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This time around, I decided to play with a couple of
villains from different publishers who share common
roots. In this case a common creator, George Perez.
George is one of the most prolific artists of the last
30 years, working for almost every comic company to
publish during the time he's been a professional
artist. However, the characters we're concerned with
today are from Marvel and DC.
You could say these guys are cut from the same cloth,
though their back-stories and abilities originate from
different sources, probably the result of different
writers' involvement. In most other ways they are
nearly identical. Of course, I'm talking about
Taskmaster and Deathstroke, the Terminator.
Before I get started, I'd like to plug a website that
I used for most of the Taskmaster info:
http://www.taskmastersite.com/
Gotta appreciate the thoroughness and dedication of
the creators of the site. Good design, too.
Taskmaster is something of an unkown quantity. We
have been shown a bit of his childhood life, when he
learned that he had a single, very effective,
super-power. It is assumed he is a mutant and that his
mutation is the source of his "photographic reflexes",
the ability to duplicate any athletic or physical
skill he has witnessed, even viewing athletic
performances on television. Later, he used archival
video records of costumed adventurers such as Captain
America and Daredevil to duplicate their skills, moves
and fighting styles.
When he was first introduced, Taskmaster was revealed
to be an established villain, who had managed to
remain "under the radar" up to that point. He had used
the wealth he had amassed in his own criminal career
to establish a "crime college" on Long Island, New
York. This is not to be confused with the "crime
college" from the old Doc Savage pulp series, which
was a kind of mental institute for the criminals Doc
apprehended, where he performed experimental brain
surgery that altered the behavior of criminals so that
anti-social behavior was no longer possible for them.
Taskmaster's "crime college" was more like a
finishing school for criminal henchmen. It was his
goal to be the #1 supplier of what we might call "hero
fodder", the disposable lackeys, henchmen and such
that super-villains tend to run through like a high
school football team through a buffet.
Of course, the problem with any operation of this
kind and size is, you can't run it all by yourself.
Taskmaster had a partner, Dr. Pernell Solomon. Solomon
had a heart condition and used the equipment
Taskmaster had acquired to grow a clone of himself, to
provide a compatible donor. I guess that whole
Hippocratic Oath thing went right over his head, eh?
Solomon's clone escaped, as they usually do, and
despite having been grown in a lab for parts, he had a
fairly advanced knowledge base and surprisingly well
developed emotional responses and the like. The clone
escaped and managed to alert the Avengers. The
Avengers, as heroes often do, charged in and smashed
the place up. No more Crime College. This didn't put
Taskmaster out of business, but it did put him on the
heroes' radar.
Taskmaster has some of the things I like in a
costume. Always loved the cuffed "bucaneer" boots, and
a big, billowy cape. The hood is cool too, with the
skull mask. Plus, lots and lots of weapons. The only
things I really hated were the colors, which were from
the limited, pre-digital pallette and the way he was
characterized. Now, people who know me, know that my
writing "voice" is quite a bit different from my
speaking voice. I am smarter than I sound, in person.
I can take some of the twang out of my voice, but I'm
a Texan, and I don't usually do it. I guess that's
what writer David Michelinie was going for with
writing Taskmaster. he talked like your typical thug
from the northeast. Yawn. I don't say he needs to have
a cultured, pedantic speech pattern, but something a
bit more professional.
As for the colors, well, we can do something about
that. Lose the orange. Ugh. Take the white into gray,
blue and black, are good and a little red for
emphasis. The mask, I simplified, make it a closed
mask, concealing some of that ultra-tech so he could
have night-vision and air-filters, comm gear, too.
A few months after Taskmaster appeared over at
Marvel, a new villain appeared in the DC Universe, in
the pages of The New Teen Titans. Like Taskmaster,
he's been active a lot longer than we've known him,
just behind the scenes. He had forged a successful
career as an assassin, as Deathstroke, the Terminator,
but he would be known as The Terminator for most of
the time.
Deathstroke, the Terminator is Slade Wilson, a
military veteran who volunteered for a medical
experiment that increased his strength and speed, and
possibly his mental abilities, by increasing the
portion of his brain he can actively use to around
90%. Coupled with his fighting skills and an array of
weapons, he's pretty formidable. When he left the
military, he became a mercenary and assassin.
Years later, he was offered a contract to kill the
Teen Titans, but he turned it down. The contractee,
H.I.V.E., contacted Wilson's son, Grant and offered to
give him powers like his father's so that he could
take revenge on the Titans, whom he blamed for ruining
his life by accidentally destroying his apartment.
Pretty weak, as motivation goes, until you figure how
hard it is to find an affordable apartment in
Manhattan, I guess. Grant's body rejected the
enhancement serum and he died from it, in battle with
the Titans. Deathstroke took up his son's contract and
fought the Titans, but couldn't beat them.
Later, Wilson entered into a relationship with a
young (and I do mean YOUNG) metahuman, Tara Markov, in
a plan to destroy the Titans. She joined the team as
Terra and they very nearly succeeded in bringing down
the Titans, but Nightwing and Wilson's other son,
Joseph, freed them. Terra was killed in the battle.
She was a bad girl, she smoked and wore too much eye
makeup and everything!
In the Teen Titans cartoon series, Slade Wilson is
known as Slade, though there are definite "Terminator"
elements to his costume, the face mask, especially.
He's cool and efficient, but he's not the comic
version by a long shot. He seems a lot less
independent, to me.
I do like elements of the toon costume.
But, for my version, I want to go back to the cloth
face mask. I mixed elements from the original costume
and the toon version. The armor I preferred is similar
to Captain America's armor in "The Ultimates". I think
the blue and gray work well together, with a few
red-orange elements to break things up and
silver-metal for the metallic parts. I had to keep the
boots as close to the originals as possible, I always
loved that style. (Yes, I grew up in the '70s and wore
big bell jeans)
Well, that's enough for now. Back next month.
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