Panic In The Sky!

If you've been here before, you may have noticed that instead of breaking down Deathstroke appearances between his various volumes and his time with the Titans, I've instead chosen to do it be "era".

The reason is simple; some pages were becoming too bulky and cluttered. As you can see, appearances are now separated by year of publishing. Deathstroke's guest spot in The Ravagers book, for example, are included in the "volume two" page because those Ravagers issues came out as volume two was winding down and their content had a direct impact on Deathstroke's own book. There will be some overlap but people should be able to track down individual stories and chronology fairly easily.

Most of the pages still need a bit of filling out. The trick is, at times, to know when a book that is said to include Deathstroke has a significant appearance or if it's simply a pointless one-panel flashback or a dream sequence or some such nonsense.

I'm going to get clarification on a few books from the early 90's come June.

Panic In The Sky ran through the Superman books in late 1991 and early 1992.  I've known about it for some time, of course, but was reluctant to buy it in case Deathstroke was only included for a couple of panels.

There is a revised collected version of story coming this summer. I came across the above cover for it on the Comic Art Community gallery. Here's the solicitation text for it:

Brainiac returns to invade the earth with his ultimate weapon, Warworld, a planet-sized satellite built for destruction. With the help of super-powered friends like Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern and many more, Superman must lead the attack on Brainiac and protect Earth! 

Collects ACTION COMICS #474-475, SUPERMAN: MAN OF STEEL #9-10, ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #488-489, SUPERMAN #66.

That issue listing does not seem to be very accurate. Action Comics 475 was published in the summer of 1977. That text should read Action Comics 675 (the cover to which is seen at right and, of course, includes Deathstroke getting squeezed by Brainiac).

And being that the cover above, apparently being reused for the new edition, was originally the cover to Superman #65, it's probably safe to assume that that issue will be included as well. Yet the content listing above makes no mention of it.

So let's try that again. The actual reading list will probably be the following, as it was in the original graphic novel:

Action Comics (1938) #674
Action Comics (1938) #675
Adventures of Superman (1987) #488
Adventures of Superman (1987) #489
Superman (1987) #65
Superman (1987) #66
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #9
Superman: The Man of Steel (1991) #10

All right, so with that figured out...Is it worthwhile to get this book for Deathstroke's sake?

I held off until now because he didn't seem particularly involved. The solicitation doesn't even mention him (or Batman, oddly enough).

But upon closer review, he is shown on several of the covers and my understanding is that he is hand-picked by Superman to be the group's tactical leader.

I could be wrong about that. I am trying to avoid spoilers, after all. But if that's accurate then that's a pretty significant role to fill. He shows up in the story a few issues in, but maintains some visibility right through to the epilogue issue. Also, Deathstroke's contributions are referred to later in Superman's series when the Man of Steel is tasked with capturing the world's best mercenary.

This was a busy time for old Slade. In his own book, he was squaring off against Batman in the four-part "City of Assassins" story arc and in the New Titans book, he was preparing to drive a sword through his possessed son, Joseph.

Thanks largely part to this multi-part story, Deathstroke was present in eight books cover-dated March or April 1992, marking the first time he would get that sort of exposure alongside the DC big shots and as more than "just" a Teen Titans villain.