Geo-Force vs. Deathstroke

[starwolf_oakley]

7 pages from LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT, a one-shot by Brian Meltzer and Adam Kubert. It has Deathstroke saying he used his Crazy Juice on Terra, as he used on Rose/Ravager and Cassandra/Batgirl.







Ollie! Roy! Lian! (I still feel a little ripped off that we never got to see how Bruce Wayne reacted to Lian's death, Roy going nuts and Ollie killing Prometheus.)



Did Geo-Force just use a Jim Kirk line on Deathstroke? (Though this came out about a year before the 2009 Star Trek movie.)



Pwned. With a capital P.



I know there were no "older" Teen Titans in the post-FLASHPOINT DCU, but I am curious if they will ever redo or refer to "The Judas Contract" and if Wilson's Crazy Juice will play a role. As much as I like Marv Wolfman, there *should* be a better explanation than "Tara Markov was a bad person who hated the Titans for no reason."

This one-shot ended with Hal Jordan being all, "Right, like the world is really going to end."

Comments

[cleome45]

"...As much as I like Marv Wolfman, there *should* be a better explanation than 'Tara Markov was a bad person who hated the Titans for no reason.'"

She had reasons. To those who sympathize with the idea of using power responsibly, they aren't very good reasons, but still...

[rdfox]

Read the Graymiotti/Conner Terra mini. They explain her psychosis quite nicely.

[cleome45]

Has it been scanned at all? And is this story about a resurrected Terra?

Because when it comes to resurrecting such a character, or retconning in new motivations, I'm more an advocate of, It wasn't broken, so why did they have to fix it?

The closest thing I'd be interested in seeing would be a story of Slade (and maybe Tara as well) as "unreliable narrators." Slade would be in denial of his part in encouraging her corruption. (And maybe Tara would wallow in her hatred as a way of denying that she wasn't as clever or deserving of rule as she wanted to be. She'd still be evil, of course. But maybe somewhat more sympathetic.)

But even that seems like it would belong more in fanfic or in an Elseworlds story.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Guh, easily the dumbest Deathstroke appearance around.

Why the hell would Deathstroke cultivate any weapons? He's a for hire merc, not Lex Luthor!

Hate how they try to white wash Terra's betrayal, just because the writer wanted her to be a hero. I swear, 90% of current comics is like glorified fanfiction now.

And lastly, Geoforce is a step below Superman in terms of sheer power. C-Lister or not, he should be able to put Deathstroke on the ropes without breaking a sweat.

[md84]

It's still not as bad as Deathstroke's Identity Crisis scene.

The whitewashing is so blatant here. Heck, in the original story Terra was so evil that Slade was AFRAID of her!

What's sad is that classic Deathstroke was smart enough to AVOID fighting people as powerful as Geoforce directly. The man knew his limits.

[nyadnar17]

moto. Having the original Terra be brainwashed really takes away from the character. She goes from being a dangerous villain to just another female lead astray by a man. I quite like the evil, spiteful version of her.

[md84]

She had reasons. Just not the kind of reasons anyone who wasn't a violent and manipulative person would find sympathetic. For crying out loud, she hated Raven mostly because Raven was the only Titan not fully buying her act. Hating someone for seeing through your BS just seems petty.

I really hope Slade's "evil juice" doesn't appear again in the reboot. It's just blatant retcon fuel. Want to make a former villain a hero without dealing with his/her bodycount and history of sociopathy? Handwave it away with Slade's crazy juice! It worked for Ravager since Slade didn't just inject her with the serum -- he also destroyed any chance she could have a normal life all so that she would have no choice but to turn to him, so she was already mentally unstable.

[mastermahan]

Deathstroke the supergenius chessmaster, forgetting that his opponent is holding a sword. This is probably the worst moment in Slade's career, and that includes the time Green Arrow beat him up with a katana. It does not get any lower than losing to frigging Geo-Force.

[espanolbot]

To be fair Ollie pushed Slade into a pit filled with glue and had about two dozen soldiers point machine guns at Slade prior to jumping into the gluehole too and beating up Slade.

Kind of seems equivalent of someone challenging someone to a martial arts fight, only to run them over with a truck immediately after they accept and then declare yourself the Greatest Fighter of All Human History while they're being packed into the back of an ambulance.

[mrstatham]

Yeah, but he deserved it. Slade needed knocking down for a change, after Meltzer magically changed him into an unbeatable monster in IdC, and then everyone ran with that for years whilst making him sink lower and lower in terms of what he'd do to the point where the character was just a piece of shit.

[icon_uk]

Yeah, the trouble was that Slade had no history with Green Arrow beyond whatever they retconned in. And Ollie, whilst no slouch in hand to hand, shouldn't have been anywhere near his league.

It should, by rights, have been a takedown by a former Teen Titan, and I think you can guess which one I'm thinking of! :)

[mastermahan]

Lord knows I'm not a fan of Godstroke, but flipping the Worf Effect around doesn't really make for a satisfying story. Whether Slade is stabbing the Flash or he's losing a sword fight to a guy known for being an archer, either way it feels like the writer is, well, stroking.

[lucean]

Just echoing with others here that the whitewashing of Terra's character was really unnecessary, in my opinion. Especially since it is not character who even fell or became corrupted, but someone who was from the very beginning on the side of demons. What story purpose or idea did that reveal even serve?

[starwolf_oakley]

Well, from a wider story perspective, it makes some sense. Deathstroke used his crazy juice on Rose and Cassandra. It isn't hard to imagine he used an earlier, unstable version on Terra that drove her too crazy to be useful.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

DC had a bad kick back then of making anyone associated with a villain by blood, or at the start of their career, evil. Hell, they even said Jericho had 'bad blood'.

So I guess Terra's relationship with Geoforce was enough to absolve her. But then they made Geoforce nuts.

Hmmm...

[mrstatham]

Really loathed this take on Deathstroke where he went from remotely sympathetic and interesting assassin to unbeatable thug who brainwashed children for the lulz.

And the treatment of Terra is even more dull. I mean, yes, it's uncomfortable to have such a young character be pretty damn cruel, spiteful and nasty, but it's different and it's genuinely interesting. To have Deathstroke just be the one pulling her strings is utterly blegh, and actually makes HIM seem even more skeevy.

[mrstatham]

Oh, and can someone please change Brion's record in that scene? I think it's kinda broken.

[icon_uk]

Adding my voice to the multitude, an awful retcon for Terra's actions.

Amongst other things this makes one of the best Titans issues, where, after Slade is acquitted for actions during the Judas Contract (because it's impossible to prove that he is the Deathstroke who attacked them, though he makes no bones about having used the identity, sometimes even at the behest of the US Government) Gar and Slade sit down in a diner and try to clear the air between them, and talk about Tara and what she was really like. The notion that Slade was lying in that issue is just... bleagh.

[kraesil]

The stuff in this post just makes me sad.

Why is G-Force saying that over and over again?

Given how screwed up the majority of DC is right now, I really don't expect them to pull it off if they decide to do a Judas Contract thingy...

[ruhig_knight]

Also feeling greatly disgusted with this retcon as well.

And as much as a fan I am of The Judas Contract and prefer the idea of Terra being a sociopath and the whole "sucker-punch" effect of the character, I'll admit I also had a couple problems with the story but this retcon? By the looks of it (and the introduction of a new Terra almost free from the Titans/JC baggage) DC wanted to redeem Terra but by doing this they made Deathstroke (their big assassin fanboy crush) very sleazy. I mean, he not only supposedly drugged a young girl but also had sex with her in that drugged state. And this guy's suppose to be an anti-hero with a moral code.

It makes some of the reasoning why the reboot wiped out The Judas Contract and now has a new Terra who could be Tara Markov, a blonde Atlee, or another entirely new female geomancer with the same name a little more clearer.

[protogarrett]

Is it shameful that I have never read the whole Terra story? I mean, like, none of it from first meeting to death.

I need to put that on the next request post.

[icon_uk]

Oh, and this is IIRC also just plain wrong. True, the Titans told Brion that Terra died a hero to spare his feelings, but Batman told him the truth. That's why Brion dumped his brown outfit and switched to the green and gold outfit he wore for years, he couldn't wear an outfit that was so close to someone who had betrayed him and everything he stood for.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Oh Icon, you silly goose. So what?

A writer should be able to ignore past canon and a logical narrative to tell a single story he wants to tell, right? Repeating old stories is awesome!

*cough*

Yet another reason why alot of modern comics seem to resemble paid fanfiction...

[starwolf_oakley]

I'm a little puzzled by everyone's responses.

No matter how professional Deathstroke *says* he is, it is very clear Slade Wilson is a petty, petty man. Destroying Bludhaven and drugging Cassandra Cain to spite Dick Grayson and Tim Drake respectively (for "taking" Rose away from him) make that obvious.

Given Deathstroke's common use of his Crazy Juice, is him using an earlier prototype on Terra that painful of a retcon? Maybe I have to read Judas Contract again, but "Terra joined, betrayed and tried to kill the Titans for the lulz" puzzles me as being one of the greatest superhero comic story ever (despite George Perez being a great artist).

[icon_uk]

Thing is, the Bludhaven/Crazy Juice bits were all added in after Identity Crisis had chronically damaged the character. He hadn't been that petty before, he actually LIKED the Titans (Well some of them) and certainly respected them for what they did, even if it was something he couldn't do. There really is sweet FA in common between the Deathstroke the Terminator who targetted the Teen Titans (and which Slade noted many times was very much against his usual pattern and only did it because his son had taken on the contract and died in the process), a professional mercenary who has a very self aware notion of his own limitations and sees no benefit in exceeding them, and the "I make stabby" type who fought the JLA, more or less for fun and killed tens of thousands because Dick Grayson had inconvenienced him.

And yes, to be honest, it really IS that painful a retcon, it removes the agency of Terra as a villain in her own right, and makes her nothing more than Slade's drugged puppet. Tara Markov played against every physical stereotype that was going, she was the cutte as a button Kitty Pryde-type ingenue in appearance and manner, masking the mind of Sabretooth's more nihilistic evil twin.

[runespoor]

it removes the agency of Terra as a villain in her own right
This. If they wanted to redeem Terra, they should've worked on that rather than on a way to make her not responsible for everything the character did.