Deathstroke #1 Review

Intro

Slade Wilson is officially back and staring in his own comic in the New 52. Deathstroke the highly anticipated series headlines writer/artist Tony S. Daniel. Daniel, who has had a hand in a ton of major comics, was most recently involved in DC’s Superman/Wonder Woman series and The New 52’s Detective Comics.

Spoilers Ahead!

If you plan on reading Deathstroke #1 but haven’t gotten around to it yet you probably want to stop right here.

Summary

The series starts with a very distinguished looking Slade gearing up for his next mission. We get a pretty cool retrospective of how Slade views Deathstroke as the eye-patched mercenary stares at his iconic orange and black mask.

"Deathstroke is not who I am. It’s my job. And I love it."

Slade then meets up with one of his contacts, a mysterious man by the name of Tiggs, who acts as his middleman. Tiggs gives Slade a briefcase full of targets located in Russia; of the various targets, Slade seems to have the most interest in a disfigured man known as Possum.

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Once in Russia, Slade meets up with another one of his contacts, Angelica. It seems as if Angelica and Slade share a romantic past, and in the words of Slade, they still enjoy “toasting to old times.” Angelica acts as the eyes and ears of Slade in Russia and is able to give him the location of all his targets. Deathstoke eliminates all of his targets except for Possum. Once he arrives at Possum’s location, he finds Angelica standing over two dead bodies with Possum beat and bound to a chair. She then tells Slade that this operation had been a trap set up and planned by Possum in order to kill Slade. It appears that Possum’s plan was to transmit a frequency via cell phone that would break into Slade’s mind and cause him to lose ability of all motor functions.

Angelica admits to accepting the bribe to set up Slade even though her plan all along was to take the money and kill the people who hired her. While explaining this to Slade, the cell phone starts to transmit the frequency. Once Slade is incapacitated, Possum breaks free of his restraints and delivers what appears to be a killing blow to Angelica’s head. This is when we learn that the plan was not only to kill Slade but to first extract some information from his mind. Once Possum gets what he wants from Slade, he begins to torture him, and just when it looks like this may be a very short series for Deathstroke, he is able to escape his imminent death.

After escaping the threat of Possum, Deathstroke is hit with an airstrike by Possum’s men. The strike leaves Slade badly injured and in need of serious help. Clinging to life while stumbling through the streets of Russia, Slade is searching for I-Ching, a man that owes him a favor. Slade, missing part of his left arm and a good chunk of the back of his head, collapses at the feet of I-Ching. He remains unconscious for sixteen days, and when he awakens, the unthinkable has happened: not only have his injuries healed, but he is also significantly younger and is no longer blind in his right eye.

Review

Its pretty clear that Tony S. Daniel wants to portray Deathstroke as an anti-hero in this series. Based off the art, it appears that Daniel also wants to keep this series slightly darker than most.

The artwork was well done, and the story flowed very well for the first in a series. It was refreshing to read a series opener that didn’t start by covering the origin story of the main character. I think this really grabs the attention of the reader and says that this series is going to be action packed and contain little to no “filler issues”.

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It appears as if the next few issues will indeed cover the origin of Slade Wilson and how he became Deathstroke. It will be interesting to see whether or not Daniel sticks to previous origin stories of Deathstroke or if he decides to create a new past for DC’s deadliest assassin. I thought the ending was rather surprising and am intrigued to see what Daniel has planned for this younger version of Slade Wilson. The only thing I didn’t like was Slade getting his right eye back. As long as I can remember, the most defining characteristic about Deathstroke has been his eye patch and his single-eyed mask, so I’m not too keen on a Deathstroke that lacks both of these qualities. Other than that, I was very impressed with this issue and would definitely recommend following this series.

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