been announced. I know you can’t talk too much about it yet, but can you say why you wanted to start with those two characters?
KG: What I really wanted to do was start with whoever Gabriel was going to be the most excited about. And I know he's a giant Blue Beetle fan.
GP: I love Blue Beetle.
KG: And I love that he has done fanart of Kid Flash before too, which I think is adorable. We both discussed it and felt like those two would work really well together. I didn't know Gabriel when we started [on Teen Titans] and I picked Raven. She was my favorite. So, this time I wanted to start with whoever he would be the most excited about.
GP: Yeah, that was my pick. I just love Blue Beetle. The whole personality of Jaime and his superpower. I think he's one of the funniest DC characters. I want people to know how cool he is and introduce him to more people.
Teen Titans: Together by Kami Garcia and Gabriel Picolo is available in bookstores, comic shops, libraries and digital retailers as a softcover graphic novel.
