Kyle Higgins and Daniele di Nicuolo’s new Teen Titans series features a lineup of characters we’ve never seen on the team before. Some of them, like Proxy and Wildcard, are making their first appearance anywhere with this series. It just goes to show that you don’t have to be a big name to be a Teen Titan. So, in this week’s House of List-ery, we’re celebrating the ones who have come and gone but still have a place in our history. We’re going to start niche, and then get even more niche as we go. How many of these Titans do YOU remember?
 

Gnarrk

First Appearance: Teen Titans #32 (1971)

That’s right. We’re STARTING with Gnarrk. If you don’t know who Gnarrk is, then good luck with the rest of these guys. If your obscure fave is more popular than Gnarrk, then I’m sorry, your indie darling is mainstream. Gnarrk is the line. If you don’t know Gnarrk, this time-displaced prehistoric caveboy was a member of the original Teen Titans lineup back in the 1970s and formed a relationship with the only slightly less obscure Lilith Clay. Since he was introduced, Gnarrk has been killed off multiple times, but last we checked, he’s doing okay since he was replaced with a body double by the time traveling hero Goldbug during his last alleged death in Heroes in Crisis.
 

Fringe

First Appearance: Teen Titans #4 (1996)

One of the stranger configurations of the Teen Titans was a ’90s team led by…the Atom, Ray Palmer, who had been de-aged into a teenager due to some strange fallout from the Zero Hour event. His cast of entirely new heroes, most of which were the hybrid children of humans and an invading alien race known as the H’san Natall, could all quality for this list of obscure Titans. But the last and most tragic member of the team was the Frankensteinian Fringe, rejected by his parents and living on the streets until the Titans took him in. Forming a connection with fellow Titan Prysm, Fringe found a new sense of purpose fighting for the rights of aliens on Earth. 1998’s JLA/Titans would be the last time we see him, an event which in retrospect featured quite a lot of teen misfits’ final bows.
 

Azrael

First Appearance: Tales of the Teen Titans #51 (1985)

No, not THAT Azrael. This angelic alien who crash-landed in Alaska midway through the Wolfman Teen Titans run has never spent any time claiming to be Batman. They do derive their names from the same biblical source, though. Like Gnarrk, the misunderstood Azrael spent some time with the Titans and sparked up another romance with Lilith. But was he ever truly a Titan, or did he just hang around with them a bunch in the ’80s? Who’s to say?

Azrael actually earned his name while under the spell of the cult leader Brother Blood, but don’t hold that against him. Lots of good Titans log some brainwashing time in the Church of Blood. He last appeared aiding the Titans against the Technis Imperative in 1998’s JLA/Titans and was never seen again, presumably because there was a much more prominent Azrael knocking around with a flaming sword at the time.
 

Protector

First Appearance: Keebler Company Presents DC Comics’ The New Teen Titans in Cooperation with The President’s Drug Awareness Campaign (1983)

Known mainly for his appearance in his debut anti-drug special, the Protector stands for two things: saying no to drugs and presenting a compromise in licensing conflicts. When the Keebler cookie company partnered with DC to put out this public service comic starring Marv Wolfman and George Perez’s smash hit New Teen Titans lineup, they ran into a small problem. At the time, Keebler rivals Nabisco had a licensing deal with the Super Friends characters. Usually, that wouldn’t be a problem, save for the fact that Robin appeared in both Super Friends and New Teen Titans. The fix? Robin was tagged out of the Titans lineup for this never-before-seen crimefighter, then and forever more a substitute Robin figure in the team when the real one is contractually forbidden from showing up. Like Gnarrk, Protector was also allegedly killed off in Heroes in Crisis, only to be revealed later to have been swapped with a body double.
 

Jarras Minion

First Appearance: New Titans #114 (1994)

Your typical lone alien survivor of a planet’s destruction, Minion is perhaps most notable for being the final Titan introduced to the team during Marv Wolfman’s tenure on the title. Minion’s powers come from a technologically advanced battlesuit called the Omegadrome, designed by his own parents (you know, where some planetary apocalypse survivors just get a rocket and a big crystal fortress). After coming to Earth and aiding the Titans on a few missions, Minion eventually left over personal difficulty with adapting to life among humans (and presumably because subsequent writers couldn’t really figure out how to deal with him). Like Azrael and Fringe, he’s been MIA among the stars since 1998’s JLA/Titans.
 

Molecule

First Appearance: 52 #32 (2006)

This one’s so obscure, it was hard to even find an image we could use for him. Introduced during the one-year gap between Superboy’s death in Infinite Crisis and the reassembly of “One Year Later,” Molecule was one of many short-lived interim Titans who fell in and out of team membership. Arguably the most obscure of DC’s small stable of shrinking heroes, which is really saying something. Any connection he might have to the likes of the Atom or Dollman remains unknown. What we do know is that he was killed on a mission against the Terror Titans not long after we first met him and he’s remained among the dead ever since.
 

Wonder Boy

First Appearance: Team Titans #19 (1994)

It’s not easy explaining what the “Team Titans” spinoff of the 1990s was about. Suffice to say that the focus was on a group of teen heroes from a variety of possible alternate doomed futures, all in the present day to prevent their future calamities from taking place. One of the last teens introduced to the team was this extremely search engine unoptimized young hero we never got to know much of anything about because just a few issues later, the events of Zero Hour wiped almost the entire roster from existing in any capacity, including this late arrival. Wonder Boy, what is the secret of your power?
 

Tramm

First Appearance: Teen Titans, “Deep Six” (2003)

No, that’s not Lagoon Boy. This stalwart companion to Aqualad is an exclusive character to the Teen Titans animated series, appearing only in print through tie-in comics up to this point. The aquatic, fish-faced Tramm is an accomplished undersea mechanic with skills that rival even Cyborg’s. Like Lagoon Boy, he can inflate himself at will like a puffer fish in combat situations. Early in the series, he and Aqualad are the first Honorary Titans to be inducted into the team’s larger reserve ranks. We imagine he’s still waiting for the call into main continuity. Somebody ring up Jeremy Adams.
 

Animal Girl

First Appearance: Teen Titans: Futures End #1 (2014)

The 2014 Futures End storyline featured a month of tie-ins to the main weekly comic series, checking in on each of DC’s ongoing titles for where they might be in its dark near future. For the Teen Titans, that meant another new team of heroes, featuring some unfamiliar faces. One such character was Animal Girl—whom you might speculate would be Buddy Baker’s daughter Maxine, sure. Except from what we know in the story, this new hero is explicitly from a small Brazilian village. We may never know her full story, as the future which drove her into action has ultimately been averted.
 

Prosthetic Lass, Dead Pretty Boy, Witchie-Poo and Captain Thug

First Appearance: Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone (1997)

Our very last spot on this list goes to a quartet of Titans who only ever appeared in an Elseworlds one-shot you probably won’t find referenced anywhere except for lists like this one—a team of four original heroes in a ’90s manga-inspired setting, obliquely inspired by Robin, Cyborg, Raven and Starfire. Like others on this list, they’re the Teen Titans of an alternate future that never came to pass. Why so many alt future Titans? Well, my guess is that for a lot of writers well past their twenties, imagining what teens might sound like in a future that you create is easier than capturing what teenagers sound like today. You can find these oddballs collected in Elseworlds: Justice League Vol. 1, the only place you’ll likely ever see these characters again. Prove me wrong!
 

Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Jules Chin Greene and do not necessarily reflect those of DC, Warner Bros. or Skydance, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.