Every month, we have a literature piece written by ImpulsiveSpidercide that tells all about the month's character in great detail! It tends to be long, but it's a good read! Here's all you ever wanted to know about Raven!

- S.

And for Halloween and the month of October, we at Comic Underground are tackling your, my, and everyone’s favorite Teen Titan --- Raven! Her story is quite complex and disturbing, and I’m gonna do my best to give you all a good overview of it. It all started with a young woman named Angela Roth who got involved with a cult that actually managed to summon the devil . . . in the form of a handsome man who, depending on the particular version, either seduced or outright raped her until she was pregnant with his child and then revealed his true self to her --- the interdimensional demon called Trigon. Desperate for help, Angela fled into the protection of the priests of Azarath, worshippers of an other-dimensional goddess called Azar. Taking her under their wing, they renamed her Arella and when she gave birth to a baby girl named Raven, they taught Raven how to channel her power by controlling her emotions, for if she were to lose control, her father Trigon would gain a foothold into the world through her and the world would thus be destroyed.

Alas, when she was a teenager, she learned that Trigon was seeking to invade Earth, and she fled there to warn the Justice League, only to be turned away by the League’s magician Zatanna Zatara, who sensed evil in her due to her parentage. Desperate for help, she gathered a group of teenage superheroes and metahumans --- Dick Grayson, a.k.a. Robin, Wally West, a.k.a. Kid Flash, Donna Troy, a.k.a. Wonder Girl, Gar Logan, a.k.a. Changeling (and formerly called Beast Boy) and newcomers Princess Koriand’r of the planet Tamaran, a.k.a. Starfire, and Victor Stone, a.k.a. Cyborg for the cybernetic enhancements that saved his life when he was mutilated by a strange creature from another dimension accidentally summoned by his father’s experiments. Together, they became the New Teen Titans, facing a variety of foes such as the mercenary Deathstroke, the evil organization H.I.V.E., the Brotherhood of Evil, the Fearsome Five, the mad cultist Brother Blood, and even a traitor in their own ranks, sent to infiltrate and take them down from the inside all along, the literally earthshaking Terra. However, no foe was more fearsome than Raven’s father, Trigon himself, who still managed to exert his influence through and over her, eventually corrupting her into his herald and avatar on Earth. Despite this, the Titans’ friendship with Raven ultimately prevailed over Trigon’s evil, freeing her from his grasp and banishing him from Earth forever . . . or so it would seem.

Freed of her father’s influence, Raven was able to experience the full range of her emotions for the first time instead of repressing them to maintain control over her demonic half. However, her inexperience with emotions meant that she couldn’t distinguish the different forms of love that existed, confusing her fondness of Dick Grayson, who had then become Nightwing, for romantic affection, which caused her to subconsciously project romantically charged dreams of her into his mind. It took an intervention from his lover at the time, Starfire, to set her straight about how love could vary and how one type of love wasn’t necessarily the same as another, and then Raven embarked on exploring the world some more. To that end, she started attending college, where she met a charming young man named Eric Forrester, whom she began to fall in love with, only to find that he was intent on seducing her to drain her life force so that he could keep himself from being consumed by some kind of techno-virus.

That would not be the end of Raven’s troubles, though. Eventually, the seed of darkness inside her, inherited from Trigon, would bloom and she would once more become Trigon’s herald and avatar on Earth. This time, she sought to corrupt the other Titans, infecting them with Trigon seeds so that the darkness inside them would come to bloom and transform them into her loyal servants, who would help her bring Trigon back to Earth. She would be foiled again, but not before she crashed the wedding that Dick Grayson was going to have with Koriand’r, driving Kory away from Earth, though this was actually to protect the soul of the good Raven that had actually been planted inside her. Ultimately, the good Raven would resurface after the evil Raven’s defeat, but as a golden spirit entity, no longer contained in mortal flesh.

That wouldn’t last so long, either, as Raven was eventually reborn in a teenage body through an invocation of blood magic by a new Brother Blood, who wished to make Raven his bride. Instead, Raven fled from him, reuniting with her old friends Starfire, Cyborg, and Changeling (once again calling himself Beast Boy) and the new Teen Titans they were mentoring --- Tim Drake, a.k.a. Robin, Bart Allen, a.k.a. Kid Flash, Conner “Kon-El” Kent, a.k.a. Superboy, and Cassie Sandsmark, a.k.a. Wonder Girl --- to defeat him. From there, Raven tried to reestablish herself in life, starting to go to high school (as per her physical age) under the alias Rachel Roth, beginning a friendship with Cassie, and even embarking on a romance with Beast Boy, though the romance was strained and eventually splintered by Beast Boy’s difficulties as de facto leader of the Titans after a series of departures from the team in the wake of Infinite Crisis. One year later, Raven would once again reunite with the Titans, having been searching for a way to restore Jericho, a former teammate and friend driven insane by being touched by the Trigon-corrupted souls of Azarath when he attempted to bond with Raven emotionally, to life. She was successful, even with the interference of yet another traitor to the Titans, and Jericho rejoined the Titans as well.

Later on, though, Raven would encounter a particularly personal foe, known as the Wyld, an entity created from her energies merging with the wildlife of another dimension that she had passed through and considering itself her offspring. It attempted to claim her for itself, only to be ultimately defeated with the help of the Titans, and even later, after a battle with the Titans East, an evil team created to counter the Titans, Raven and Beast Boy decided it was time to rekindle their romance.

Then came the New 52 reboot, and DC reintroduced Raven as a troubled teenager who had been effectively sold to her father Trigon by the immortal Phantom Stranger. Under Trigon’s control and tutelage, Raven became almost as twisted as her father, and she gathered the Teen Titans to corrupt them into vassals that would help her and Trigon claim Earth for their own. Despite that plan, Raven found herself growing fond of the Titans, and eventually, she would find herself somehow freed from his influence through a strange time-traveling adventure. After this, she would find herself becoming a popular and iconic figure among American youth that admired her style. However, a series of misadventures and mishaps would lead to the Titans becoming hated and distrusted by the public at large, and later dissolving after the seeming death of their leader Tim Drake, now calling himself Red Robin. Following that, in the wake of the DC Rebirth initiative started last year, Raven would find herself joining a new Teen Titans team under the leadership of the newest Robin, Damian Wayne, the biological son of Batman.

Raven has not only appeared in comics, she’s also been one of the central characters in the Teen Titans animated series that premiered in 2003 and ran until 2006. Voiced by Tara Strong, it was her portrayal of Raven’s dark, cynical wit and surprising emotional vulnerability that made Raven’s character incredibly popular with a lot of the show’s viewers. After the series ended, she would continue to remain a central figure in the hearts and minds of its fans, and she would later reappear in animation, this time in a more comedic/parodic reboot of the original series called Teen Titans Go, though retaining Tara Strong as her voice actress. Beyond that, she also appeared in the DC fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us, where she was once again voiced by Tara Strong. However, the streak would be broken in the DTV movies Justice League vs. Teen Titans and Teen Titans: The Judas Contract, where she was voiced by Taissa Farmiga.