Deathstroke: The Terminator #4: Sins of the Father

Normally villain storylines go out of their way to make the villain empathetic and, in doing so, strip away the layers that make them an interesting antagonist. In these four issues, especially in issue #4, Tony Fleecs has been able to make readers empathize with Slade without making us forget he’s the bad guy. The writing accomplishes this by framing the entire story arc as retribution for Slade’s mistakes and showing how the proverbial bill gets paid by the other characters in Slade’s orbit.

As the story’s been set up, the person who has paid for Slade’s sins thus far has been Wintergreen, but in issue #4 Tony Fleecs introduces Rose, aka Ravager, Slade’s daughter, who first debuted in Marv Wolfman’s Deathstroke the Terminator #15 way back in October 1992. Rose herself takes center stage in this issue as the focus of Slade’s characterization, where she is used to reflect all the bad parts of Slade’s character and history back at him to remind readers that even though we’re rooting for him, Slade is still a bad guy.

Slade’s influence on Rose’s personality is clear, yet she has her own voice and isn’t hard to separate from her father at the same time. That kind of character writing, and the scenes it creates, is hard to come by and makes for a particularly good read.

Even while this issue mostly takes a break from the action that has filled the previous three issues, Carmine Di Giandomenico’s art and Ivan Plascencia’s colors still shine. Most of the rest of the issue uses these stacked panels, putting five or six panels on top of one another, which creates a rhythm to the visuals. However, a number of pages break this rhythm by using a grid, splitting panels down the middle half of a page, or even by mixing different layouts together in an overlay.

Normally it’d be easy to get lost in such a dense and varied arrangement, but Carmine Di Giandomenico keeps the panel transitions tightly focused without changing the perspective too rapidly. By doing this, a 14-panel-long back-and-forth conversational scene is able to keep an even pace while delivering Tony Fleecs’ emotional dialogue.

Ivan Plascencia brings a much-needed lightness to the issue. While the art is densely detailed and the dialogue is emotionally heavy, Plascencia’s colors bring roaring flames to the early action beats and warm daylight to the bulk of the issue. As Slade and Rose air out their problems, the basis for a strong bond between them is made clear through how the characters act towards each other, but the colors reinforce that basis by creating a lighter atmosphere, contrasting the dark and explosive battles of the previous three issues with calmer and cleaner textures.