LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT: Geo-Force vs. Deathstroke

[starwolf_oakley]

With the posting of "The Judas Contract," I am posting "Conversion" the story in DC UNIVERSE: LAST WILL AND TESTIMENT. To some, it is Brad Meltzer and Adam Kubert (with Joe Kubert on inks) wrecking "Judas Contract."

8 pages of a 39 page story. Trigger warning for the word "whore."



During FINAL CRISIS, there is some worry the world is going to end. (Again?) So Geo-Force is going to settle accounts with Deathstroke.

Geo-Force narrates how his family kept the Nazis and the Soviets out of Markovia. And a general taught him an important lesson: we survive because we prepare.



*Has* anyone tried this on Wilson before?





Didn't Brion already learn the truth about Tara?

A beaten Geo-Force decides Slade won't get final say and use him against his friends. So he uses the sword to cut his own throat, which is Slade's "trigger."







That's Jefferson Pierce, a.k.a. Black Lightning talking to Brion on the last page. The final page of the story is Hal Jordan telling Barry Allen the world isn't going to end. "This is the life."

I get the problem some fans would have with this. "Judas Contract" said Tara was insane. "Hey, the most innocent member of the team is really a crazy lady! Wild, huh." Plus, the idea that Slade drugged Tara with "prototype crazy juice" to boost her powers removes her agency.

But... Deathstroke drugged Rose with his crazy juice to get her on his side. Then he drugged Cassandra Cain with the same crazy juice to punish Tim Drake for "taking" Rose away from him. As I've said before, Slade Wilson is a petty, petty man. "Let me drug Tara so she will hate the Titans (who she doesn't know) enough to help me kill them" does not seem to be beneath him.

Comments

[kd_the_movie]

I wish it would've been explored more that Brian really was trying to kill himself and only struck when he saw the chance.

[q99]

-
But... Deathstroke drugged Rose with his crazy juice to get her on his side. Then he drugged Cassandra Cain with the same crazy juice to punish Tim Drake for "taking" Rose away from him. As I've said before, Slade Wilson is a petty, petty man. "Let me drug Tara so she will hate the Titans (who she doesn't know) enough to help me kill them" does not seem to be beneath him.-

Though he only became that petty with time, in the last few years before this.

It fits with modern Slade, not original Slade.

[superboyprime]

As it happens, Meltzer wrote an essay about reading the Judas Contract as a young teenager:

'Dammit, where were the teenage girls who’d like insecure, loud-mouthed boys wearing Lee jeans like me? And then, out of the George Perez blue sky, comes this fifteen year-old fast-talking blond with super powers who could control the Earth itself. You better believe the ground quaked beneath my feet. Sure, she was trying to blow up the Statue of Liberty, but that was only because terrorists were threatening to kill her parents if she didn’t take Lady Liberty down. She didn’t want to do it, though–remember her words? “I don’t want to do any of this!” Look at the back issues. There were tears in her eyes as she begged Changling to stay away. “Don’t make it harder on me,” she begged. “Please!!” No question, this was a girl who needed help. She needed someone to come to her aid. She needed me.'

[icon_uk]

I'm glad I read the whole article, or I'd have thought he missed the point of the arc.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

....and yet, looking at these scans...

In the (nw) Terra mini that follows, it's stated that Terra's own powers drove her insane. And in the Outsiders series, Geoforce becomes increasingly unhinged.

So yeah, DC, in a manner that would embarrass fanfiction writers, totally changed Judas Contract Terra from 'evil, just because' to 'evil because mean ol' Slade'.

Oh, and Joey was evil too because he had bad blood, but that's another gripe...

[icon_uk]

Yeah, the whole "evil is inherited" seems to have been a rather worrying obsession of DC at the point with, I hate to point the finger, Goeff Johns in particular.

We had Joey being evil because it was in the blood (And apparently nothing to do with the possession by several hundred corrupted souls), Superboy could barely open his mouth without going on about how he was worried that being half Luthor (another Johns retcon) made him intrinsically evil , and the "struggling aginst everyone's expectations to be a hero" Captain Boomerang Jr was thrown under the plot bus in Darkest Night IIRC.

[q99]

Cassandra Cain, of course. Heck, even Miss Martian had her evil future self trying to take over her body because she's a white martian, thus evil.

.. you know, it's really impressive Steph never became the Cluemaster's successor or sidekick or something.

[ruhig_knight]

Yeah Johns had a hand in a lot of that though with Joey I think it was Winick who evoked it the most in his Titans run with Wally ranting about how Joey couldn't be trusted because "Bad Blood" to Roy Harper of all people and everyone evoking double standards for Joey and Raven who recently went all Trigon herself. But yeah, Johns put Joey on that path complete with his old friends not seeming to give shit about him and Gar lumping him with "the crazy Wilsons" when listing traitors(which of all the characters that's actually plausible for Gar but still)

[silicondream]

But... Deathstroke drugged Rose with his crazy juice to get her on his side. Then he drugged Cassandra Cain with the same crazy juice to punish Tim Drake for "taking" Rose away from him. As I've said before, Slade Wilson is a petty, petty man.

Er...but weren't the other crazy juice incidents written at roughly the same time? Seems like i's not really an illustration of Slade's established character, so much as a momentary spike in crappy stories about crazy juice.

That said, I don't really have a problem with how the crazy juice stories depict Slade. He can be petty, sure. What bugs me is the agency loss for Tara (not because she "deserves" more agency but because she's more interesting that way), and Cassandra's sudden transformation into unrecognizable cackling villainy.

[freezer]

Yeah, the "Slade Drugs Everyone" thing feels like it belongs on the same page as "Charles Xavier Is Retroactively David Xanatos": Someone wanting to put their "mark" on a character and taking a flamethrower to what came before is incidental.

[q99]

Agreed, it ends up undermining a lot.

[icon_uk]

Brion is shown to be a complete and utter idiot in combat here, I'm talking Identity Crisis "Deathstroke takes down the JLA" level of idiot.

Apparently this story reworked his powers significantly, presumably to make this OOC scene work, because otherwise Slade is doomed from the get go.

Aside from little things like his formely super-durable skin (able to resist and the power of flight, Geo-Forces' primary powers are super strength, all out lava blasts and, oh yeah, gravity manipulation.

Brion could make Slade weigh about five tons if he wanted to have him pinned down (and possibly his bones breaking under their own weight if you wanted to get all 90's gritty and angsty, which this appears to do, ten years late).

And even allowing for all that this is still a mess. The whole "Slade was apparently manipulating every female character he met with drugs" is a comparatively recent retcon to the narrative, only going back as far as Geoff Johns Teen Titans run IIRC. So this is simply adding to that, and has always struck me a fairly shitty thing to do to The Judas Contract.

[laughing_tree]

"By the way, without your powers, you have no way of pulling that sword out."

[icon_uk]

Perhaps my confusion arose from the panel on the previous page where Slade (now apparently an expert in how such acquired powers work) says that Brion now has Tara's powers too, which suggested a power increase, not a decrease.

[kd_the_movie]

it was a hanging plot thread from Meltzers Justice League run that Slade had somehow tampered with Brions power so that he lost his gravity manipulation but gained Terra's earth bending powers.

[icon_uk]

.....

.....

...of COURSE he did...

because presumably somehow Slade understood the technology that Dr "I'm actually a Manhunter Spy" Jace used to give Tara and Brion their powers (They were never standard metahumans) well enough to futz it up.

Le sigh

[john_wyatt]

I think this will join my list of stories I disregard (right there will Norman Osborn's resurrection and his impregnation of Gwen Stacy).

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Well, he does have a superbrain and lots of money, so he could have maybe hired someone?

What baffles me the most is why he'd even bother. They treat Deathstroke as some criminal mastermind, when he's a merc. Point him at a target, and kiss that target goodbye.

What would he need with two unstable geomorphs? How does that work towards his noble goal of 'get paid to kill things'?

[starwolf_oakley]

This means I'm wrong. It isn't the Crazy Juice, it is the nature of the powers. I think.

[halloweenjack]

Nice to see that my policy of never spending a penny on anything that Meltzer has done is fully justified.