Deathstroke to Appear in Batman Universe #1 this July

While Deathstroke was featured rather prominently on the Walmart-exclusive Teen Titans books, I didn't pay much attention to them when they were announced and released.

The reason is simple; Deathstroke's appearance in these books was in a reprint of issues from the Titans book from 2003, written by Geoff Johns. The 100-page books all included four stories, three of which were reprints. Deathstroke did not seem to appear in the single story of new material.

That he appeared in the Batman story eluded me. Here is a portion of a press release (first seen on Newsarama, for the record) about these Walmart exclusives being reprinted for comic shops this summer.

Following the theft of a priceless Fabergé egg, the Riddler leads The Dark Knight on a wild hunt after its true owner: Jinny Hex, a descendant of the haunted Western hero Jonah Hex. Deathstroke, Green Arrow and some of the brightest stars in the DC Universe will join The Dark Knight on the chase to find this treasure! 

The covers to the early issues of these Batman books all seemed to give one of the reprints the spotlight. Check out Deathstroke at the bottom right of the fourth issue.

I believe that will be his only appearance.

While attempting to sort all that, I collected the covers from the Titans books which featured Deathstroke and those are now displayed below.

Editorial Interference Is Not a New Thing

I recently took advantage of a Halloween sale by Mile High Comics to close some gaps in my collection and that little bundle of joy arrived this afternoon.

I bought ten books in total, including issues 116 and 117 of Nightwing. Those issues close out the "Renegade" storyline that began in number 112 of the series. In that story, Dick Grayson pretends to be a villain operating under that new name. Complicating best laid plans, Deathstroke comes by for a visit to convince Nightwing to train his loopy (well, to be fair, she's probably still being drugged by old dad at this point...) daughter Rose.

A trade paperback of the storyline came out in late 2006. The cover to that book is at right but it is basically a slightly reworked version of the cover to issue #113.

Here's where the editorial interference appears to come in: DC was in the midst of its Infinite Crisis event at that point. The story is humming along just fine from issues 112 to issues 114. And as is often the case, 114 concludes with a teaser for the following issue, which reads...

Dick Grayson keeps on keeping his enemies closer when Lex Luthor comes into play! And now that all of his actions as Renegade have gotten Oracle's attention, you can be sure Dick's ex is going to be on the scene as well.

And the cover displayed with that blurb appears on the left.

All sounds pretty cool, but none of it happens. Not even close. Luthor is nowhere to be seen, although we do get Deathstroke's attempt to use Rose and Nightwing to take down Superman for Villains Inc.  No sign of Barbara "Oracle" (at the time) Gordon, either.

That group of villains, incidentally, dropped a chemical explosive on Nightwing's then-home of Bludhaven during the Infinite Crisis events. This took place between issues 115 and 116 of Nightwing.

So rather than continue the story of Deathstroke's manipulation and Rose's training, in #116 we instead get an issue of Nightwing running around town trying to ensure that his supporting cast is safe and feeling responsible for the situation. Deathstroke and Rose don't appear at all yet once again the cover is somewhat misleading in regards to their involvement.

So clearly plans were changed at the last minute.

'Stroke and Rose return in issue 117 for the conclusion. Nightwing proves to Rose that Deathstroke is a shit dad (and that the sun rises in the East, I suppose), even though he had pretty well done that at the end of 115, and she bails on her pops as a result.

The expected skirmish between Deathstroke and Nightwing is a good one in this book as 'wing uses his acrobatics and agility to dodge blows more so than to deliver them. Pretty consistent with past battle, in my opinion.

The following month was DC's "One Year Later" event in which every book was "fast forwarded" to, well, a year later. Not sure if the Renegade story had to be wrapped up quicker than intended as a result but obviously the Infinite Crisis event and the destruction to Bludhaven that came with it forced changes onto the Renegade storyline.

So what happened to Rose a year after running out on her crap dad and telling him she hates him? Why at some point she became a member of the New Teen Titans!

With some exceptions, she was a regular in the series until its conclusion at issue 100 (October 2011).

As for Deathstroke, he went on to the Green Arrow book to give that character a hard time in a story called Crawling Through The Wreckage. More on that later.

Man, The Titans Get Hunted A Lot...

For a rather mundane title, "Titans Hunt" seems to come up a lot.

I was reminded of this while reading an interview with writer Dan Abnett about the coming Titans Hunt book from DC Comics. Being that there are large gaps in this blog's "(New) (Teen) Titans" page, this seemed like a good time to fill them a bit, since Deathstroke is so often involved with that group.

I've added some covers and a couple of issues from the New Titans series that ran from 1984 to 1996. My Titans fanhood has come and gone over the years, so I can't claim to be an authority on them, but it seems to be consensus that the 14-issue period between numbers 71 and 85 is referred to as Titans Hunt (see Comicvine for an example).

Deathstroke was very prominent in the book during that period, spending much of the time leading a ragtag group of Titans family members on a search for the abducted team. As the rather dramatic cover at right displays, he ultimately finds himself needing to combat a possessed version of his son and needing to make a pretty tough decision.

Those books came out in the early 90's. The other Titans story to take that name featured a totally different team and was released several years later.

Starting in 1996, Dan Jurgens wrote and drew a Teen Titans book featuring a mostly new team of young heroes, along with the Atom and Captain Marvel Jr. Titans Hunt ran from issues 21 to 24 of that series. The basis of the "hunt" is that one of the team members, nicknamed Risk, appears to have killed a villain in battle and is wanted by the authorities as a result.

Deathstroke steps up to the plate in issue #22 (also now added to the Titans page) and captures the team over the course of five pages for some anti-alien group called The Veil. Sounds very similar to how he took on his son's contract with HIVE against the original Titans way back in his first appearance, doesn't it? Can't imagine that's a coincidence.

The only slight downside is that Deathstroke is still wearing the blue and black outfit that he changed to briefly at the end of the first volume of his own series. There have been worse redesigns, I suppose, but I could never get used to the hubcaps on the shoulders. And what the hell did they replace his staff with? A cattle prod?

That's Risk getting acquainted with Slade's boot heel, for those who are unfamiliar with him.

'Stroke must have seen something in that character that I didn't at the time because he recruited him for his team in the Titans East story that ran in early 2007 (that's him over Slade's left shoulder below), almost a decade later.

Risk had lost an arm in a battle against Superboy Prime during Infinite Crisis (first panel below) and has since encountered him again to similar results (second panel).

Yikes. Why don't you just get lost before he start going after your legs? Love the sound effect consistency, however.

Anyway, I doubt Slade will be recruiting Risk for anything again any time soon.

One last thing about the East storyline; there actually seems to be a Tiny Titans version of it, released shortly after the original.

Slade's looking pretty suave in that suit!

Hard to imagine the story being made kid friendly (obviously they're not being fully faithful to the original version) but it's tempting to buy it anyway. They're using mostly the same Titans East characters so maybe a Tiny Rose Wilson appears too? If she does, I'll bet she doesn't carve her eye out to be more like dad. ;-)

Anyway, now we need to pay attention to see if Slade is involved in the upcoming story that takes the Titans Hunt name. I haven't seen his name in the solicitations yet, but he has such a strong connection to that team that it shouldn't surprise anyone if he makes an appearance.