B5Erik

After having picked up the first three New Teen Titans omnibuses (omnibi?), I really liked the Deathstroke character, so when I ran across the TPB of the first Deathstroke The Terminator set (from 1990-91) by Marv Wolfman and Steve Erwin I picked it up to check it out.

And, wow, what a great comic it was! I really missed the boat on that one back in the early 90's. The writing and art were both top notch, and the character development was really good! And I just love Slade Wilson - he is a great character!

So then I picked up the next 4 TPB collections, and they're all really good. That was definitely one of the best comics of the early 90's, and it holds up amazingly well.

Switching to Masterworks, Omnibuses, and TBP's from individual issues has been a great way for me to really collect some titles that I missed out on the first time, and this one is one of the ones I'm happiest about when it comes to a, "New," discovery.

Highly recommended.

(Assassins, Sympathy For The Devil, Nuclear Winter, Crash Or Burn, and World Tour.)

ddrknghtrtns

He got overtaken in popularity by Liefeld's carbon knockoff. But to be fair, always felt that Deathstroke was very similar to Deadshot.

B5Erik

Maybe, but the Slade Wilson character was really well developed and his backstory was fantastic (and very different, I'm sure, from that of Deadshot).

Marv Wolfman really did a great job with Deathstroke.

B5Erik

majorjoe23

I don’t think I could support a comic where the main character is a rapist.

B5Erik

And that's part of why he was a villain at that point.

At best he was an anti-hero, not someone to be idolized or emulated, but he was a great, well rounded character.

ddrknghtrtns

You talking about the Terra controversy?

B5Erik

Yes and no. It's something between him and me and another topic on another subforum.

But, yeah, Slade sleeping with a 16 year old Terra was a pretty skeevy thing to do...

Of course, the character grew from there, but he was a really well thought out character with a ton of backstory and personality traits. He was very complex.

majorjoe23

Yeah, she was 15.

B5Erik

Steve Erwin's art was really good, but his last credit was from 1996. I wonder why he stopped drawing comics - he was a first rate artist.

I'm halfway through volume 5 (World Tour), and it is as good as the rest. I wish they'd release a 6th volume (even though Erwin was no longer on the title by that point). There are enough issues to fill out at least one more TPB.

Hokeyboy

I always loved Slade Wilson since I first started reading New Teen Titans in 1981. Marv Wolfman created an amazing mercenary character, with more depth and nuance you'd see in typical "villains" of the time. And I love the look George Perez came up with; chainmail, buccaneer boots, the blue and orange scheme. It just worked.

I also enjoyed the 1991 series but it became so popular, DC turned him into an "anti-hero" and the next thing you know, he was teaming up with heroes in all sorts of crossovers of the day.

When Identity Crisis dropped in, what was it, '03 or '04, it was so damn cool to see him take his place at or near the top of the villain pantheon, as he took on several members of the JLA at once. Successfully. Including the Flash.

B5Erik

I just read this issue. It was the conclusion to his World Tour storyline. That was a great story. I wasn't real big on the sideways formatting for the art in this issue, though...

The Valeyard

I always thought it was awesome that they included Deathstroke in the X-Men Teen Titans crossover. I remember when this issue came out, I was in Jr. High and all my friends were going nuts over the Slade vs Wolverine panels.

B5Erik

I really wish that DC would put out Volume 6 of the Deathstroke TPB series. I loved the first 5.

Josh-da-man

It's pretty obvious that when DC gave Deathstroke his own series in 1991 that they were trying to make him into their version of The Punisher, much like they were trying to make Lobo into DC's Wolverine.

Josh-da-man

I never thought of Deadpool as being a knock-off of Deathstroke; the "Merc with a Mouth" always struck me as being more of "dark" Spider-Man than anything else.

PhantomStranger

I'm fairly sure that Liefeld admitted thinking about Deathstroke when coming up with Deadpool. Deadpool only became popular when later writers decided to turn him into a darker Spider-Man-like quipster.

B5Erik

That's what I've read. Several times.

Red Hood

I loved this. That crossover was one of the best done at that time. All of them were fun but the X-Men coming in on the rails of the Dark Phoenix Saga, made this crossover a little more important/serious/fun.

I didn't know this until recently but Claremont trolled Wolvman, Perez and DC by doing a character in Spider-Woman #39 called Death Stroke who had Terminators as his henchmen