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With all due respect to the other writers, I don't want to disparage any other writers; I don't want to have to invent a bigger villain than Deathstroke so Deathstroke can seem heroic fighting this bigger villain. I'd rather just have Deathstroke be who is, and he's kind of a bastard.
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'Deathstroke' became an interesting challenge - not just because of his ethnicity, but because he's a villain. I've never written a villain as a protagonist of a series before. I thought this could be an interesting challenge. That's really what got my attention, and it just went from there.
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What makes a good villain is someone who doesn't just challenge the hero but comes organically out of that character's history and circumstances.
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If we can provide even a fictional roadmap to what a successful, prosperous African nation might look like, then let's do that.
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I quit comics in 1988 and trained as a bus driver. I used to drive those big Greyhound coaches out of New York Port Authority and down to Princeton, New Jersey. It was, hands down, the best job I ever had, and I profoundly regret having left it. I kept that job the entire time I was on staff at DC Comics in the '90s.
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Deathstroke,' in my view, is a family drama. It's like the 'Sopranos' with super villains.
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In comics, my experience has been mostly artists whose visual storytelling chops are either weak or they're more invested in rushing to a paycheck than in doing work they can be proud of.
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Writing 'Deathstroke' presents a number of challenges to me. As a Christian, as a minister, it's difficult for me to write a comic book that all but glorifies violence. So my take on 'Deathstroke' has been to not so much celebrate violence but to deal with the consequences of violence.
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When I read comics, they were dense stories. When you put them down, there was a sense of having gotten a great deal from them.
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If the League were real, today, they'd most likely be sued by every person they ever saved. They'd be subpoenaed by every authority in every jurisdiction imaginable; hearings upon hearings. There'd be waves of accolades followed by tsunamis of boos from social media.
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Hollywood is, of course, loaded with egos, but it's amazing to see how, despite the egos, those collaborators pull together and focus on telling a story rather than butt heads and sabotage what is extremely hard work and investment just because their ego apparently demands it.
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If you could access 90 percent of your brain, you'd be Charles Xavier.
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The 'Black Panther' series was never really about the Black Panther at all. The State Department guy, Everett K. Ross, was the series protagonist, so politics was simply a logical part of the character's tool set.
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In my opinion, I feel like all versions of 'Deathstroke' are valid. Just like with 'Black Panther,' I felt like it wasn't good for a writer to say another writer's work was invalid or never happened.
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You don't want to have a character say what's bothering him; you want to define characters by action.
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The way that I process and make writing work is I'm really telling true stories; I'm just putting them in a cape and putting an 'S' on its chest.
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Deathstroke is the dark-mirror version of Batman, basically. He is every bit as resourceful, every bit as ruthless, every bit as powerful as Batman.
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My 'Black Panther' run really wasn't about Black Panther. It was about Ross. It was about exploding myths about black superheroes, black characters, and black people, targeted specifically at a white, male-dominated retailer base.
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I never really considered 'Quantum & Woody' a comedic book or a funny book. I never thought of it as a satire.
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If I could make Panther tough, mysterious, wily, and often at odds with his 'Avengers' comrades, that was a character I'd find interesting.
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I think everybody wants to feel validated in some way, and when you're looking for leisure activities or if you're looking for escapism or things like that, you want to read about characters you can identify with.
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Not liking me because I'm black is so juvenile and immature, because there's many reasons to not like me.
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I wanted to demonstrate that Deathstroke does not need to solve every problem with his fists.
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Some people might shy away from a character like Deathstroke because, you know, all of the blood-letting and the swordplay and violence and all that other stuff.