Character Spotlight: Joystick(?)

Teen Titans was more successful than anyone could've ever predicted, and its legacy is still being felt today. It led to the relaunch of the Teen Titans comics series, which has been published ever since. It was followed by the New Teen Titans shorts on DC Nation, which led to Teen Titans Go!, which led to Teen Titans Go! to the Movies, the first theatrically-released animated movie from DC since Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (when I talk about success, that's the level I'm talking about: Batman The Animated Series successful). And it also left its mark on DC continuity in numerous ways that I've covered before.

The interesting to me is that mark is usually simply a change in design. Although the show introduced a number of characters - Red X, Punk Rocket, Kyd Wykkyd, and Brushogun, to name just a few - those characters don't often make the jump to comics. The only ones I can think of are Cinderblock and Mas y Menos. But now we can add Control Freak to that list...or so I thought when I wrote this back in October. It turns out to be much more complicated than that. But first I should probably tell you a little bit about who he is.

Control Freak first appeared in the season 2 episode "Fear Itself" (February 2004). He is essentially The Simpsons's Comic Book Guy if he were a supervillain, and has reality warping powers thanks to his special remote control. He would go on to have major roles in five more episodes, and cameoed in several more. He considers himself to be the Titans' archnemesis, although that's clearly not the case.

It took 15 years (almost to the day), but he finally made his comics debut in Teen Titans Annual #1 (January 2019)...or did he? I’ll explain. Usually my posts are written months in advance, and this one is no exception. And when I wrote it, I was basing it on the following solicitation:

Control Freak is clearly mentioned. It also mentions Joy Stick, a character from Teen Titans Go! #41 (March 2007). The story of this issue is that several daughters of supervillains show up to attack Steel City. The first is Joy Stick, the daughter of Control Freak, as seen below. Of course, but the end of the issue, we learn that all these "daughters" are actually Kitten, the daughter of Killer Moth, trying to get his attention.

So...despite what the solicitation says, the actual issues contains sort of a combination of the two characters: a male named Joystick (no space) who can control people, but seemingly not reality itself like Control Freak can.

Normally I’m not sure I’d even count a character like this, but I’m willing to this time because the solicitation makes the intention clear.