By Sean McKeever, David Hine, Yildiray Cinar, Georges Jeanty & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2919-1
Deathstroke the Terminator is a flamboyant cover identity for mercenary/assassin Slade Wilson who was treated with an experimental serum whilst serving as an American Special Forces soldier. He was invalided out but later developed fantastic physical abilities that augmented his military capabilities.
He debuted in the second issue of the New Teen Titans in 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 very troubled young man desperately trying to impress his dad.
Slade’s other children would also be the cause of much heartache and bloodshed over the years…
After years he tracked down his illegitimate daughter Rose Wilson Worth. The child already had severe daddy-issues but after abducting, brainwashing and torturing her with the serum that created him he turned her into something even he couldn’t predict.
Doped and delirious, she gained physical abilities ands regenerative power like his but, in a moment of madness, cut out her left eye in a manic attempt to become just like dear old dad.
She was saved by Dick Grayson in his Nightwing persona and began a long, not entirely successful, attempt to throw off Wilson’s dire influence and sadistic parenting. After the events of Infinite Crisis she joined the Teen Titans, but found them an extremely poor fit…
This exceeding dark chronicle details Rose’s mounting struggle to come to terms with her killer instincts and conflicting determination to be nothing like her sire, gathering the one-shot Faces of Evil: Deathstroke #1 from March 2009, Teen Titans volume 3, #71 and the short back-up serial from #72-76 and #79-82 (July 2009-June 2010), beginning with ‘The Beginning’ from the aforementioned Deathstroke special, courtesy of writer David Hine and illustrators Georges Jeanty & Mark McKenna.
Following a rare defeat and well-deserved, life-threatening beating, Slade Wilson is somehow failing to recuperate in super-penitentiary Belle Reve. In his traumatic delirium he triggers a security lockdown and the harassed authorities call in Rose to save hostages and tackle her dad, the deadliest man alive…
Typically, their savage rehashing of old times ultimately frustrates the heartsick and agonised Ravager and only allows Deathstroke a chance to spectacularly escape…
With readers by now fully clued in to Rose’s ghastly past, the main event opens as ‘Fresh Hell’ (Sean McKeever, Yildiray Cinar & Julio Ferreira) opens with ‘Homecoming’ and Ravager’s return to Titans, concealing her growing addiction to adrenaline substitute Epinephrine – which gives her a kind of combat precognition – and growing dissatisfaction with the judgemental attitudes of child-heroes who have never experienced episodes of genuine “kill-or-be-killedâ€â€¦
When a misunderstanding leads to bloody battle with atomic ace Bombshell, a meeting is called to discuss Rose’s future but the action junkie decides to jump before she’s pushed…
The Terminator’s daughter has finally shaken off her father’s malign influence and joined the forces of good, but almost nobody seems to believe her so she gets on her bike and heads north and away…
Some time later, the hallucination-wracked rider is robbing a pharmacy for more Epinephrine, plagued by a conscience which manifests as her preachiest ex-partners (such as Wonder Girl and Miss Martian) and desperately outracing pursuing cops. Even with the drugs her clairvoyance is diminishing and now she’s also suffering from rather inconvenient blackouts…
She snaps awake in a frozen wilderness, having crashed. Trekking over uncounted icy miles, she eventually reaches a small town filled with the unfriendliest men she’s ever met and has to break a few heads and limbs just to get a meal. However at the height of the battle she just keels over…
Slowly regaining consciousness, she’s informed by the local medic of Angelsport, Northwest Territories that his examinations have uncovered a cruel fact: all the adrenaline she’s been snorting has wrecked her heart and other organs to the point where not even her serum-based regenerative capabilities will fix them if she doesn’t stop.
Will the barman is slightly friendlier than the rest of the town, but even he is hiding something. So when she beds down in the cabin he’s provided, Rose is waiting for a next move.
It comes in a massed attack of gunmen using rocket-propelled grenades…
Despite explosively escaping and despatching many assailants, Rose is forced to run: chased by the surviving ambushers who send her to a watery grave in the frozen ocean…
They’ve grievously underestimated the Ravager, and when she follows Rose discovers the reason for the town’s hostility. The entire place is a smuggling port and former spy Will is a ruthless entrepreneur using contacts in Russia and a submarine to provide highly profitable, illicit merchandise: weapons, drugs, underage girls…
Rose is utterly determined to end him and his business and rescue the stolen children but she’s never faced a foe like Will, and before her mission is over she will have to decide if she’s a shining champion and protector or just a bloody, red-handed avenger…
With covers by Cinar, Ladrönn, Joe Bennett, Jack Jadson & Guy Major, Fresh Hell is a nasty, violent and extremely dark blend of superhero drama and real world criminal depravity that will satisfy Fights ‘n’ Tights fans with a penchant for the raw underbelly of action/adventure.
© 2009, 2010 DC Comics Inc. All Rights Reserved.