Raven (comics)
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Raven is a fictional superhero in the DC Comics Universe, specifically the Teen Titans comics. She first appeared in DC Comics Presents #26 (October 1980), created by writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez.
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[edit] Character history
Raven has been a prominent member of The New Teen Titans, and is currently a member of the modern Teen Titans. She is an empath who can teleport and control her "Soul Self", which can fight physically as well as act as Raven's eyes and ears away from her body.
Raven's chronology is typically separated into three lives; her first life, 20 years, was spent in the Temple Azarath and creating The New Teen Titans. Her second life began once she started wearing the garb of White Raven, and lasted under two years. Her third life, which started in issue #3 of Teen Titans (3rd series), is her current form; unlike the transition between her first and second lives, with her third life came a new body, that of a 17-year-old.
[edit] Raven's first life
A character with morbid past and origins, Raven is the half-breed daughter of a human mother named Arella and the interdimensional demon Trigon. She grew up in a pacifist alternate dimension called Azarath, where she was taught to "control her emotions" by the goddess Azar, a sworn pacifist, in order to suppress her inherited demonic powers. During this time, Raven rarely saw her mother and grew detached from her. Upon Azar's death, Raven's demonic heritage was revealed, as she met her father face to face for the first time. Soon after her 16th birthday, Raven learned that Trigon planned to come to her dimension, and she vowed to stop him. Raven initially approached the Justice League, but they refused her on the advice of Zatanna, who sensed her demonic parentage. In desperation, she reformed the Titans as the New Teen Titans to fight her father. The team consisted of Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, Starfire, Cyborg and Beast Boy. Kid Flash only agreed to be a member after Raven used her powers to coerce him into loving her. On another meeting with the Justice League, Zatanna revealed this information, which caused the other Titans to turn away and mistrust Raven. This separation didn't last long when Trigon kidnapped Raven to his home dimension.
The team defeated Trigon and sealed him in an interdimensional prison with the help of Arella, who stayed at the interdimensional door as Trigon's Guardian. However, Raven continued to fight her father's influence as he wasn't completely destroyed. For a period of time, Raven lost control several times in high-stress situations, but managed to regain control before Trigon could assert himself. Popular storylines such as "The Judas Contract" took place during this period. Eventually, however, Trigon escaped his prison, came to Earth and took control of Raven, destroying Azarath in the process. The Titans came together and were forced to kill Raven, thereby allowing the souls of Azarath to possess her and guided by the spirit of Azar, who was acting through the body of the Titans' ally Lilith, used her as a channel to kill Trigon. After this battle, Raven rose again from the ashes, purged of Trigon's evil, and vanished.
[edit] Absent during Crisis on Infinite Earths
Between the periods that we know to be Raven's first and second lives, Raven's whereabouts were unknown even to The Monitor, a character who has knowledge of all beings in all parallel dimensions that contain Earth. This suggests that during this period, Raven transcended Earth for a non-parallel dimension. Raven was briefly mentioned in one frame (issue #2, page 22), suggested as an alterative to Psycho Pirate as an empath in the Monitor's plans. She was also mentioned as an alternative for the Anti-Monitor in issue #5, page 2).
[edit] Raven's second life (White Raven)
Later on, the minions of the Titan's enemy, Brother Blood, captured Raven to control Nightwing (the former Robin) as part of Blood's plans of resurrection. The Titans rescued them both and prevented Brother Blood from returning. Raven then donned a white cloak to represent freedom from her father's influence.
Some time later after being free to feel, Raven found she was able to not only sense, but control others' emotions; a power she learned to handle only after unintentionally forcing Dick Grayson/Nightwing to love her for a brief time. It was during this incident Starfire and Raven became close friends. Raven also fostered a relationship with technopath Erik Forrester, who was using the life force of women he seduced to regain some of his lost humanity, a result of interfacing with computers. Forrester knew that Raven's soul-self could help him to permanently retain his humanity. This attempt was cut short by the intervention of Joseph Wilson (Jericho), who helped Raven overcome her love for Forrester by destroying him and saving herself.
Raven's life went on without change until she was kidnapped by the Wildebeest Society during the Titans Hunt storyline. The Wildebeest, lead by the Trigon-possessed souls of Azarath, were going to use several Titans to bring about the return of Trigon. During a massive battle in the remains of Azarath, Raven was possessed by the evil souls and once again became the evil doppelgänger of her father. Arella, along with Danny Chase, used the power of Azar's soul to cleanse Raven; however, through the battle, her body was destroyed, and Arella and Danny joined the cleansed souls of Azarath to become Phantasm.
Now free of its bodily prison, the evil energy that was Trigon's in Raven's soul took on sentience and possessed a meta-human with a resemblance to Raven. Raven appeared possessed by her evil conscience, and attempted to implant Trigon's seed into new bodies. She arrived at Nightwing and Starfire's wedding, and implanted a seed into Starfire. Instead of corrupting her, she actually implanted the soul of the good Raven. This caused Starfire to leave Earth in order to escape from the evil Raven, who implanted seeds into several other superheroes. The Titans were able to defeat her with the help of Phantasm.
Raven returned later, still evil, in order to destroy the good version of herself implanted in Starfire. The Titans defeated her once again, for the last time. The good Raven became a being of golden energy without a physical body.
[edit] Raven's third life
In this spirit form, Raven wandered Earth looking for her place in the world when Brother Blood came to claim her. Her spirit was reincarnated in the body of a teenage girl by the Church of Blood. A new incarnation of the Teen Titans discovered that the Church of Blood were worshippers of Raven's father, Trigon. They also found a prophecy which told of the marriage between Brother Blood and Raven that would result in armageddon. The team interrupted the wedding, and Raven forced the cult to escape. She then joined the Teen Titans and enrolled at a high school as Rachel Roth (in honor of her mother's birth name).
After her rebirth, Raven began developing romantic feelings for Gar Logan (a.k.a. Beast Boy), and the two recently became romantically attached. Despite speculation to the contrary by the shipper community, writer Geoff Johns confirmed that this relationship had long been intended by him before the animated series began.
[edit] Infinite Crisis and "One Year Later"
- Main articles: Infinite Crisis and One Year Later
Due to the effects of the Spectre's destruction of magic during the Day of Vengeance storyline, Raven found her own magical powers weakening and slipping out of her control, but continued on the good fight nonetheless, helping the Titans both in evacuating the shattered city of Blüdhaven and battling Superboy-Prime.
After the events of Infinite Crisis, it was revealed in Teen Titans (3rd series) #34 that Raven quit the team after she and Beast Boy broke up their relationship. In issue #37 of the series, a recording of her told Cyborg that Beast Boy was stressed by being team leader, and even compares him with Nightwing. Raven then left the Titans because she learned a secret about the new members of the team, though she let them think she was leaving because of Gar.
Raven will also star in a five-issue mini-series starting in September. Marv Wolfman will write the series with art by Damion Scott. In the Wizard #177 magazine, Wolfman briefly described the series:
| She needs to be on her own and in charge of herself for the first time in her life. This is more than just a "tale of Raven"; it sets up her new life. |
It will take place during the missing year.
Raven has also appeared as a minor character in 52 issues #1 (art only) and #21 (art and dialogue).
In Teen Titans (3rd series) #38, Raven is seen, apparently on the lam, with a book that is of unclear significance. She was incredibly tired from teleporting for a whole night. In #40, we see that she is in possession of the diskette containing Jericho's soul; at the end of the issue, Jericho's soul has been cleansed by Raven's incantation and has a new body. She returns to the team during TTT #40.
[edit] Teen Titans animated series
[edit] Appearance
In the Teen Titans animated series (2003-2006), Raven (voiced by Tara Strong) appears much younger than in the comic book variants (as do all the other characters), though her costume is relatively unchanged. Her skirt was, however, changed to a leotard by the animators to avoid several animation complications; she wears a chain belt around her waist as well. Instead of having normal human coloration, Raven is depicted with light grey skin, violet eyes and shoulder-length violet hair.
[edit] Character history
In "Nevermore", episode 6 of the first season, Raven is angered by the villainous Dr. Light. She then transforms into a demonic version of herself with four red eyes, grabs the villain with tentacles apparently made of her cloak's shadows and drags him under her cloak; he is seen to be dramatically traumatized when he reemerges.
Later, Beast Boy and Cyborg find a mirror in her room, which accidentally transports them into her subconscious. There, they encountered the personified aspects of Raven herself. Each aspect is represented as wearing a different colored robe: green (bravery), gray (timid), pink (happiness), red (hatred), orange (rudeness), yellow (intelligence), and two more colors with unclear emotional correlations, purple and brown.
When Raven went after them, she tells them that her dark side (the red-eyed tentacled transformation that traumatized Dr. Light) was let out by accident and had taken over her other sides. Red Raven (complete with four glowing red eyes) soon gathers herself and transforms into a huge hulking red beast, at which point Raven comments "Let's just say I have issues with my father", a hint in the animated series that the beast represents Trigon, her father.
Raven was again angered into undergoing a demonic transformation (with her four glowing red eyes visible through her cloak's shadow's) during Raven's battle with Terra (season 2, "Aftershock Part 1"). However, since enraging Raven was apparently Terra's plan all along, it is possible that Raven's anger made her lose the control of her powers needed for a fight against a skilled foe. Whatever the reason, Raven lost the fight (although she fared much better the next time the Titans faced Terra).
The white cloak, boots, and leotard from that episode are seen in at least one episode of the series' seasons. In "Nevermore", her cloak turns white after she absorbs her other aspects (except red) to defeat her mind's view of Trigon (Red Raven).
The cloak was next seen in the first episode of season two, "How Long is Forever?", where Raven's future self dons the white cloak after losing control of her powers and sanity.
In season three's episode "Spellbound", Raven dons her white attire as a result of her being attracted to the dragon Malchior, disguised as the handsome wizard Rorek that originally sealed him in his book. The final appearance would come in the three-part episode "The End", representing a Raven purified of her father's evil.
In season four's episode "Birthmark", it was revealed that Slade had made allegiance with Trigon, who spared him from being destroyed after being tossed into lava by Terra ("Aftershock Part 2"). The demon also empowered Slade in order to accomplish his task.
In a scene of Raven's birthday "Birthmark", Slade comes to deliver her the "news" that she is going to bring her father to Earth and end the world and in "The Prophecy" that Raven was going to bring Trigon to the Earth. In "The End Part 2", she gets regressed back to her childhood form by her father, so that he may succeed in his plans of world domination.
In her final confrontation with Trigon, Raven's robes changed to white. She overcame Trigon's spell and reverted back to her former teen self. She then continually attacked Trigon while renouncing him as her father. Then, by reclaiming the energies that she had left behind in her friends, Raven transformed into her soul self, which took on the form of a gigantic white raven, banishing Trigon from the world. Though her uniform and power were white when this happened and her hair long, by the end of the episode, Raven had once again donned her standard black and blue outfit and cut her hair to its usual length.
[edit] Powers
[edit] Empathy
Raven has the psionic ability of empathy, the power to absorb emotions, enabling her to feel the feelings of others. She can also use her empathy to steal emotions from others, rendering them emotionally "numb". She can absorb the pain of injured people to ease their suffering, and induce rapid healing.
[edit] Force Emotion (Second Life only)
In Raven's second life, she found she had the ability to force outside emotions into other people, consciously or otherwise. This led to a short-lived romance with Nightwing, which was also induced by the fact that Raven was only just experiencing her own emotions at this time, and could not tell the difference between romantic love and brotherly love.
[edit] Flight (Third Life, Evil Raven and Animated only)
With her new body in the Teen Titans came new powers, the ability to fly being one of them.
[edit] Soul-Self
Raven can manifest her "Soul-Self" through astral projection. It normally takes the form of either her human shape or a giant raven. Through the use of her soul-self, Raven can project her consciousness into the mind, for therapeutic purposes (to aid in her own meditation, or to help calm an agitated ally), or for offensive attacks, rendering her enemies unconscious (yet otherwise unharmed). It also serves as a way to travel into other dimensions. Using her soul-self, she can teleport herself and others over vast distances.
[edit] Limited Precognition
In The New Teen Titans foundation storyline, Raven explained she was able to predict Trigon's invasion of the Earth-2 dimension. She was unable to control or consciously activate it, but happens occasionally. It is unknown whether she still possesses this ability in her current body. In the animated series, during the episode "Titan Rising", when Terra runs and brushes past Raven, images past and foreign of Terra and Slade flash through Raven's mind, possibly a small precognition of Terra's eventual betrayal.
[edit] Soul-Self Metamorphosis (Animated)
When the animated Raven is highly upset, her soul-self can also transform her body's appearance to a variety of demonic forms and sizes. Worst of all, when she can't control her anger, she transforms into a demonic Raven, usually with four glowing, red eyes and sprouting black tentacles from under her cloak. The four eyes seem to symbolize her demon father, Trigon — when Cyborg was infected with a virus, she threatened Gizmo into helping by lifting and then pulling down her hood. The face was not shown, but it appeared to be a dragon's head with tentacles.
[edit] Psychokinesis (Animated)
In addition to an affinity for magic and spell casting, the animated Raven possesses powerful psychokinetic abilities which manifest in the form of Dark Energy (umbrakinesis), serving as her primary means of attack and defense. She can use her abilities to levitate objects (and also herself), project concussive blasts, and form simple shapes like grappling hands and razor sharp plates to use as barriers and/or restricting binds. Raven can use her Dark Energy to create portals to phase through solid barriers like floors and wall. In episode "Car Trouble", after Cyborg's newly built T-Car was stolen, and he's lamenting about how the loss hurts him emotionally as he had put his own circuits into it, Raven admits she sympathizes: "When I use my powers, I have to put a little of my soul into whatever I'm moving. I become a part of it, and it becomes a part of me".
[edit] Mantra (Animated)
The animated version of Raven often says the phrase "Azarath Metreon Zinthos" to help her focus her powers. She even uses this as her attack phrase as well. These words are her mantra. As previously mentioned, Azarath is the dimension in which she was born and raised, and where she learned her powers from the monks. The words "Metreon" and "Zinthos" were created by Glen Murakami for the spell, and have no assigned meaning yet.
One theory holds that since Azarath is a sanctuary, that it's inclusion in a mantra intended to focus her thoughts implies that the remaining words refer to a principle relating to the followers of Azar--much like a Buddhist mantra. A related theory suggests that the words have a "Subject Object Verb" grammatical order--the command-like and finalizing nature of "Zinthos" being the chief reason for this assumption (not to mention that the Japanese language has the same word order). From this, two theoritical possibilities are derived:
- "Metreon" is a word refering to "calm", "peace", or some particular but unspecified order of thought or thinking; followed by a copula, "Zinthos".
- "Metreon" refers to her own "state of mind" in the generic sense regardless of her present mood, with "Zinthos" being a commanding verb which with reference to "Azarath" sets her own mind to recollect her earlier teachings.
If this theory is true, or rather if it could be assumed (since Glen Murakami never made any defining statements or references), then this would be similar to the Litany Against Fear, depicted in Frank Herbert's Dune.
Raven sometimes uses the mantra to aid her in her daily meditations, which she performs to keep her emotions in check so they do not clash with her conscious self control.
[edit] Other Powers (Animated)
The animated version of Raven also possesses a large number of limited powers used only under special circumstances. These include teleportation (both of people and objects), time manipulation, precognition, rapid healing, extremely powerful magic spells and the (unwilling) creation of various monsters.
[edit] Writer/Artist Interviews
[edit] Raven's Powers (Marv Wolfman)
MacDONALD: Raven's powers are very vague.
WOLFMAN: Not to me. She's the empath who can cure some illnesses, some problems. She can't cure death, or any major disease. She failed when trying to cure the Russian Starfire's girlfriend. If it's small pains or hurts, at least she can cure them, but it affects her. She can move through dimensions, which is the effect of teleportation.
MacDONALD: How far can she go with that?
WOLFMAN: I would say about 100 miles. That's about it. We really haven't played with it or have her go more than 10 miles at any given point. But I'd say 100 is about the most. But it's not really teleportation, I was trying to get away from that. If Raven comes from an inter-dimensional place, I wanted to play on her origin. What else can she do? Her soul-self, that's the part of her that's Trigon, her father, the evil part of her, and that's also the part that's the aggressor, the one that actually stops all the villains. She's not able herself to fight. But the soul self does most of that for her, because it has all her aggressive tendencies.
MacDONALD: And just what happens to those people when they get inside there?
WOLFMAN: Usually they are either sent away, teleported away, or they fall down and faint, or she learns something from them.
MacDONALD: lt's not very nice in there is it?
WOLFMAN: No. It's awful (laughter]. In fact, in issue #29, I believe, because of what happens to the Brotherhood of Evil, the character Phobia who sets up her greatest fear - she sees Kid Flash as her father and the soul self goes after Kid Flash and virtually kills him. Raven's not very happy about that.
[edit] The Art of Raven (George Perez)
"Raven is very angular, very high cheekbones, very straight-nosed, with an upper lip slightly larger than her lower lip, and, of course, an incredibly large forehead. " "Raven has developed, recently, a dancer's body in which her breasts have gotten smaller. I gave Raven a body based on a young lady, Fran McGregor, who's built with a very attractive dancer's body. She goes to the same school as my wife, Carol."
[edit] Developing Raven (George Perez)
(January 1, 1989)
"I'd like to deal with the religious aspects of her. She was a high priestess, so she has a certain feeling toward religion. She probably even disagrees with a lot of it. I guess after doing Wonder Woman for so long, religion is something I've come to understand more. I was dealing with somebody who I had to infuse with a religious belief based on some things I did not know about. I've never been a Pagan." A 2004 convention sketch of Raven by George Pérez.
"I'd like so deal more with Raven's mother. What was her mother's real name? I figure it's not Arella, as that was the name she took. Does Raven have any other relatives? Where is her mother now? One thing we'd like so deal with in the Titans-and Raven is a part of it as is Joey, although most of the others have shown already is sex. To her, sex is rape. She grew up with that, constantly reminded her entire life that she was a child of a rape. A thing like that can scar someone. I'd like so work a little more on investigating her rationale. It's not unusual. There have been lots of children who have had to go through that, but in this case we have Raven, who was not only the child of a rape, but was the daughter of a demon who tried to destroy everybody and corrupted her!"
"Now that she doesn't have that influence, maybe she'd like to have a relationship, but it will always stop when sex becomes involved. It's something she cannot handle. Realize that a woman like that, to give up her virginity, is would have to be someone she could trust so implicitly that that memory of a rape could be eradicated, or at least ignored. But having seen so many other people, including Titans, go through relationships that were more frivolous or hurt when the break-up occurred, it's not going so be easy for Raven to open up so someone that way."
"Things like that, and other investigations into Raven's personality, will be fascinating. Having done so many female characters from Wonder Woman and the Titans, that type of delving into the female psyche I find fascinating, particularly when there are certain things that no man can really identify with. Even if a man was the child of a rape, he would not have so worry about himself being caught pregnant, even if he were raped. Raven's is a totally different point of view, and I look forward to delving into that."
"If more men would try to understand that, that would be the only way to truly understand why a woman would take such pride in the things that make her unique. It would explain what happens when we as a male species corrupt that, violate that. It's like someone coming in and cutting off our penises. We don't know what we've lost until we've lost it. Virginity is something that a woman either treasures or abandons as quickly as she wants to, but it should always be her choice to do so. When a man takes away that choice, I can imagine that it is an incredible violation of one of the things that makes women feel unique."
[edit] Raven Mini-Series (Marv Wolfman)
NEWSARAMA: Now you are working on a Raven mini-series; what is the story about?
Marv Wolfman: Emotionally, it's about a young girl who has found herself reborn in a new body and is trying to figure out her place in life. Story-wise, it picks up on the bit in the recent Titans Annual that I came up with that shows Raven getting an unexplained influx of emotions and what they do to her. It also asks where they come from and how it will affect her and everyone else in San Francisco. It deals with her new life in school and establishes the new parameters for her character. And it takes an old DC villain and completely changes him.
NRAMA: Is Raven still one of your favorite characters?
MW: She always has been. Still is.
NRAMA: What is it about Raven that strikes a chord with you?
MW: More than any of the other Titans, her rich and detailed origin allows me to get into a very complex character. There are lots of levels to her that make her fascinating to explore. I wish I could replicate that with new characters, but some characters seem to be created just right and there's no knowing why, or duplicating it. I see endless possibilities with Raven that don't always exist in other characters, even ones I've created. Her stories flow from her origins and character rather than just having her fight meaningless bad guys for no real reason.
NRAMA: Does this story fill in the one year later gap for Raven?
MW: I think so, but it also establishes her new status quo.
NRAMA: Is this the same Raven from the current Teen Titans series or has she been changed by the continuity wave?
MW: She is the same Raven from the current series.
NRAMA: Is this an attempt to see if there is enough interest in Raven for an ongoing series?
MW: I don't think so, but who knows? I think some characters are perfect team members, but you can always do a series of mini-series with them. We'll see if there's any interest in that once the first series comes out.
NRAMA: Did you pitch this idea to DC or did they ask you to do a Raven mini-series?
MW: They asked me to come up with a Raven mini and I pitched the story that slowly morphed into the one you'll read here.
NRAMA: How many issues is the mini-series?
MW: Five.
[edit] Trivia
- There was an unrelated Quality Comics superhero named "The Raven", who helped out Spider Widow. This hero was more based on the bird and didn't have magical powers.
- After rejoining the Teen Titans, and wanting to find ways to express herself, Raven gets a lower back tattoo featuring her bird symbol (Teen Titans (3rd series) #13).
[edit] See also
- Raveniya, an Amalgam Comics version of Raven.
[edit] External links
- DCDP: Raven - DC Database Project
- Titans Tower Biography
- Overview of Raven
- Raven's description on the animated series
