By Marv Wolfman, Steve Erwin, Willie Blyberg & others (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-93028-982-9
Deathstroke the Terminator is a flamboyant cover identity for mercenary/assassin Slade Wilson who underwent an experimental procedure whilst an American Special Forces soldier. He was invalided out but later developed fantastic physical abilities that augmented his military capabilities.
He debuted in New Teen Titans #2 (1980), assuming a contract that had been forfeited when neophyte costumed assassin The Ravager died trying to destroy the kid heroes. The deceased would-be killer was actually Grant Wilson, a troubled young man trying to impress his dad. Slade Wilson’s other children would also be the cause of much heartache and bloodshed over the years…
Deathstroke was an implacable Titans foe for years, instigating many complex schemes to destroy the team before a weary d̩tente was achieved, all of which led to the graphic novel under review here. In recent years Deathstroke has returned to the path of pure Рif complex Рvillainy.
This rather hard to find volume comes from that grim-and-gritty era when ruthless vigilantes and killers-with-a-code-of-honour were market leaders, so a villain-turned (anti)hero in the vein of Marvel’s Punisher was sound business sense. When the Terminator got his own title (with covers by the Punisher’s Mike Zeck, all included here at no extra cost to you) it instantly became a smash-hit: issue #1 even had a second printing – an extremely rare event back in the early 1990s.
Full Cycle opens with a detailed prose account of the events which led to the release of Deathstroke from Editor Jonathan Peterson before beginning the non-stop action with the contents of The New Titans #70 (October 1990) a fill-in issue by Marv Wolfman, Steve Erwin & Willie Blyberg, that abandoned the titular teens for an entire adventure of their greatest enemy as he undertook a highly suspicious contract in a war-torn South American nation.
‘Clay Pigeons’ found Wilson and his faithful aide-de-camp Wintergreen hired to keep a charismatic peace-making rebel leader alive whilst the republic of San Miguel negotiated a longed for lasting solution to decades of apartheid and revolution. But if every clique and faction needed Jorge Zaxtro alive who could be behind all the brutal attempts on his life?
That tale preceded ‘Titans Hunt’ an extended epic which heavily involved Deathstroke wherein the tragic mercenary was forced to kill his other son Joe – the hero code-named Jericho – but you’ll need to look elsewhere for that epic. Full Cycle commences in the aftermath of that tragedy as a deeply shaken Slade Wilson retreats to his home in Africa to lick his psychic wounds.
‘Assault!’ opens the campaign with a devastating mercenary attack on a train transporting nuclear material through Germany. At the same time a helicopter raid almost kills Wilson and Wintergreen. Later, we gain insight into Deathstroke’s past when the mercenary visits the bedside of a survivor of the railway raid – his estranged wife Adeline.
She was his army trainer, schooling him in exotic battle techniques before the secret experiment augmented his combat abilities. They found love and married but when Slade’s arrogance and neglect resulted in their son Joey being maimed by a terrorist dubbed The Jackal Addie shot her husband in the face and divorced him.
As she slowly recovers in a German hospital she has no idea that Slade has just killed her beloved boy…
Slade has never stopped loving Addie and begins hunting her attackers; reviewing his own past too since whoever attacked her is also targeting his few remaining loved ones. Even so, there must also be some other motive in play…
‘Kidnapped!’ builds on the frantic action and piles the bodies high as Slade closes in on the brutal and all-pervasive enemy, only briefly detouring to rescue a young boy abducted to force his mother to reveal her husband’s munitions secrets. Meanwhile somebody claiming to be the long-dead Ravager is slaughtering both Wilson and Adeline’s people, with a trail leading to the rogue middle-Eastern state of Qurac.
And then the CIA get involved…
‘War!’ sees Deathstroke go bloodily berserk in the strife-torn desert kingdom as its new ruler General Kaddam seeks to consolidate his power whilst demonstrating to the West that Qurac is still the World’s principal exporter of Terror. As his alliance with the Ravager looks set to shake the entire globe, a clandestine group hidden within the CIA makes their own move and their target too, is Slade Wilson…
After a near fatal clash with Kaddam and Ravager, Terminator is captured. Bombastically breaking out he drags the gravely wounded Wintergreen out of the Middle East as the scene shifts to Washington DC where the stolen Plutonium is being readied for use. ‘…Bombs Bursting in Air!’ sees the terrorists turn on each other before Wilson becomes an unlikely and utterly secret saviour of the free world after a savage final clash with the new Ravager…
Meanwhile, the recuperating Adeline has learned of her son’s death …but not yet who killed him…
The first Deathstroke epic ends rather inconclusively in ‘Revelations and Revolutions’ as writer Wolfman and artists Erwin and Blyberg laid plot threads for succeeding story-arcs. Slade is visiting Adeline in the aftermath of atomic plot when the covert agents within the CIA stage an all-out armed assault on the hospital where both she and the faithful Wintergreen are recovering. Never a dull moment…
Complex, violently gratuitous and frenetic, the tale is sometimes too complicated for its own good, but nevertheless the pace, varied exotic locations and all-out, human-scale action (like a James Bond film where everyone wears masks and tights) result in a frenzied rollercoaster of gory fun for any fan of blockbuster adventure. Deathstroke the Terminator is a perfectly-produced slice of lost DC history that still holds up and could easily find new devotees if given the chance…
© 1990, 1991, 1992 DC Comics Inc. All Rights Reserved.