Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

Slade Wilson kills people for money. Sometimes, it’s just because he wants/needs to. In recent years he’s been presented as a kind of antihero, but his newest series is taking him back to his roots as a straight-up jerkwad.

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

Fans were first introduced to Deathstroke during the Teen Titans comics of the 1980s, taking on the team after his super-powered mercenary son died trying to fulfil a contract to kill them. Billed as the world’s greatest assassin, he gave the young heroes enough problems and talked enough trash to make readers believe it. The character cemented his archnemesis status in the iconic Judas Contract storyline, where it was revealed that new member Terra was working with him to undermine the team.

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

And, oh yeah, she was sleeping with Deathstroke, too. This was a sleazier, more personal kind of evil, one that would steal your girl, talk shit and humiliate you.

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

One of the most intriguing aspects of Deathstroke as a character was his status as an older, more established persona. Originally created by legends Marv Wolfman and George Perez as an adversary for a team of teenagers, the man in the black-and-orange mask was eventually revealed to be a middle-aged man with young adult children of his own. Making him older turned their later fights into a generational family vendetta as Slade Wilson’s other two children Joe and Rose joined the ranks of the Teen Titans.

A solo Deathstroke title debuted in 1991, focused on the character’s work as a cold-blooded mercenary and assassin. As the years went on, he’d show up to bedevil DC’s various heroes, sometimes allying with them if things were dire. Slade’s been through some changes of late, with his most recent solo title de-ageing him, pitting the assassin against celestial targets and having him rub elbows with Wonder Woman, Batman and Harley Quinn.

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

He’d even sort of save the day. He was still a jerk but less of one. Now, the pendulum is swinging way back the other way.

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

Written by Christopher Priest with art by Carlos Pagulayan, Jason Paz, Jeromy Cox and Willie Schubert, Deathstroke: Rebirth and this week’s Deathstroke #1 pull Slade Wilson back to a more familiar iteration and digs deeper to make him read as more of arsehole than ever before. The main plot revolves around Slade’s contract to ensure that American military forces don’t come to aid the rebellion fighting against the petty despot Matthew Bland/The Red Lion. Slade does this by helping fund a Democratic senate candidate, splitting the opposing vote that would have derailed the pro-intervention Republican incumbent.

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

Deathstroke’s also working an assassination contract to kill Silver Age cheeseball villain The Clock King and that puts him at odds with the Red Lion, who’s been providing sanctuary for the ageing bad guy. Things get even more knotty when Clock King uses a pass-phrase known only to Wintergreen, Wilson’s presumed-dead partner who is supposedly being held hostage nearby.

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

Beloved for his runs on Quantum & Woody, The Ray and Black Panther, Priest is known for turning his stories into entertainingly elaborate jigsaw puzzles out of chronology, motivation and character dynamics. So far, these Deathstroke stories entertain in the typical Priest fashion, with Slade using one contract to get around another and investigate if Wintergreen is alive or not.

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

Priest is casting Deathstroke as an ice-cold killer-for-hire here, someone who can’t openly admit that he cares about or needs to know Wintergreen’s fate. In those earlier Teen Titans appearances, Slade was shown to care about his kids, at least when their lives were in danger or tragically ended. The flashbacks in this run so far call that into question, showing him as a hardarse paterfamilias ready to verbally and physically abuse his kids.

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

Previous to this new series, the dissolution of Deathstroke’s family was portrayed as semi-tragic. His eldest son Grant tried to be like Slade and underwent super-science enhancements that killed him while he was fighting the Teen Titans as the Ravager. Middle child Joey got his vocal cords cut by Wilson’s enemies and later became Jericho, a hero would could teleport into other people’s bodies. Youngest daughter Rose also took on the Ravager mantle and worked alongside her dad as a merc-in-training before also joining another Teen Titans team.

The new Priest-proffered facets on Slade’s character make it seem like the implosion of Slade’s family was more inevitable than tragic. This is a man who lied about his age and ran off to join the army at 16 years old because he wanted to kill people, who volunteered for dangerous experiments in the hopes that they’d make him kill better. When he fell in love, it was with Adeline Kane, the woman who helped train him. The axis of his life is ending the existences of others. Nurturing probably wasn’t ever something he was going to do well. The question is why he ever endeavoured to live a “normal” life.

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

Deathstroke Gets Back To Being DC Comics’ Biggest Arsehole

What I’m liking most about about Priest’s Deathstroke so far is the density of the offering, especially since it’s being done by someone who’s been away from the monthly comics grind for more than a decade. All too often nowadays, a single issue of a comic can feel like a diluted piece of decompression, barely offering enough entertainment to justify its pricing. In two issues of the new Deathstroke, there have been multiple flashbacks that show Slade at his best and worst, double-crosses aplenty and razor-sharp slices of gallows humour. Pagaluyan’s art has rendered both the master-killer action and character-intensive moments in stylish fashion and the book has a intriguing core question that will likely get answered in sequences that are bleak, humorous and challenging. Deathstroke is already standing out from most cape comics series on the stands.


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