r/Deathstroke • u/Hexagon_Prime • 8h ago
Do you find it ironic that the more writers have tried to make Deathstroke a worse person, the more he’s become a meme rather than a great villain?
In The New Teen Titans and The Judas Contract, Slade is introduced as a professional assassin who takes a contract against the Titans after his son Grant dies trying to fulfill it. Setting the Terra controversy aside (which is Wolfman and Pérez clearly sexualizing her to reinforce her portrayal as a villain), Slade is still shown as conflicted about the whole situation. He captures the Titans alive, lets Nightwing go, clashes with H.I.V.E. over how the contract should be carried out, and eventually makes peace with the Titans before walking away. His 1991 solo series then established him as a mercenary protagonist: ruthless and morally compromised, but still a professional with principles of his own.
Since then, though, it feels like writers have steadily eroded or contradicted those traits. His professional code becomes inconsistent, his love for his children gets twisted or retconned into obsessive control and abuse, his family history is reworked to make him more and more toxic, and his villainy escalates to things like blowing up a city. And for what? Making Slade more evil clearly didn’t elevate him as a villain. It did the opposite, and it “bummified” him. He’s been mostly stripped of what made him interesting, and now he’s a huge joke in a lot of circles, whether it’s about his family failures, the controversial Judas Contract stuff, or just how miserable his life is.
What do you think ?