Titans on Stage and Screen?

This is Darwyn Cooke’s variant cover for The Teen Titans magazine, to be published this fall. It shows not the current version of the team but the “original” five members, who weren’t actually the original members since Speedy was added retroactively.

(Once Speedy/Roy Harper became the anti-Dick Grayson, that added some needed spice to the original team. But back in 1964-66, he was merely an occasional guest.)

I see two problems with this image:

• I can’t see how it will fit on a comic book cover. All of Cooke’s art for that month has the same dimensions, with no common area of focus. Maybe they’ll all be tipped on their side with the magazine titles and indicia in the black area at bottom—Cooke does tend to tell his superhero stories in a movie-screen aspect ratio these days. 
• More important, Roy Harper plays the drums, not bass guitar; he was even in a group that had gigs, called Great Frog. Dick Grayson plays guitar. And I don’t think Garth (Aqualad) could practice electronic keyboard without electrocuting himself.

No one likes the idea of the old Teen Titans enjoying a hi-fi party more than I, but are these the real Teen Titans?

And speaking of that question, there was buzz from Variety that the TNT network might order a pilot of a Titans television show. The story summary:

In the pilot, [Dick] Grayson “emerges from the shadow of Batman to become Nightwing, the leader of a fearless band of new Super Heroes including Starfire, Raven and many others. Titans is a dramatic adventure series that will explore and celebrate one of the most popular comic book titles ever.”

Starfire and Raven were part of the new team introduced by Marv Wolfman, George Pérez, and editor Len Wein in 1980. They’re also members of the team made popular on the television cartoons. It’s unclear whether any older Titans, who were sidekicks like Dick, have a role in this series. Then again, it’s still very uncertain whether there will be a series.