After launching a new volume of Robin and the comic book series Deathstroke Inc. last year, writer Joshua Williamson is sending the two titles on an epic collision course. The upcoming crossover event “Shadow War,” slated to launch this March, is the prologue to this epic showdown between Deathstroke and Talia al Ghul set to unfold in March’s Robin #12 and Deathstroke Inc. #7. The issues set Damian Wayne and Slade Wilson up for the bloody confrontation that will shake the DC Universe to its very core.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, Williamson provided an update on how Robin and Deathstroke have changed going into “Shadow War.” He also teased how the crossover will directly inform DC’s big summer comic book event Dark Crisis. Also included are unlettered previews of Robin #12 and Deathstroke Inc. #7. Robin #12 is penciled by Roger Cruz, inked by Norm Rapmund, and colored by Luis Guerrero. Deathstroke Inc. #7 has art by Stephen Segovia and is colored by Hi-Fi. Robin #12’s cover is from Viktor Bogdanovic, while Deathstroke Inc. #7’s cover is by Howard Porter.
Damian has dealt with the League of Lazarus. This opening story in Robin really leaned into his mother’s side of the family and the legacy of the Demon’s Head.
Joshua Williamson: The initial two-parter that we did in Batman and Detective Comics was called “Demon or Detective.” Robin #12 is called “Demon vs. Detective” because this story is about playing with those two sides of who he is. We’ve spent so much time playing with the detective side that I did want to play around with the demon side. In the beginning, he chooses the detective side because he’s like, “The Lazarus Tournament is a case, I want to go explore that.” What it does is pull him to the demon side. He doesn’t realize it at first, but it’s really a back-and-forth between the two parts of who he is, trying to reconcile those two pieces of his life and learning as much as he can about both sides of his life. We spent a lot of time with his mother’s side of things.
Instead of the Teen Titans, this story had Damian team up with different teenage superheroes like Connor Hawke, Ravager, Flatline, and Respawn. What was it about these characters that made you want to use them for the story?
The selfish answer is that it was all just characters that I liked. [laughs] I’ve always liked Ravager and Connor Hawke as characters, and we created Flatline and Respawn. There was a selfish part of me that knew these are characters that I like and wanted to write. When it came to Hawke, I felt like there was no way I could do a tournament storyline that didn’t have Hawke in it. I felt the same way about Shiva but wanted to push Shiva off for a later storyline that we’ll get to. We hinted at [it] in Issue #11 when she talks to Connor –that was the plan from the beginning. I actually thought she was going to come back earlier… [I was] hoping to get her in Issue #7 or #8 but it just didn’t work out, so we moved the scene to #11 instead. I really like those characters and felt they just fit the story we were telling.
DC is full of orphans. I wanted to take Damian and have him be around other orphans that had gone through similar things that he had gone through, like with Hawke who had been rejected by his father. I felt like they were very similar characters, like Ravager and the weird love-and-hate relationship with her dad. I thought that was a very interesting thing to explore. It was the same thing with Respawn and Flatline. I just wanted to put them all in there. The dynamic and chemistry between the characters just came really well and I felt was really organic. It’s fun. I picked the right group of characters for Damian to bounce off of.
While Damian worked with the Bat Family and Teen Titans before, he always came off like a bit of a jerk. This story was really about Damian learning how to play nice and make friends.
Ravager says in Issue #2, when Damian says that he has friends in the Titans, “You kidnapped those people!” [laughs] He forced those friendships. Outside of Jon Kent, I think most of his relationships and friendships are forced. The first time Jon met Damian, that wasn’t forced at all. I think the reason it felt so good was because it was very organic and given room to breathe in the Superman run Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason were doing. I think some of that was because Tomasi and Gleason had a relationship with Damian doing Batman & Robin, so when they jumped over to Superman and Jon, they knew [Damian] so well it made sense.
I wanted to show Damian make friends in a more organic way that let him lead the story in a way. There were major beats on the book that I wanted to hit, but there were surprises along the way for me as I was writing those characters. I wanted Damian to get to a stage where he had built this little network of friends, going through something together [with them] rather than him being like, “I need them and want to use them,” which was a lot of times his relationship with the Teen Titans. He saw them as tools, so I wanted to build something where he wouldn’t see [his friends] as tools but felt a real friendship with them. That was a priority.
Over in Deathstroke Inc., Slade Wilson has been a real moral rollercoaster ride. By the end of this recent issue, he tells Black Canary that he’s going to be the bad guy that everyone makes him out to be.
I don’t think it’s that everyone makes him out to be a bad guy — he is a bad guy! [laughs] He’s a bad person and, historically, DC has tried to make him walk the line a bit, but it never feels right. He’s never going to be a hero, that will never happen. I remember when we announced the book, I would talk openly about this, saying, “He’s a villain. He’s always going to be a villain and this book is about him becoming a villain.” I would then see people somehow interpreting that as “This book is going to be about him turning into a hero!” I was like, “What?!” [laughs]
This book has always been about him knowing what we know. We all know he’s a villain. It’s about him really coming to terms with that and deciding that if he’s going to [be a villain], he’s going to go big. That’s where the idea of him being the King of the Supervillains and taking over the Secret Society [came from]. This ties into Dark Crisis and “Shadow War,” but if you look at Deathstroke Inc. #2, he’s close to the Weird when the Weird explodes, when he gets free. In that moment, he gets a glimpse of different things happening across the DCU. One of the things he actually sees is himself inside of the Great Darkness when Darkseid is talking about the Great Darkness in Infinite Frontier. He’s inside it in that moment.
In Issue #7, when he’s talking to Ravager, he says, “I’ve seen something horrible and everybody seems aware that something bad is building. If this bad thing is coming, I’m going to be ready for it.” He becomes more and more aware of what’s coming, building this whole tapestry of books that has been connected the whole time. Deathstroke Inc. is connected to Infinite Frontier and Justice League Incarnate. Batman is connected to Robin. You start to see all these pieces. Deathstroke has always been a bad guy and he knows things are getting worse in the world. He knows how to plan for things and what he wants so let’s show it…
There are a lot of twists and turns coming that will surprise people. I always tell people that solicits and covers can be very misleading on purpose. With Shadow War: Alpha #1 there’s a big secret we didn’t reveal and you only know if you read the books. You’re not going to get the full story from covers and solicits.
If there was ever a weak spot for Deathstroke, it’s his relationship with his kids. We’ve seen that as far back as “The Judas Contract.” How does that affect him here with Ravager and Respawn in the mix?
In Issue #7, we reveal who Respawn really is and you see [Deathstroke’s] reaction to it. Deathstroke is a broken person and broken on many different levels. [He] is not mentally well. What Deathstroke is going through is silly to call a midlife crisis, but that’s kind of what it is. You take this awful person and he’s just doubling down on being awful. Then his kids always get in the way, like you were saying. Every time his children come in, it does something to him. We also know he’s just an awful father.
When you get to some of the elements we introduce in Issue #7, he has to open up a little bit and explain why he’s doing what he’s doing and how much the death of [his son] Grant really impacted him because his introduction to the DCU was because of Grant dying. The stuff with his kids will keep building and getting bigger in some of the major stuff we do. The stuff we do with Respawn and Ravager will play a major role in “Shadow War” and the stuff that happens after “Shadow War.” His kids and the death of Grant still impact him to this day, and you see it in Issue #7.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the artists for Robin and Deathstroke Inc., of course.
Roger Cruz does Robin #12 and he’s been doing a great job. [He] and Gleb Melnikov have been going back and forth on this book. Roger really landed all the big emotional beats in Issue #12, with Damian and Damian versus himself and Talia. All those major beats, Roger just nails it. Stephen Segovia does Deathstroke Inc. #7 and I’ve worked with him a few times. Every time we work together, Deathstroke is in there somehow so it worked out that he was able to do this issue. He really nailed what we were looking for with all the emotions for Deathstroke, Respawn, and Ravager!
Written by Joshua Williamson, with art by Roger Cruz and Stephen Segovia, Robin #12 and Deathstroke, Inc. #7 go on sale March 22 from DC Comics.
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