David Hine & Deathstroke's Faces of Evil

The Pulse reports: "When you think of some of the Faces of Evil in the DCU, Deathstroke has to be in the top ten. The thorn in the New Teen Titans' side has been wreaking havoc in their world for over twenty-five years. He's grown from seeking revenge against those heroes to going up against some of the brightest heroes the DCU has to offer and held his own or bettered most of them. His recent bout with Geo-Force, a hero seeking his own revenge against Deathstroke, left the villain apparently dying in a hospital room. But, Slade Wilson's been down and close to out before. Writer David Hine picks up this Faces of Evil crossover shortly after Last Will and Testament. He told THE PULSE, "This story is about Slade Wilson coming to terms with his own toxic influence on anyone who comes close to him. And he deals with it in his usual uniquely psychotic way.""

"THE PULSE: Deathstroke's got a very unusual extended family in the world of comics, which, if any, of his children show up in these pages? Who are some of the characters he encounters here?

HINE: In those opening scenes he symbolically confronts most of the key family members, both the quick and the dead. In the real world it’s all about Rose. They have a very focused confrontation, one-on-one in a sealed room and it gets pretty harsh. We also introduce a mystery new character, who will feature large in Deathstroke’s life.

THE PULSE: What are the biggest challenges of you, personally, getting into character like this? How tough was it for you to get in touch with your mercenary side?

HINE: No problem. I’m a freelance writer! My keyboard is for hire.

THE PULSE: For me, Marv Wolfman and George Perez defined this villain, especially in The Judas Contract. How big of an influence are those two men on your vision for who and what Deathstroke should be?

HINE: I absorbed all this stuff in a very concentrated dose, so I haven’t lived with the character in the way that a lot of readers will have. The Wolfman/Perez version was of his time. He was Robin Hood by way of Green Arrow, James Bond by way of Nick Fury. But all the key aspects of his personality were established in the early years. He’s an introspective character, with a questionable grip on his own sanity, who generates a field of destruction around him that draws everyone into it. I don’t know how Wolfman and Perez would feel about the more nakedly amoral character he’s developed into, but that development feels pretty organic to me, quite in keeping with the established character."

Read the whole interview here!