October in Opal

[arbre_rieur]

Four pages from THE SHADE 1...





Instead, the adventure's found him:



They fight. One of them wins.

Comments

[q99]

Agreed, but that's also where they were doing the overcompensating.

[drmcninja]

The problem there is that no matter how much they tried to over compensate, it was immediately washed out by how he kept being beaten by teenagers. Yes, immensely powerful and experienced teenagers, but teenagers none the less. It took some legitimacy away from him, methinks.

[q99]

I found him much more badass when he was losing legitimately, but giving a tough fight, to the likes of Cyborg, Starfire, Kid Flash, etc., than recent Deathstroke.

Partially because he also had a code of honor back then, but then dropped it more recently.

[icon_uk]

Yeah, the original Slade/Titans conflict was terrific. The fact he clearly actually, in some weird way, liked and respected the Titans for their abilities and commitment (A whole hell of a lot more than he liked his employers, the HIVE) but was still committed to killing them all, made for a very rich story, and as you say, he was a professional, with a strict code of honour (in his own way). I always think of the story where he has them set up to die in an atomic explosion, and when they show up three pages later, he seems almost genuinely pleased, and is all sort of "I gotta know, just for me, HOW did you manage to get out of that one?"

[q99]

Indeed. Recent Slade is a pale, 2-D imitation of that guy.