Two Eyes? Deathstroke Don't Need No Stinking Two Eyes!

Throughout Deathstroke's many incarnations one signature design element is almost always present: His half-dark mask. But the reason that the left side of the mask is dark is that underneath that side he has lost an eye. Over the course of the years readers have been shown the fatal fate of his right (our left) eye, which like most things in the DC Universe is a multiple choice affair. Below, we take a look at Slade's missing eye(s). (Ha! See what I did there?)

The original, and in my opinion best story of Deathstroke losing his eye was told in Tales of the Teen Titans (1980) #44 as the third chapter of the now legendary Judas Contract storyline. Adeline Kane accuses Terra of working with the Terminator to bring down the Teen Titans. Adeline is joined by her son Joseph and tells the origin of both Deathstroke, and her son Jericho. Slade has been acting as a mercenary and assassin for years without ever telling his wife, Adeline. A rival mercenary, known as the Jackal, arranged for an armed attack on Slade and Adeline's home resulting in the abduction of their son Joseph. Once they track down the Jackal, he wants Slade to give up information regarding his clients. Slade refuses this request citing his own professional ethics. Slade trusts that his enhanced reflexes and training will allow him to rescue Joseph without betraying his professional ethics. Slade did rescue Joseph, but not before one of the Jackal's men had begun to slit his throat, rendering poor Joseph unable to ever speak again. These events are depicted below.

Adeline was furious to the point of hate with Slade as he valued his professional ethics and reputation far more than the life of his own son. Adeline tried to take Slade's life shooting him at close range, but his enhanced reflexes saved his life as Adeline's bullet only took Slade's eye.

Jumping to the New 52 continuity, Teen Titans (2011) # 23.2 depicts Slade taking a job to sabotage a North Korean nuclear facility with his son Grant , the Ravager, as his partner. After completing the job, Slade and Grant hole up in the home of one of Slade's old friends. Long story short, the North Koreans find their hiding place and attack it with extreme prejudice. The onslaught of the house resulted in the both "death" of Grant and the loss of Slade's eye as depicted below.

The last tale of Slade's missing eye took place in Deathstroke (2014) #s 1-2. Deathstroke was hired to take out an old associate named Possum.

But it turns out that the Possum job was a set up and that Possum was hired by Odysseus to kill Deathstroke. Possum speaks a codeword that triggers Slade to reveal coded information via a post-hypnotic suggestion. Once Slade reveals the information he is mentally incapacitated. Possum takes Slade's swords and begins slicing him to shreds. Slade turns the tide and apparently kills Possum, but just for the moment. As Slade escapes he is met with a ninja-like hit squad also sent by Odysseus. Between the mental trauma of the hypnosis and the physical attacks of Possum and Odysseus' hit squad, Slade's healing factor was pushed beyond its limits. In dire straits, he manages to make his way to a safe house run by the mysterious I-Ching.

But Slade got much more than even he bargained for as I-Ching's methods seems to have caused Slade's healing factor to restore his body not only to health, but to youth as well as pictured below.

Slade apparently required more proof than
a restored and functioning eye to prove that
he had indeed been rejuvenated. Why this
was that proof is beyond me.

Fast-forwarding to the end of the Godkiller storyline in Deathstroke (2014) #10, after Deathstroke kills the (Greek not Teen) Titan Lapetus, Hephaestus informs Slade that the killing of a gods comes with a blood sacrifice that must be made by the killer. To not make the blood sacrifice would bring the wrath of the remaining members of the Greek pantheon down upon Deathstroke himself. After refusing to sacrifice either of his children, Slade sacrifices the one thing he knows he can live without as seen below.

They apparently took it.

Deathstroke's Post-Flashpoint/New 52 Daddy Issues

Originally, I planned to do some silly geneology-styled family tree for this post, but the affairs of the Wilson family are seldom simple. It seems at one point or another everyone tries to kill everyone else (Or at least Slade) due to one unforgivable transgression or another. While Slade manages to reconnect time-to-time with his two youngest children at some level, his relationship with his father is never as repairable. Complicating matters even further is the fact that after the Flashpoint event remade the DC Universe, Slade seems to have more than one father. So let's delve into the issues of Slade's two dads (Yep, I just referenced that crappy sitcom).

Nathaniel Wilson

In Deathstroke (2011) issue #8 (the final issue of Kyle Higgins' run), Slade's father, Nathaniel Wilson, was formally introduced. Nathaniel fancied himself a hardened street-level criminal and con man who always had things going on. In reality, he was a life-long loser who, during Slade's childhood, regularly moved he and Slade from town to town because he owed everyone who was a criminal anyone large sums of money due to the frequent failures of his own criminal enterprises.

When desperate, Nathaniel would stoop to common street muggings just to raise enough cash to keep his illegal "creditors" at bay, though he would still get roughed up as a continual reminder that his debts were far from being paid in full. These violent events often played out in front of a young Slade who would normally then himself pay a physical price as his father's proxy victim after the humiliation of getting beaten up by the mob debt collectors.

Eventually, Nathaniel's debts became more than he could ever pay. To settle a $10,000 debt to the criminal, Rossi, Nathaniel took Slade to secluded area of the Grand Canyon. When Rossi arrived, Nathaniel handed over his own son to him as payment for the debt. It was this particular event that built the fire in Slade to not only begin his own dark business pursuits, but to be the best in the world at them, if for no other reason than to show his father that he was far better at them than Nathaniel could ever have been. To further drive this point home, once Nathaniel became old and feeble, from time to time, Slade would visit his bed-ridden father's home in Gary, Indiana to place cutouts of newspaper articles chronicling his various exploits on a bulletin board facing his bed. As Nathaniel could neither speak, nor could physically remove the articles from the wall, he had little choice but to confront the facts that Slade had indeed far surpassed anything he ever accomplished in his life.

OR...

Charles Henry Wilson,
A.K.A. Odysseus

In Deathstroke (2014) #1-6, Tony S. Daniel introduced us to Slade's father, Charles Henry Wilson, also know as the super-villain, Odysseus. Charles Wilson was a former CIA. operative that went missing after an assignment in Russia went bad. It is revealed that Charles had a metagene that allowed him great physical and psionic abilities and that this gene was passed down to his grandson, Joseph, (A.K.A. Jericho). Somehow Charles' body was recovered by the League of Assassins who in turn abducted Jericho to use his power to bring Charles back to life as Odysseus. Upon his resurrection, Odysseus had the ability to control the minds of large groups of people, as he demonstrated on a groups of fighters in Syria. It is also revealed that it was Charles' metagene DNA that was used to bring about the enhancements of Slade's physical and mental abilities, turning him into the Deathstroke that we all know and love.

Some online Wikis claim that after the Russia debacle, that Charles actually survived and went into hiding by adopting the Nathaniel identity. The problem with this theory is that Nathaniel and Charles simply can't be the same person because, as Slade claimed in Deathstroke (2014) #3, "I haven't seen my father since I was twelve." If that were the case, then who exactly was the Nathaniel Wilson that Slade visited in Gary, Indiana since Slade was clearly an adult in Deathstroke (2011) #8? Furthermore, in Deathstroke (2014) #4, Slade seems a bit taken aback when he realizes that Victor Ruiz and his Dead Bastards group want him to take Odysseus out. Slade states that, "...you want me to kill my own father," and further claimed that if Ruiz hadn't, "monkeyed with my brain. I would have never agreed to it." It seems to me that he might not have been as hesitant to kill Nathaniel as he is to kill Charles, especially after the whole being sold to a mobster to settle Nathaniel's debt bit.

This multiple fathers conundrum may just be a simple case of a retcon, or even just poor title editing. Regardless of which father is the real father, it's safe to say that Slade's father completely sucked. Not that Slade of father of the year material, but then again, he hardly had a descent role-model in in that department. I'm going to continue trying to sort this Nathaniel vs. Charles business out and I will post an update if I am finally able to crack this mystery in the future.