Monday, August 15, 2016

SHADES OF SLADE: Amalgam Comics' Dare The Terminator

Slade Murdock: Dare the Terminator
As the DC and Marvel Universes merged during 1996 inter-company crossover, forming the Amalgam Comics universe, a number of characters from each fictional universe also merged into completely new people. A funny thing happened though when DC's Slade Wilson (AKA Deathstroke the Terminator) and Marvel's Matt Murdock (AKA Daredevil) merged as the two he's somehow became a she. Enter Slade Murdock: Dare the Terminator. As a courtesy for the remainder of this post, I will combine the original character names with a plus sign in an effort to clearly describe the Amalgam character and their constituent identities with the DC character listed first.

As depicted in the DC Comics-published Assassins (1996) #1, Dare the Terminator (Deathstroke + Daredevil) was former big time New Gotham City power attorney, Slade Murdock, who walked away from practicing law when she no longer had faith that the law could truly provide justice. Having been trained by her father to fight, Slade became a successful mercenary despite the fact that she was both blind and had lost an eye to a bullet from the assassin Deadeye (Deadshot + Bullseye). Slade earned the name Dare because of her reputation for accepting dares posed to her regardless of how outrageous they were. Knowing this about Slade, New Gotham City mayor Enigma Fisk, AKA the criminal mastermind the Big Question (the Riddler + the Kingpin), had her abducted so that he could have prosthetic devil horns permanently affixed to her head to make her look like a literal "daredevil."

Wanting her eliminated, the mercenary Tombstone the Ravager (the Ravager + Tombstone), hired the assassin Catsai (Catwoman + Elektra) to take out Dare. After an initial confrontation between the two, Dare and Catsai joined forces to kill Tombstone instead. The two assassins then formed what would become a close friendship with one another. Evntually the pair took a contract from a mystery client to kill Mayor Fisk. En route to the Big Question's tower office, Dare and Catsai manage to fatally dispatch both Deadeye and Lethal (the Cheetah + Kraven the Hunter) as well as lay out Wired (Manhunter + Cable) after a wicked brawl. In the final showdown, even though Dare lost her remaining eye, her horns, and apparently her life to the Big Question, Catsai did manage to land the death stroke (See what I did there?) on him, to put him down for good. Luckily for Dare, Dr. Strangefate (Dr. Fate + Dr. Strange) would later bring her back to life. Little else is known about Dare other than she had two daughters; Jericha (just mentioned and not actually appearing in any book) and Terra-X (Terra + Terrax the Tamer).