Wednesday marked Week 3 of DC's New 52 relaunch and I picked up all 13 of the new #1's that came out. While all of the titles were great, one of my favorites was Deathstroke #1, written by Kyle Higgins with art by Joe Bennett and Art Thibert. For those of you not familiar with the character, Slade Wilson a.k.a. Deathstroke the Terminator was first introduced back in 1980 as a high-level mercenary who took up a contract to kill the original founding members of the Teen Titans. While Deathstroke has remained a ruthless mercenary during his 30 years in comics, the character became fairly two dimensional with one of two motives: Taking out the Titans or punishing/torturing his own children. For a character with so much potential and bares such a credible threat in the DC Universe, Deathstroke had lost a lot of steam in the last few years leading up to this new relaunch.
Now under the guiding hand of writer Kyle Higgins, Deathstroke is back to his true glory. From the moment you open the first page, you can clearly see that Deathstroke is a badass. During an assignment to assassinate a Russian government official, Deathstroke finds himself surrounded by over a dozen armed guards. As the Russian tells him that the odds are "clearly in our favor", Deathstroke simply chuckles and then proceeds to take out each guard in 3 moves and beheads the Russian with his HUGE trademark sword.
What Kyle Higgins has done, that made this issue so great, is that he brought Slade Wilson/Deathstroke back to basics. He didn't give him any alterior motives or making plot towards a greater goal. Higgins makes Wilson quite simply the best mercenary in the world, making the only problem that he is confronted with is people underestimating him because of his age. Higgins stays true to the Terminator's origin, referencing the fact that Wilson was given an injection of an experimental drug that grants him enhanced strength, speed, reflexes, and a sped up healing factor.
Perhaps one of the best elements of this issue was seeing Slade Wilson deal with his supporting characters: Christoph, his handler, and a new, young team that Slade is forced to work with on a job. It is through these supporting characters that we see the brunt of Slade's ego and utter disrespect for people that he sees as inferior to himself.
All in all, I would give this book a 4.5 out of 5. It is excellently written, has a great pace with enough story to entertain for a single issue, but also can lend itself to a setup to a better, long-run storyline. The action in the panels jumps off the pages and will leave you wide-eyed saying "WOW!" out loud. Kyle Higgins was quoted as saying before the issue came out, "We're going to show why he's the greatest mercenary assassin in the DC Universe." I must say: Mission accomplished. If you haven't yet, go out and buy this issues ASAP!