WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Deathstroke Inc. #5 by Joshua Williamson, Paolo Pantalena, Hi-Fi, and Steve Wands, on sale now from DC Comics.
DC’s heroes may not exactly be failing to do their jobs but they aren’t always succeeding at them either. At least, that’s what some people think. In a world that’s been rewritten over and over again by Crisis after Crisis, the heroes being unable to prevent these huge changes to all of reality could be seen as colossal failures. With that in mind, the world’s latest hope of salvation against the next reality-shattering event has come from the most unlikely of places.
The shady organization T.R.U.S.T. has already been uncovered as wanting to bring order to the multiverse by Deathstroke and Black Canary. They recently uncovered that the villain Libra was behind it all but it was revealed to be a much bigger conspiracy in Deathstroke Inc. #5.
The Secret Society of Supervillains has returned. This group was led by the original Libra during Final Crisis. Now, this new version of the obscure villain has reformed the team for a new purpose, to save the world. Although this seems like an odd thing for these villains to work towards, their reasoning makes sense and it ties directly into the larger cosmic strokes of the DC Multiverse.
The Secret Society of Supervillains was created by Gerry Conway and Pablo Marcus and first appeared in 1976’s Secret Society of Supervillains #1. The group was originally created by cosmic villain Darkseid but has gone through many wildly different variations through the years. This new version of the group is made up of more obscure villains like Prometheus and the Calculator. Thanks to the roles of larger villainous figures like Lex Luthor, Joker, and Cheetah in the Perpetua Crisis seen in Death Metal, some of the smaller ones believe that certain powerful individuals in their community should be quietly taken off the board, for the safety of the multiverse. That’s why Deathstroke and Black Canary were hunting down big-time villains for T.R.U.S.T., to ensure they couldn’t bring about a new Crisis. As all these villains play much smaller roles in the DC Universe, they’re the ones that end up changed most by these big reboots. That is if they even exist at all after the cosmic dust settles.
So, for once, DC’s villains (the smaller ones at least) have an altruistic goal. The reason they hired Black Canary to be a part of T.R.U.S.T. was to give their operation legitimacy. A hero on their side meant the world would believe they really were doing good. As well as that, it would encourage other heroes to join T.R.U.S.T. too. That would lead to an alliance between heroes and small-time villains. They would take down the bigger baddies and defend against multiversal threats. If this all sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.
Obviously, this society is still a villainous one. If they wanted to save the world in the same way that heroes do, they would have become heroes. As the Calculator explained, the way the Secret Society of Supervillains motivated its members to join their cause is money. Luthor and Joker wanted power, which has proven too dangerous, so money is the next best thing. After all, it can only do damage financially and doesn’t threaten their entire existence if anything goes wrong.
This supervillain team may want to save the world but it’s for all the wrong reasons. Where heroes do it for selfless reasons, the Secret Society wants to do it for money and self-preservation. They’ll do whatever it takes to survive, even if it means fighting their own peers. However, whenever the next Crisis does roll around, isn’t it better for the heroes to have all the help they can get? Perhaps, but there’s no guarantee that their new “allies” will stay on their side forever either.
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