Since 2016, I’ve made no bones about the fact that “Deathstroke” is my favorite comic currently running. The book was consistently funny, thoughtful, and taking risks that few other books were willing to take. The entirety of the most recent run was penned by Christopher Priest [nee James Owsley, sometimes simply credited as Priest], and was illustrated by a murderer’s row of modern comic talent: Diogenes Neves, Carlo Pagulayan, Joe Bennett, Fernando Pasarin, and even layouts by Larry Hama.
With issue #50 in the books and the series closed, I approached DC about an interview with Priest. I was told that he would answer ‘a few questions’ via email, so I shot off eight questions. The responses took almost a week to come back, but when they did, they were not quick answers. 4000 words later, and I felt I needed some follow ups.
DC and Priest graciously agreed to some follow ups; two of them were simply questions I omitted initially for fear that Priest wouldn’t be able to get to them. These are the Power Girl and issue #11 questions that follow below.
But the other two follow ups were looking for clarification from Priest on two statements he made towards the end of the interview involving ‘The Lazarus Contract’ and the Deathstroke/Terra relationship therein, which carries over from ‘The Judas Contract,’ the classic “New Teen Titans” event that defined both Deathstroke and the Titans for a generation. I wanted to give Priest the opportunity to put some of his words into context, as they read a bit extreme.
At Priest’s request, I did not change his wording or remove anything from his answers. The original questions appear as any other in the interview; the followups are placed in blockquotes, identifiable by the vertical red line on the left side of the text. I included both what I asked in the follow ups and Priest’s response. I felt that this was necessary for two reasons: one, because I wanted to honor Priest’s request to not change anything, and two, because I felt it was my responsibility to ask for clarification on the two statements in question.
We, as a staff, also feel that a trigger warning is required, due to content about sexual abuse and pedophilia, for the last question, for which Priest’s answer begins with “Okay, let’s discuss Terra.”
We thank DC and Priest for making the time and putting in the massive effort to put this interview together.
We first spoke about this book at NYCC 2016, when the series was just a few issues in. At that time, you told me that you were working far ahead, and that you were writing more than you could ever use, relying on judicious editing to get it down to 20 pages a month. I’ve been thinking about that answer ever since, as this book continues to be both incredibly dense and still feel like it is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. As the endgame for the series became more clear, did you continue to produce as much voluminous content for the book, or was it easier to keep things lean and pared down, knowing there were only so many pieces left to do?
(Laughs) Well, Brian, a lot of comics writers are frustrated novelists, myself included (I have several novels on Amazon), so thinking Big Picture is part of our makeup. I love long movies if they are well written and feel cheated by feature films that feel too undernourished. Then there came this trend for comics to be incredibly paired down, Panel One: Hi there! Panel Two: Where ya been? Panel Three: I was at the chiropodist all day…Stan and Jack would do that exchange in half a panel. But at some point the trend became to fill up a page with virtually nothing.
I’m an old guy. My point of reference is Stan and Roy and guys like Don McGregor, all of whom were paid almost literally nothing and yet produced deeply enriched adventure comics. Then guys like Frank Miller and Alan Moore literally started blurring the line between prose and visual storytelling, producing very dense comics that became landmarks like “The Dark Knight Returns,” “Watchmen,” Gaiman’s “Sandman,” Busiek’s “Marvels,” Mark Waid’s “Kingdom Come.” I always felt like I got my money’s worth reading that stuff. I want to give the fans their money’s worth, not some pamphlet they can flip through in ten minutes.
Continued belowAlso, I tend to use density for pacing, to either slow a reader down or speed her up as the reader moves toward a page turn, which usually leads to an escalation or de-escalation of the plotline. A favorite example was the opening sequence of “Deathstroke” #7, wherein Deathstroke’s ex-wife Adeline Kane grills Superman for nine panels of fairly dense yak-yak, only to open into the punch in the face glorious double-spread by Carlo Pagulayan of Superman towing an aircraft carrier through a violent thunderstorm.
I wanted readers to stop and marvel at that gorgeous artwork, upon which I placed not a single word other than the credits. As yakky as I can get in my narrative, I’ve actually argued with my editors a few times defending these big moments, insisting on not putting any text on the big splash pages. If I’ve done my job right, I’ve set the reader up for that moment and the visual will speak for itself. When you see dialogue on a full-page splash, I can almost guarantee it was my editor who placed it there.
As for “Deathstroke” ongoing, sure, I have lots of thoughts about it and, like most writers, pages of outtakes. But comics is a numbers game, and the reality is numbers rarely if ever increase over time. They usually settle in somewhere and don’t improve unless there’s a major creative change. My first duty is to the fans but also to the character himself. Deathstroke is becoming wildly popular everywhere but his own comic book. A refresh would seem to be in order.
This book does something that many books struggle to do effectively, which is not just focus on a main character, but give us a rich supporting cast. Of all the characters you brought into the series, which has been your favorite to develop?
Hah, well, that’s tough because I’m in love with them all. The most frustrating character was Rose because I never felt supported in my vision for her. Calling herself “Ravager” after a dead brother she’d never met made no sense. Patterning herself after a father who neglects her made no sense. I wanted to go places with her but permission to experiment wasn’t the same as active support, and I’m quite sure the minute I’m gone she’ll just go back what she was before I got there, an illogical implementation of a very rich character.
If you discount predator characters like Venom, supervillains have never successfully sustained ongoing series. The Joker—arguably the most popular supervillain in comics—has never successfully sustained an ongoing series. I presume that’s because supervillains, by syllogistic argument, function as foils for the heroes.
Deathstroke’s enemies are DC’s heroes, which is a real problem because access to those characters is a political process that often defies logic or reason. “Banana Man (TM) can’t appear in Deathstroke this month because he’s having a cavity filled in his own comic that week.” Huh?!? We’d hear that kind of thing, and I’d just slam my head into my monitor. Fans aren’t stupid. Fans can figure this continuity stuff out. Batman is in 87 books a month and fans don’t seem to mind.
But it was always a chore to arrange these play dates with the DC heroes and even the other villains. So we had to keep digging deeper into the barrel, finding villains we haven’t seen in ages (Bolt, “Deathstroke Rebirth Annual”) or even inventing our own (Ace Masterson, the Human Dynamo from issue #32, whom several fans swore they remembered from DC’s Golden Age). Yes, you can use Arkham, but no, none of the villains readers would expect Deathstroke to interact with there will be available.
Writing the character was very frustrating because the intrinsic premise of the character requires him to interact with the DC characters, and everybody is really protective of their respective characters. During [the] ‘Arkham’ [arc], we staged an attack wherein Deathstroke leads a team of heroes to stave off an alien invasion. Now, with the ‘Arkham’ story, you never know what actually happened and what was just Slade’s medication-induced psychosis but we were denied use of DC’s heroes—even in a delusion. *slams head against monitor.* So Deathstroke called up a bunch of villains instead, and even then we were only permitted secondary villains. I hope the next creative team to handle the character will have more juice in terms of getting these kinds of clearances. It’s very hard to write Deathstroke if he can’t run into anybody.
Continued belowThe series has taken a number of sharp turns, all of which brought the book to interesting new places. Personally, ‘Defiance’ was my favorite such status quo change, and was the arc that I felt could have gone on for longer than it did. Were there ever plans or desire to dedicate more time to the Defiance team?
(Laughs) We should do it now. Project Defiance was kind of a dark mirror Teen Titans led by this unmitigated jerk Deathstroke. It was a lot of fun and Diogenes Neves, our artist for that period, just hit it out of the park. Dio had a wicked sense of humor and a really slick, progressive art style that worked amazingly well.
I pitched “Defiance” as a stand-alone title, advocating we cancel “Deathstroke,” publish “Defiance” as a maxiseries, and relaunch “Deathstroke,” perhaps in DC Black Label, which would afford us more flex in terms of language, violence, and accessibility to DCU heroes since a Black Label “Deathstroke” would surely be out of continuity. But DC, rightly, said no—there’s way too much “cancel after five issues and relaunch” going on these days. They were absolutely right.
A lot of what I do represent stand-ins for books I won’t be offered. “The Ray” was intended as (and really should be) DC’s Spider-Man. “Steel” was a semi-satirical deconstruction of Superman. “Black Panther” was me doing Batman because nobody was letting me do Batman, and “Justice League Task Force” was more or less Editor Ruben Diaz and I mocking the Justice League.
So, ‘Defiance’ was more or less my take on the Teen Titans, a group that really no longer exists because the tide of continuity has just made everybody a little crazy to the point where neither the Haney/Cardy nor Wolfman/Pérez teams can exist anymore. That actually confuses me because there’s clearly an audience for that.
There have been any number of people throughout your run that either claim to be Deathstroke, or dress like him, or wear his old costumes. What is it about Slade that makes him both so imitated and also what does that do for you, as a writer, to hold a living mirror up to him?
Hah—I’d think someone as intimidating as Deathstroke would inspire copycats like The Red Lion and our deranged Deadpool stand-in Death Masque. Beyond that, unless I’m missing something, I believe the only other people to have impersonated Deathstroke in my run has been his children — Joseph, attempting to help Rose work through her depression, and ultimately Rose herself attempting to complete Deathstroke’s final mission after he was killed in The Terminus Agenda.
[Editor’s note: Isherwood/Doomstroke was the other character I was alluding to. – Brian]
Despite having a bunch of different artists across the 3+ years, the book has managed to maintain a consistent visual tone throughout. Not that their work necessarily looked a lot like one another’s, but there was a visual language in the book that remained, no matter who was drawing it. How much of that is due to the way you script, versus the artists making a conscious effort to be simpatico to one another?
Wow, I’m not sure I agree with your premise. The series has varied a great deal in visual tone from the groundwork laid by series artist Carlo Pagulayan and character designs by ACO. Joe Bennett’s approach varied a great deal from Carlo’s as well as from Diogenes Neves, who drew Slade almost as a hippie (which I really liked). Both Carlo and Dio drew Slade as a normal-looking guy who happened to look super-buff when he suited up as Deathstroke, while Bennett and Fernando Pasarin’s Slade was fairly huge at all times.
For my part, there’s usually an observable distinction between artists who follow my art direction, which is fairly detailed, and artists who, for whatever reason, do not. In most cases, when the artist follows me (or, more accurately, trusts me), the visual storytelling tends to be really clear. When things tend to be less clear, it is often because I haven’t yet earned that trust or that partnership hasn’t fully formed. I’m not, like, “Do it my way!” but more like, “Here’s the images *I* see inside *my* head. Feel free to make it better,” which often happens. The longer I work with a partner, the more we learn one another and, as a reader, you can clearly observe the visual storytelling improve as the series progresses.
Continued belowThis run has so many iconic Deathstroke elements – Teen Titans, his family, big-ass swords – but it also managed to be funnier, more politically acute, and somehow more intertwined into the DC universe. What – both when you started and now – did/do you consider the essential elements of Slade that you had to get across on the page?
Well, first, humor was a must. “Deathstroke” had become, no offense intended to previous writers, unbearably grim and kind of hostile to new readers. I meet fans at these shows who want to talk about “Black Panther” or, seriously, “The Ray,” but who have skipped “Deathstroke” entirely, having not read even one page of it. This is mostly due to what these fans think “Deathstroke” is about: blood and guts. They assume the book is a modern-day “Conan The Barbarian” (which I also used to write).
DC hasn’t done a whole lot to overcome that stigma by routinely publishing cover images of Bloody Deathstroke swinging his sword. One of our biggest sellers was the Ryan Sook homage to Kevin Maguire’s “Justice League [International]” #1 that kicked off our ‘Defiance’ series. And, *shakes head*, DC did not use that art on the ‘Defiance’ trade paperback cover but instead used — wait for it — Bloody Deathstroke, which is like Bat-New Reader Repellent (TM).
Deathstroke is not Conan. The series is not about a bloody killer. It is about The World’s Worst Dad, who happens to be an assassin in his day job. We have not done a good enough job of conveying the actual premise of the Rebirth Deathstroke, so the stigma of Bloody Deathstroke lingers over the comics rack like a stale fart. I can’t tell you how many times some eager fan has mentioned, in between “Black Panther” chat, that he’s skipped “Deathstroke.”
On a very personal level, I want to say thank you for this series. It is, hands down, my favorite book DC has published this decade, and I think it will be remembered as one of the all-time great runs of this era. What do you want fans to know about your process, this series, and what you’ve done with these characters?
Well, thank you, first of all. And, if I want fans to know anything about my process it is that I so value their investment that I cannot take it lightly. I, and everybody in the “Deathstroke” band, swing for the fences every month, never completely satisfied as we try harder, every day, to earn your support. As for how it will be remembered, if past is prologue, my “Deathstroke” run will become wildly popular about ten years after I stop writing it. That seems to be the pattern. We couldn’t *give* “Black Panther” away when it was actually being published. But, like Star Trek, “Panther” became much more popular in reruns than it ever did when we were actually doing it.
Part of the reason is I kind of suck at doing these monthly comics because so much of what I do involves misdirection. So you read a couple of installments and either come away confused or believing I’m an idiot (which is not unreasonable). But then, in the latter chapters, we see the mouse traps snapping shut and (hopefully) readers can flip back to the early chapters and realize the clues had been there all along.
That kind of approach to writing requires patience on the part of a readership that often sorely lacks the will to invest in a work over the long haul. This fan posted to a review site how sick he was of “Deathstroke” (which made me wonder why he kept buying it, but I digress), wherein he chastised me for not explaining where this obviously severely altered Deathstroke came from. It was the first issue of AltStroke’s appearance. But, because I didn’t give a complete accounting of what was going on and who this guy was, I was being personally attacked.
Seems like a lot of fans want everything explained, everything spoon-fed to them, and instant gratification, which works against even reasonable storytelling. I mean, what fun would it be to just blurt out Vader is Luke’s father during the opening crawl to Episode IV? But that seems to be what I was beheaded for not doing.
Continued belowI suppose my work should come with a disclaimer: HANG IN THERE, KID, ALL WILL BE EXPLAINED. Because it will. But my work reads much better in collected editions where there isn’t a four-week wait for the answers.
The one loose thread that I was hoping to see again was that of Tanya Spears, Power Girl. We see the character, presumed dead, not actually dead, but ‘lost’ alongside Karen Starr. Did you choose to leave her story open ended, or was this simply a victim of limited space in the final months?
Deathstroke had renounced evil in issue #20 (although he continued doing incredibly evil things in the name of good, but I digress). At the end of the Defiance arc I needed a compelling reason for Deathstroke to disband the group and revert to his old ways. I struggled with that a long time before coming to the conclusion that the only thing that could snap Deathstroke back toward evil was a complete and utter failure of “good.” This implicitly demanded the death of someone he loved and, since we’d been-there-done-that repeatedly with killing his kids or ex-wife or Wintergreen, and since Kid Flash wasn’t my character to bump off, that left only one candidate, the girl Slade loved almost as much as his own kids.
Now, I don’t know if DC would have allowed me to kill Power Girl, but being how Paul Levitz (Power Girl’s creator) is a dear friend I wouldn’t have wanted to do that anyway. I love the character and have repeatedly pitched a “Power Girls” series to DC featuring both Tanya and Karen. So the compromise became obvious: make Slade believe he was responsible for Tanya’s death without actually killing Tanya.
I left the Power Girls in limbo with the hopes of getting a project approved featuring them both. Failing that, I’d rather leave them in limbo until someone can get a project approved for them than to either kill them or leave them wandering around the DCU with nothing to do.
Issue #11 is one of my favorite issues of the entire run, and it felt perfectly in line with the tone of the series and also a biting commentary on the world we, the readers, live in. What was the process like for you to break that story, and what are your thoughts on that issue, 2+ years later?
We needed a fill-in issue to help with the schedule. While considering what stand-alone story I might tell, I was reading end-of-year summaries about various things around the country and noted the continuing tragedy of gun violence in Chicago. This is a complex issue with no easy answers. Also, I didn’t think it was my place to preach to people and tell them what to do or what to think.
When asked, “What’s the solution to Chicago’s gun violence?” Deathstroke replies, “Better aim.” It’s important to bear in mind this is what Slade Wilson believes. It is not necessarily what Christopher Priest believes. I am frequently accused of proselytizing or making some political point in my writing. I am, frankly, not that clever. The choices and opinions expressed by characters in my story are the point of view of the characters. It is my first duty—to the characters themselves, and not to prostitute them or make them caricatures for my own benefit. I’m an actual preacher; when I want to preach, I can do that.
For Chicago,’ “Deathstroke” #11, the message was simple: this is a complex issue with no easy answers. Illegal guns, sold on the street, are a nationwide scourge. I don’t see how banning guns from law-abiding people who need to protect themselves solves that problem, but then again I don’t see how more guns solves it, either. I live in a rural area where everybody has a gun. Or, you know, eight guns. It’s really no big deal, here. You see people open carrying all over the place, and crime is like practically nonexistent in some areas out here. Pulling a home invasion in rural Colorado requires monumental chutzpah, as you’re just as likely to find yourself blown back onto the street by a shotgun blast.
Continued belowBut this ain’t Chicago, where errant rounds fired kill innocents every week. Where thin sheetrock is the barrier between life and death in densely-crowded housing units. And legal pathways to gun ownership can also be exploited through straw purchases and weapons reported stolen but which were actually sold on the street.
So, what then is the answer? The truth? education. Most of society’s problems are fueled by ignorance. Irrationality is fueled by misinformation, disinformation, and stuff-you-done-heard-someplace. We are living through extremely dangerous times and I believe it is for the next generation, or perhaps the one after that—the young people who reject our tribal bullshit, who reject racism and hatred and democrat-vs-republican and who see the nonsense and, yes, stupidity for what it is—to change things. Maybe that generation will someday put the guns down.
And, finally, what is one bit that you cut out that you wish would’ve made its way into the book?
Okay, let’s discuss Terra.
This is what I’m asked about most regarding this series, especially by comics readers who remember the Wolfman/Pérez run. “How can you write that pedophile?!” This business, of creepy old Slade (who, in 1980’s version, really did look like he was in his fifties) in bed with a nude teenager (who was also smoking—which actually offended me even more) is the defining moment of the Deathstroke character.
The message can be taken that you think that smoking a cigarette is worse than child rape. I know that this is not what you are implying but, and I totally agree that smoking is gross, I don’t want to give anyone the opportunity to paint you with that brush. Is there another way to express your disgust with the smoking where it isn’t compared to the sex act, or should I just cut that parenthetical?
No, I think constantly self-censoring and over-explaining in the vain hope that people won’t look for the worst possible way to interpret something is doing real harm to free speech. But (here I go over-explaining) my first reaction in 1980, upon reading that scene, was, “Oh, Terra’s actually an adult who just looks young and is posing as a teen.” I assumed she was an adult because it never occurred to me that DC would allow such a thing. So, bing, I read that as Jill St. John impersonating Burt Ward’s Robin in the Batman TV show pilot—an adult posing as a teenager. It wasn’t until, maybe, years later that I got it that Terra was actually a teen. I assumed she was maybe in her early 20’s. So, yes, the smoking bothered me more.
It frustrates me a little that Deathstroke is so popular these days, and actually has always been super popular with the fans, while so many of them decry this, the moment that literally defined who he is.
Deathstroke manipulating a young girl is reprehensible. It is kind of unsurvivable in terms of character—you really can’t soft-pedal the behavior and continue to root for Deathstroke. Any attempt to rationalize the behavior just blows up in your face. Deathstroke’s choices are indefensible.
But painting Terra as a saint is wrong and stupid. Excusing Deathstroke’s behavior is wrong and stupid. Not talking about it leaves this cloud lingering over DC, over Deathstroke, over Marv, over me.
I am reading the above sentence in the sense of, “Terra, the character who betrayed the Titans, is not a saint,” and not “Terra is partially to blame for being sexually assaulted by Slade.” Would you like to reword that, or perhaps use “But painting Terra, a comic book villain who did horrible things outside of this interaction, as a saint is wrong and stupid.” I’m sure you could say it far better than this New Jersey numbskull can.
No, I really don’t want to reword anything (laughs). Even in a most careful rewording, internet trolls will find something to twist out of context, so I don’t really see the point. Every time I do one of these Q&A’s I just assume I’m screwed.
Continued belowI hope this doesn’t come off as censorship; if you want to say these things, that’s fine. I just want to make sure that we’re presenting your words in a clear way.
Wow, this business with Terra really is the grave that just keeps on digging.
The sense I get, from fans branding Deathstroke a pedophile, is they have this vision of Terra as some innocent whom Slade corrupted, which shows me they don’t know the character of Terra and don’t know the character of Deathstroke.
Jodie Foster played a 12-year old prostitute in the acclaimed classic Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver. That child was certainly no innocent. As I said, growing up, I knew girls like that. No, I didn’t know any child prostitutes, but I knew teen girls who were not only sexually active but who were sexually aggressive; who didn’t hesitate to weaponize their emerging sexuality.
So, re-reading the original Judas Contract, while I was as disturbed as everyone else, I never thought of Terra as a flower of chaste innocence and presumed her willing if not eager cooperation. Terra wasn’t 12 and she wasn’t a prostitute, but she was a contract killer which implies she was not innocent. That’s my only point: fitting Terra for a halo is wrong and stupid, that’s not the character.
A pedophile is a person with a sexual attraction to or predisposition toward children. That’s not Slade Wilson. If it was, I’d have written the character as a man struggling with those kinds of impulses. I didn’t write him that way because that’s not who the character is. Slade couldn’t stand Terra. He was only using her to help him kill the Titans. Which does not excuse his heinous behavior nor does it, I suppose, fully exempt him from the label.
But labeling him a pedophile diminishes a very serious global threat to children by applying the term generically and often disparagingly as a dismissive aspersion rather than treat the term and condition with the gravity with which it must be considered.
My regret concerning things that did not make it into MY run, which was your original question, was over 2017 Deathstroke not taking fuller responsibility for 1980 Deathstroke by our not more fully exploring how sexual exploitation impacts at-risk youth. I thought rounding the corners off of the original story was a less courageous choice than holding Deathstroke accountable for his actions and exploring the long-term impact on Terra.
“Pedophile” isn’t a term we should just toss around. Sexual exploitation of minors happens every minute of every day everywhere in the world. In 2016 alone, child protective services agencies substantiated, or found strong evidence to indicate that, 57,329 children were victims of sexual abuse. One in 9 girls and 1 in 53 boys under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault at the hands of an adult (RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) https://www.rainn.org/statistics/children-and-teens). That’s why I’m eager to take the opportunity to address this business, not to excuse Slade but to stop the character or the story from being used to make pedophilia a punchline.
We could have written a story that addressed this issue in a way that would educate and perhaps even help somebody. Instead, we changed it to protect the character, Terra, once again being exploited for Deathstroke’s benefit.
I was frustrated by the insistence we round the edges off of all of that. Mainly because, I promise, 90% of the fans already know the story and little kids don’t read Deathstroke. So who were we protecting? The company? The fans? Or were we protecting Deathstroke by shaving edges off of what he is—a reprehensible human being.
I’m not sure what good running away from this classic event does. I’d have rather dealt with it head-on, exploring the greater ramifications of how this kind of abuse and violation victimizes youth. That’s a story worth telling, a story that could help educate and inform rather than pretending this doesn’t actually happen. I wish we hadn’t shied away from telling it.
In our ‘Rebirth’ retelling, Deathstroke only kisses Terra (who’d been aggressively coming on to him), and we explore the impact Deathstroke’s manipulation has on Terra, who is emotionally scarred because of it. This still earned me the scarlet letter. It’s a bit of business that rightfully concerns everyone. However, pretending this kind of abuse does not go on, when we have an opportunity to responsibly explore and deal with it, would have been, I think, the wrong choice.
I often had to fight City Hall and repeat, ad nauseum, that Deathstroke is a villain. In the first issue, Slade kills a bear in order to save his son. Then he goes back and kills the bear’s cubs because, to his thinking, it would be cruel to leave them without a mother. That is Deathstroke. But I had to fight to get that in because of concerns over the character’s likeability. This was the unfun part about writing this character, a guy who should have an even sharper edge than Wolverine. Please write this down someplace for future reference: Deathstroke is an ass.
I am reminded of Michael Chiklis’s brilliant performance as Vic Mackey on FX’s award-winning series The Shield. The cops on The Shield reminded me a lot of the Little Rascals from the Our Gang serials — mischievous boys (and girl) who would get themselves into scrapes and we’d be rooting for them to get out of trouble.
Well, Vic Mackie was a crook. A crooked cop. As much as we liked him, we really should not forget that fact. Mackie was a liar, a serial adulterer, a thief and a murderer. And yet, when internal affairs cop Forrest Whitaker went after him, we rooted for Mackie! This kind of freaked Whittaker, the actor, out for real, that his character was so loathed by the fans. Fans and, at times, DC have been uncomfortable with some of my choices for Deathstroke. We like him. We’re rooting for him. Hopefully, fans are identifying with Slade’s desire to love and be loved. But, like Vic, we have to be occasionally reminded of who this man really is, and those reminders can be jolting.
I was, and am now, wholly unconcerned about his likeability. Supervillains are asses. Fans need to be reminded of that fact. I don’t think they deserve to be liked. More important, I am using Marv and George as my reference: this is who the man is.
DC is run by extremely nice people. That’s not blowing smoke—seriously, it’s like they all went through some kind of training in How To Be Polite And Get Along. What I remember from Old School Marvel was intense fiefdoms and cliques, and you had to remember whose territory you were intruding on and how to play by those rules.
DC feels more like Gene Roddenberry’s utopian view of the future, where kindness, forethought, and patience are the rules of the day. How does Deathstroke function in that kind of environment? I mean, I had Slade kill Power Girl’s dog in issue #17, and that was a major push. So far as I am concerned Slade, not Bruce, is Damian Wayne’s father. I mean, I get why DC made the call they did, and Damian is not *my* multi-million-dollar I.P. to gamble with, but I lobbied hard for another, in my opinion, more daring choice that would have shaken things up, enraged fans, and launched dozens of exciting stories.
Esai Morales’ scenery-chewing Titans Deathstroke is a big improvement over the typical baritone-voiced mustache twirlers I’ve seen in the video games and elsewhere, but I wish the character (and, perhaps, the show) had more humor. Scene after lonnnng scene of brooding, ominous drums rumbling beneath the dialogue, just exhausts me. I love Morales and have followed his work for decades. His Slade is certainly evil enough — way to go, folks. Now, please work on Slade’s sense of humor.
Continued belowTo me, Deathstroke is just utter bullshit without the will to take him as hard as Marvel takes Wolverine or Punisher. Even the Marv Deathstroke was kind of reality-once-removed as compared to, say, Spawn. The point of which is less to criticize DC than to point out Deathstroke has to coexist with other themes and characters within an environment where conflict between the heroes is kind of frowned upon. Maybe if “Deathstroke” was published under their Black Label [imprint] there’d be more flex in terms of what the character could be.
This was my real motive for AltStroke. Since we were about to take our bow, I thought I’d like to write the character the way he should, in my view, actually be portrayed: as a totally ruthless, unlikeable bitch. And Damian IS his son (Laughs). Now, could AltStroke sustain his own monthly title? I actually think yes in the short term, not in the longer term because eventually he’d either kill everybody or kill himself or we’d fall into the cliché of constantly contriving reasons he wouldn’t.
But at least Deathstroke, as I’d have actually liked to have written him, made a brief cameo before we turned out the lights.
If you have room for some shout outs…
It’s important to stress that I actually don’t tell stories. I tell my editor and my creative team and they are the ones actually telling the stories. My writing is only as good as their investment in it, so I’m eternally grateful to Carlo Pagulayan, the architect of the ‘Rebirth’ Deathstroke, for his amazing creative vision and dazzling storytelling, aided and assisted by my adopted dad Larry Hama on layouts, and my CREW partner in crime Joe Bennett. Letterer Willie Schubert has become, quite literally, my voice and I can’t thank him enough for putting up with my text-heavy pages. Jeromy Cox is our soundtrack, our orchestra, our special effects guy, who has brought all of this to life.
Artist Jason Michael Paz has been along from the beginning, bringing consistency across a diverse group of pencil artists, which also include the wonderful Diogenes Neves who brought new energy into our book along with ‘Defiance’ (when asked, “What are you defying?” the answer was low sales!), and Fernando Pasarin, who has saved us from Deadline Hell many, many times.
Thanks also to [cover artists] Mark Morales, ACO and Romulo Fajardo, Jr., Shane Davis, Michelle Delecki and Alex Sinclair, Ryan Sook, Denys B. Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz, the amazing Francesco Mattina (thank you SO much!!), and, of course, the dozens of contributors whose names I’ve neglected to include here.
Thank you DC Publisher Dan DiDio and EIC Bob Harras for putting up with me, DC Group Editor Brian Cunningham for thinking of me to begin with. Thank you DC Executive Editor Marie Javins for making the call. Thank you Brittany Holzherr, Diego Lopez, David Weilgosz and Andrea Shea for your invaluable assistance and patience. Thanks most of all to DC Editor Alex Antone for all the times I’ve sent you through the whirling knives, for your patience and humor.
