It occurs to me that today’s entry is actually a big part of one of the biggest runs in comics history, namely the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans run, but Jericho doesn’t seem to appear all that often any more.
That may be because he went evil.
First appearing in the June, 1984 issue of Tales of the Teen Titans, Joe “Jericho” Wilson was created by the dream team of Marv Wolfman and George Perez. Originally a mute young man who could take over the body of anyone he locked eyes with, Jericho was a kind and gentle soul, the complete opposite of his father Slade “Deathstroke” Wilson. During his childhood, Slade was living a double life, family man by day, superhuman mercenary by night, and when terrorists tried to get back at him, they kidnapped Joe. Slade was able to rescue the boy, but not before a baddie slit Joe’s throat, rendering him mute. That resulted in Slade’s wife Adeline (the reason Slade only has one eye) divorcing him, and she took the kids, both of whom eventually followed in their father’s footsteps, but more on that in Joe’s case in a bit.
By the by, my own first exposure to Joe Wilson was when he joined the Titans during the “Judas Contract” storyline. About all that and a Trigon arc trade did for me was convince me that Wolfman/Perez era Teen Titans was not for me. It was far too melodramatic (I am pretty sure it was impossible to go more than three pages without seeing some character shedding tears for one reason or another), but when it came to Jericho, I loved how Wolfman in his introduction said how great Perez’s art was because it forced him to use Joe’s facial expressions and the like to communicate to the others, starting with Dick Grayson in his new identity as Nightwing, but then Wolfman’s own narration and dialogue boxes always spelled out exactly whatever it was Joe was trying to say, so maybe Perez’s artwork could do the job, but Wolfman’s writing wouldn’t let it. I won’t deny that the Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans wasn’t groundbreaking in a lot of ways, but it just isn’t my cup of tea, kinda like Silver Age Superman comics.
Oh, and it is interesting to note that Wolfman and Perez actually discussed making Jericho a gay character, but they ultimately decided not to because they didn’t want to stereotype the sensitive, artistic guy as a homosexual. Later writers would canonically make Jericho bisexual or at least not into women, but I think this is a good place to set that down.
As it is, Jericho would become a stalwart member of the team after they got over the whole “he’s Deathstoke’s kid” thing.
And then he went evil.
OK, it’s not as sudden as that. Raven was forever dodging her father Trigon, and when Raven started to look increasingly out-of-reach, Trigon’s agents set their sights on Jericho as a replacement due to his body hopping powers. Combine that with the idea that a small piece of everyone Jericho has ever taken over stays inside of him, and that includes a lot of really awful people, and before you know it, he went full evil. He would become the leader of the Wildebeest Society before dying at his father’s sword during a storyline called the “Titans Hunt.” However, it turned out Jericho was hiding in Slade’s mind, taking over the body at one point when he learned a new Titans team had formed to discourage teenagers from fighting evil, starting with shooting Bart Allen through the leg (he got better).
Essentially, from there, Jericho has always been more of a bad guy, even in various reboots like the New 52, DC Rebirth, and the Earth-One line. These newer incarnations would sometimes have more telepathic powers and sometimes whole new looks.
That may be why, when new Titans teams come along, they may feature the original line-up of former sidekicks, or they’ll use Raven, Starfire, Beast Boy, and Cyborg as the “classic” Titans, but Jericho, not so much.
However, he did appear as a mute good guy in the animated Teen Titans, a bad guy I do not remember in the Arrowverse, and finally, played by genderqueer, deaf actor Chella Man for the streaming series Titans as one of the good guys.
Basically, Jericho is one of the classic Titans that doesn’t come around much because someone had to go and make him evil.
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