COLD BASTARD #5 - Deathstroke, the Terminator

WHO IS HE?

Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke the Terminator. He's a top level mercenary/assassin/supervillain who regularly goes up against the biggest names in the DCU. And usually gets his ass handed to him by them.

WHERE IS HIS PROOF OF BASTARD?

See The Teen Titans.

COLD BASTARD LESSONS LEARNED?

It's ok to beat, mutilate and murder children for your own ends. Especially if they are YOUR OWN CHILDREN.

THE STORY

Slade here has shown over his long feud with the Teen Titans that nothing is off limits: After one son Grant is killed accidentally, he uses a teenage girl (Terra) to infiltrate the team and eventually betray them. While he's sleeping with her. Which is creepy no matter how you slice it. When this gem of a plan fails, he escalates his conflict until he murders his other son, Joseph (Jericho). After this, Slade kicks back doing, well, I don't really want to know. It was the 90s, and let's just assume it wasn't very good. After taking this little vacation, what does Slade do? He injects his only surviving child, his daughter Rose, with a serum to give her superpowers and drive her so batshit crazy she cuts out her left eye. Ah, the family that mutilates together stays together. Or something. He also manipulates, drugs, and tortures various other teens into forming an anti-Titans team, but that also didn't work out so well, as you might imagine.

Clearly, this guy has issues with kids, and is quite possibly one of the worst dads in comics (but trust me, there's a LOT of competition there). But what sets it apart is just what an emotional void he is about it, and how this never even seems to mildly upset him. At all. However, Slade doesn't reach much higher on account of scale. Yeah, he's a meanie, but he basically limits it to the sadistic bullying of a bunch of teenage sidekicks. He lacks a certain ambition and drive to reach higher. Probably on account of the fact that if he pulled the same shit on adult heroes, Batman would completely school him.

NEXT UP: A more familiar face!