In an interview with CapelessCrusader...

>In an interview with CapelessCrusader, Christopher Priest has outlined his plans for both the Deathstroke comic he is currently writing for DC Rebirth, but also how this will affect the Titans books. Specifically the storyline that launched Deathstroke in the first place, from Marv Wolfman and George Perez, The Judas Contract – itself up for an animated movie – will b rewritten and crossed over for Deathstroke and Titans, written by Dan Abnett.

>He tells them,

>>We’re doing a JJ Abrams-ing of “The Judas Contract… we are not dismissing that or ret-conning that, but as JJ Abrams did with “Star Trek,” we are now telling our own alternate version of it because of the speed force, and was Wally there or was Wally not there, and where was Starfire, and was Terra really underage when Deathstroke slept with her?

>Which means for Priest,

>>In order for the Deathstroke book to function, I need to tell the definitive, at least post-Rebirth, version of Deathstroke’s origin. Which involves the at the time Teen Titans, so I need to know who was in, who was out, and all that other stuff. So that’ll be the first half of the year, we’re just rebuilding Deathstroke’s cast and establishing Deathstroke, so that’s 1-11. Issue 12 will begin the second arc where it’s retelling that classic story and basically retelling the Titans origin over in “Titans,” and retelling the Deathstroke origin over in Deathstroke. Dan and I are kind of collaborating on it.

bleedingcool.com/2016/08/16/christopher-priest-to-jj-abrams-teen-titans-the-judas-contract-and-prepares-deathstroke-for-a-tv-series/

How long did YOU think it would be before they redid Judas Contract?

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And people thought Titans won't have "it's a Deathstroke episode" episode.

I thought about a year at least so it happening before then is just bleh

Anyway it sounds like they may keep most of the NTT crew out of the new telling? Or at least Raven, Beast Boy, and Cyborg, since Starfire is attached to Dick at the genitals when on teams usually. Makes sense since they may want Cyborg to stay a JLer and for Raven and Beast Boy to be younger than 18.

Man I hope they keep the statutory rape inact.

Damian vs Trigon when

This is gonna get really weird since the Wolfman era titans' ages are all fucked up.

Speed Force fixing it, 5 years brah

Ignore current Dick is 21/22, Wally is like 25/mid 20s? (he remembers Linda), Donna is Donna, Roy's old enough to have had drug problems at least.

Hopefully they just replace Raven with Lilith since they're both garbage characters but Lilith doesn't come with Trigon and replace Beast Boy with another funny guy like Roy or something

>Jeremy Radick: Your focus for the last years have been outside comics, what was it about Deathstroke that brought you back to an ongoing title?

>Christopher Priest: Okay, so, for the past, oh man, eight or nine years, every 18 months I’d get call from Marvel or from DC or an independent and they’d go, “Hey! You know we’re doing all negro comics! We want you to come back!” And you know they’re doing Black Goliath, Black Lightning, they’re doing Black Potato-Man. You know, I’m not really sure how it happened, but once upon a time I was a writer. I was writing “Spider-Man,” I was writing “Green Lantern,” those mainstream sort of things. And somehow over the years I went from being a writer to being a “black writer.” You know? So for the longest time I’ve been saying to anyone who would sit still and listen that I would love to do comics, but I’d like to be competitive with everybody else, and I’d like to be considered as a writer. I said, “Look, I’ll take the worst, most dog-faced character you got, the character nobody wants, and I’ll be happy to do it.” But we’d have these conversations every 18 months, and I would kind of say no, I really don’t want to do that and I would go, “Hey, how about Martian Manhunter? I would love to do Martian Manhunter, he’s green! I can do that one!” And they would go, “Well….” So they would want me to do stuff that I wasn’t really excited about, and I would want to do stuff that they weren’t necessarily excited about, and then we’d just go okay well, we’ll see you in 18 months and do this all over again. And that how it’s been going. So it wasn’t like I was refusing or I was retired, or anything like that, it was just we couldn’t, none of the companies could match up with what I wanted to do.

JR: And so Deathstroke…

CP: Deathstroke! What happened was, and I wasn’t going to tell the story, but Dan DiDio, the publisher of DC, he told the story to the press. So thank you Dan, so I’ll tell the story too (laughs)! DC called me up and offered me Cyborg. And I gave them the speech. Blah, de-blah, d-blah, everything I just said. Thank you, I thought that was that, see you in 18 months. Then the next week I got a call back from DC and they said, “Well, what do you think about Deathstroke?” And I said, “Give me a minute. Oh, you mean the bad guy from the Teen Titans?” They said yeah. “Is he black?” (laughs) Because they’ve been changing the characters so much, some of the characters are black now. They said, “No, no, no, he’s still a white guy.” And I said, “Okay, I’m listening, keep going.” I gave it some thought.

To be honest, if they're going to re-do JUDAS CONTRACT, it's better they do it now while Christopher Priest's writing DEATHSTROKE and Dan Abnett's writing TITANS.

Can you imagine someone like Tony Daniel and Scott Lobdell re-doing it?

>I didn’t know he had his own book. I haven’t read comics in God knows how long. I thought, he’s a villain, this could be really interesting. If I could do it my way, if I could get introspective, if I could make it character-driven and get inside his head, you know, like what makes a guy like that tick. Because this guy is a complete and total bastard. Over the years, in his own book, and with all due respect to the other writers who handled him, they kind of moved him from hard right to kind of centre-right, if not centre-left. Where he’s not so much a villain, he’s kind of an anti-hero, super-soldier. My Deathstroke is a villain. He is an absolute bastard. The Rebirth issue is only three days old, only been out for so long, and I’ve gotten tons of email from people going, “You know, he’s really unlikable! We’re not happy about that.” And my retort is always the same, “He’s a villain!” Not sure which part of that really confuses you. He is a total and complete bastard, even to his own kids. And I think he’s an emotional cripple who struggles because he obviously does love his kids, and he’s fighting against his own nature because he’s a complete and total bastard. And I think for the first six issues or so, I’m really trying to hammer that home, and really trying to underscore and explain to the world, because they seem to have forgotten, [that] Deathstroke is a villain. He’s not an anti-hero, not a mercenary, not morally confused or morally challenged, he is a complete and utter bastard.

>We’re doing a JJ Abrams-ing of “The Judas Contract"
Probably the most unfortunate phrase I've heard all day.

>JR: So, he may be fascinating, but he’s not cool, you know what I mean? He’s not a role model or someone admirable.

>CP: He really should not be a role model. For some reason he’s very popular, and a lot of readers really dig Deathstroke. I don’t know if they’re going to dig my Deathstroke, so I’ve been hiding under my desk for a while! Because they’ve kind of gotten used to this modern-day Conan the Barbarian. And I have him doing a lot of rotten things, and reaping the consequences of those bad things. Inasmuch as Deadpool, and I used to write Deadpool, so I’m not knocking Deadpool. Inasmuch as Deadpool, it’s kind of a parody and in it’s own way kind of glorifies violence. And the Deathstroke book had glorified violence for a little while. My book is not really about the violence, but about the consequences of that violence and the consequences of this guy living this lifestyle. And the personal struggles that he goes through because of it.

>JR: Would you say that writing an ongoing, you’re back on one for the first time in a while, is it like a riding a bike or are there muscles that you have to train again?

>CP: Oh, yeah, there’s definitely muscles that you have to train to get back into it. It’s been a little easy so far because the editor, Alex Antone, and I had developed a storyline that lasted about eight or nine issues. And then we presented it to the higher-ups and they said, “Oh, no, no, no! We like the storyline, it’s a good storyline, but we don’t want to lead with that storyline. We need to lead with who Deathstroke is and re-establishing his character, and all that stuff.” So we went back, and we worked with Geoff Johns, and developed storyline number two, which is seeing print now. So, because we had already had these other eight issues, we’re adapting that stuff into the new storyline, but as a result we ended up having ten or twelve stories that are in various stages of development. So it’s been pretty easy, me knowing what’s going on for the first dozen issues or so. And they’ve been coming out pretty regularly, in terms of my end. The art is a different story, because artists, they always use every possible day in the calendar. We have two separate art teams, and they alternate with each other.

>crossing over with Titans
Fuck you DC I don't want to read that garbage.

>JR: Because the book will be a twice-monthly, right?

>CP: It’s twice-monthly, which is a real challenge to put out. But so far it’s been really easy. Now once we move past issue 12 or so, then we’re doing a big crossover with the Titans book. And we’re doing a JJ Abrams-ing of “The Judas Contract.” The original storyline that launched Deathstroke and is like the definitive Teen Titans storyline from Marv (Wolfman) and George Perez. So, we’re kind of building a firewall around that story to say, “Yes, this absolutely happened.” We are not dismissing that or ret-conning that, but as JJ Abrams did with “Star Trek,” we are now telling our own alternate version of it because of the speed force, and was Wally there or was Wally not there, and where was Starfire, and was Terra really underage when Deathstroke slept with her? And all that other stuff. So Alex and Dan Abnett, the writer of “Titans,” they are working out all those details. In order for the Deathstroke book to function, I need to tell the definitive, at least post-Rebirth, version of Deathstroke’s origin. Which involves the at the time Teen Titans, so I need to know who was in, who was out, and all that other stuff. So that’ll be the first half of the year, we’re just rebuilding Deathstroke’s cast and establishing Deathstroke, so that’s 1-11. Issue 12 will begin the second arc where it’s retelling that classic story and basically retelling the Titans origin over in “Titans,” and retelling the Deathstroke origin over in Deathstroke. Dan and I are kind of collaborating on it.

JR: Sounds great. Deathstroke’s family is central to his character and his origin. But that’s become pretty convoluted in terms of continuity. How do you untangle the family, but keep the power of those relationships, while introducing it all to a new reader?

CP: We cheat. I’m a guy, you know, who knows how painful it is to have the next writer come along and say what you did never happened. I hate to do that. Luckily, because of how Geoff Johns set up the whole Rebirth thing, I don’t want to give any secrets away, but Doctor Manhattan, it’s all his fault! (laughs) We have this plot device that enables the reader to decide, maybe for the first time in history, the reader gets to decide what’s in and what’s out. But, for our purposes, we are telling our own sort of composite history. A lot of Deathstoke’s family history was thought up over a lot of years. Like the stuff with Grant, the older son. And then they thought we’ll do this business with Jericho, then they came up with Rose and then Rose had a bunch of history on her own, and so forth and so on. So we are saying all that stuff exists, but what I’ve done is just compressed the timeline so some of that is happening at the same time. At the time that Joseph’s throat gets slashed, Deathstroke is out of the country rescuing Rose and her mother from Cambodia.

Holy shit, you mean they're finally bringing Terra back? That was the one fucking thing I wanted from this book. Fucking wow, I am so putting this on my pull list.

>Originally those events happened years apart but if we told the story the way it was told in the original comics, all I’d be doing for the first two years of my book is explaining all of that stuff. But basically we’re trying to keep all of the major highlights of the history. Some of it we’re kind of ignoring, but most of it, the key parts, not only are we saying they’re existing but we’re re-telling the story. For the first six months or a year or so, Deathstroke has a current day story and you will see these flashbacks to roughly ten years ago where we’re retelling the story with his boys and then in issue 2 he meets Rose in Cambodia and in issue 3 Rose makes her debut as a grown up in this series and so on. Unfortunately some of it is a hand wave to how many times have they killed off these characters. So some of it is, we’re not saying it didn’t happen, but we’re really not talking about it. I’m trying to write Deathstroke as if there had never been a Deathstroke comic before. So if you’ve never read Deathstroke, you know nothing about Deathstroke, you don’t even like Deathstroke, sample the Rebirth, sample the #1. Because Geoff and I kind of talked about it, and we wanted to set this series up as if it were a motion picot or a television series. Rather than have Geoff and the TV people come in and adapt it to that, why don’t we just set it up as if it was a TV show in the first place and make it as translatable to the screen as possible.

Abnett & Priest are GOAT writers so I'm game.

Wally remembers Linda from Speed Force. He was dating Lilith when he got lost, his entire marriage is in that stolen 10 years timeline. All of them should be 20-21 now.

shit taste.

>JR: Last question; are you having fun being back on an ongoing with DC?

>CP: So far, yeah, but that’s just because we did all this advance work. If I know what the story is, all I’ve got to do is type. I can be a typist. So that’s easy to do. I’m running out of those issues! (laughs) And now Dan and I have to start working on the Titans thing, that’s going to be actual work. So, ask me again in a few months

capelesscrusader.org/kccc-2016-interview-with-christopher-priest-on-his-return-to-comics/

>they actually offered him Cyborg
THE ABSOLUTE MADMEN

I want a Priest written MMH now. I hope it's his next book.

>“Is he black?” (laughs) Because they’ve been changing the characters so much, some of the characters are black now
kek

I love Priest honesty. Most black writers wouldn't voice his complaints in fear of either DC or Marvel not hiring them back.

>DC called me up and offered me Cyborg.
I fucking knew it.

>Abnett
>GOAT
user are you drunk?

user DC is definitely playing the long game. They lured him in with Deathsroke so they can get him to write Cyborg and Milestone shit one day.

He's already doing Milestone stuff, although he's not writing it, just overseeing it all. He called himself its Geoff Johns.

That's good to know that Milestone has a competent writers as it's Geoff Johns.

“The Judas Contract…is it something that young readers can read like me ?....

I'm glad some black guy spoke up. Most people who go [insert minority] writers on [insert minority] characters are guilt-ridden white liberals or BLM members.

This is going to be super weird if Wally has huge effect on this story. He quits superheroing JUST BEFORE Judas Contract. Wally quitting Kid Flash mantle and Dick becoming Nightwing happen right at the prologue of story.

Lilith will probably the Raven replacement and I can see Cyborg joining somewhere down the line but I have no idea how Beast Boy will be replaced.

Maybe Wally was the one to have a boner for Terra instead.

It'd be weird since Terra was already with Beast Boy in the New 52 plus it looks like they're going with Linda again for Wally.

Maybe Beast Boy ends up having something to do with the story after all? dunno.

Eh, somebody having a crush on Terra wouldn't be too hard to replace.

Well he was a slut before Linda tamed his loins.

Beast Boy being young than anyone else is so fuck up. Just as Raven being young.

I seriously hope they don't set up a Damian x Raven relationship.

>It'd be weird since Terra was already with Beast Boy in the New 52

The Ravagers comic was awful and should be ignored going forward. That shit is heavily tied to Scott Lobdell's retardation.

I mean, even Lobdell's ignoring all his previous writing with the new Red Hood and Outlaws book, so why should other writers remind things that came from his hands?

>because of the speed force
that's a good as explanation as any.

Man, Ravagers was the only thing I liked from the Lobdell monstrosities.

But you're right. It really should be forgotten going forward.

Honestly I don't give a shit if it's Alan Moore on Titans and David Lynch on Deathstroke -- it's still fucking RE-DOING things, wasting precious time and space on stories we've already seen and read and bought paperbacks of

Much as I liked Priest's first ish I disapprove of this shit mightly

Normally I'd be against a retelling of Judas Contract, but Priest and Abnett writing it and the story being planned so far in advance make me cautiously optimistic

This doesn't sound bad especially if it's not a proper crossover and just kind of similar arcs coming out at the same time.

I really hope they leave out Raven and Beast Boy

Raven is the most annoying Titans characters in general and Beast Boy's shitty "thing" with Terra is one of the worst plots/relationships they constantly remind you of

>DC called me up and offered me Cyborg.

I knew it

They won't be in it since Abnett's Titans just involve the original TT.

>Damian x Raven relationship.
My DAMI IS TOO YOUNG FOR RAVEN..

Rereading the Judas Contract has really made me realize how shit the Judas Contract was.

Better than the new 52's style "stuff might or might not be canon, we'll never really clarify it" nonsense they tried to roll with at the start. As long as it doesn't drag out too much I don't mind reestablishing things just so people can know character history. Whole book doesn't need to be rehash though.

Do you remember how THE RAVAGERS ended? That awful cross-over between DEATHSTROKE, TEAM 7, THE RAVAGERS and i guess SUPERBOY where Harvest hired Deathstroke to capture all the Ravagers crew and hand them to Harvest so that Harvest would leave Rose Wilson alone. That was never solved.

On top of that you still had the whole TEAM 7/THE RAVAGERS subplot mess where we learned that the real Caitlin Fairchild died years ago in TEAM 7 due to techno-organic virus and that The Chief from Not-Doom Patrol create several clones of Caitlin Fairchild because he was in love with her, with the at-the-then-current Caitlin Fairchild being nothing more than one of his clones that somehow ended up working for Harvest in his Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E. organization.

There were so many stupid shit in those comics that i don't them never to revisit them ever again.

>DC called me up and offered me Cyborg.


CALLED IT

i'm hype for Brett Booth art

Why did you had to remind me of that fucker's awful art again? Now i lost my hype.

>oh hey a Team 7 book set in the dc universe
>oh it's by Justin Jordan so it mite b goo-
>oh
>oh no what's even happening here

STOP

Most of them don't have his rep so they can't afford to do this.

But honestly these days it might be more of a PR concern to say it than direct fear of hiring. Like you don't want SJWs crying about how you're self-hating or some nonsense. Priest can get away with it because people know him but if you're a literally who you can't speak out like this. Closest thing you might see is female writers saying they want to write nasty stuff and not just fluffy kiddy womanchild shit that seems to be popular these days.

I've blocked everything from that era out except for like the first two or three issues. Honestly, I just remember that I liked it more than the Lobdell shit.

d-don't take that away from me user.

Yeah instead of keeping Raven brainwashing Wally into falling in love with her, they could change it to Terra manipulating him.

It's obviously going to be ignored or retconned into something like "Terra was taken by NOWHERE from a different timeline" type of bullshit.

>it looks like they're going with Linda again for Wally
Wally had a long list of girlfriends before Linda, hell they already established Lilith as being one. Two of his exes went batshit on him, so it's not out of picture.

Just tweet at Percy and get him to give us Damian/Emiko

>So some of it is, we’re not saying it didn’t happen, but we’re really not talking about it. I’m trying to write Deathstroke as if there had never been a Deathstroke comic before. So if you’ve never read Deathstroke, you know nothing about Deathstroke, you don’t even like Deathstroke, sample the Rebirth, sample the #1. Because Geoff and I kind of talked about it, and we wanted to set this series up as if it were a motion picot or a television series. Rather than have Geoff and the TV people come in and adapt it to that, why don’t we just set it up as if it was a TV show in the first place and make it as translatable to the screen as possible.


This is very interesting. I wonder if we'll start to see some direct adaptations of Rebirth storylines the way they're talking with that being a priority.

Man... to be honest i felt a sadistic urge to remind you of all the stupid shit that happened in THE RAVAGERS, but you know what? I won't. Just... never try to read that book in it's entirety. Leave your good memory of it intact.

He has been on his game and somewhat readable. Still not good but he's not killing the book yet.

I'm appalled how DC managed to utterly fuck the WILDSTORM characters integration to the greater DCU back then. Just... holy fuck. Just so much potential thrown out the window.

>implying anyone ITT has read the Judas Contract

They're planning something new with them at least. Some announcement for NYCC.

>It's obviously going to be ignored or retconned into something like "Terra was taken by NOWHERE from a different timeline" type of bullshit.

Don't retcon it. Don't... just don't reference it ever again. If you try to retcon the whole TEEN TITANS, THE RAVAGERS, SUPERBOY, TEAM 7 and DEATHSTROKE bullshit in any way you'll just make the whole thing worse.

Just do what Priest is doing with the current DEATHSTROKE comic and ignore whatever came before.

some of them are insinuating it's a bad story so they probably did read it

Well I don't read shit comics.

It's in my backlog user, I'll get to it eventually.

That book doesn't hold up well after the years and it's crucial for both Titans and Deathstroke so it's actually a good idea to update it to modern times.

Hopefully they can explain Tara and HIVE better than the original Judas Contract
Or at least give Tara a better motive than being a shitty Magneto and being full of hate

Gen13 is a good example of how badly they fuck up.
>isolate your characters so they don't interact with anyone ever
>make sure they involved in some convulted bullshit
>just be as inorganic as possible.

probably gonna get shit for this, but TT cartoon did a better Judas Contract than the original.

I will get flamed for saying this, but the cartoon handled that whole story arc better than the comics.

I'm interested to see what Priest does with it.

Eh don't blame you.

Wolfman/Perez were so hellbent on making sure to tell people that Tara wasn't a person to be loved or redeemed that she came off as a poor, shallow character and the story suffered from that. Especially when you have things like Raven seeing through her, yet not telling anybody about it since they had to get to the actual mole reveal, and Tara being shit to like half the characters yet the team still tolerates her.

With the way things are going, HIVE will probably be like Outer Heaven.Its only been one issue but I'm getting a weird Metal Gear vibe from this series.

Deathstroke= Big Boss
Wintergreen= Ocelot

Still think Wintergreen makes a better Kaz analogue

Oh, good, it's just what Titans needed, more Deathstroke, more Titans vs. Titans fighting, and more rehashing old storylines.

I mean, yes, Abnett and Priest are solid writers, so they can probably do it justice, but it would be really nice to see something NEW out of the Titans.

Can't pick up comics until this upcoming Monday, but that description just got my dick hard for the book.

titans hunt
and the first tt arc is ra's as a villain

>Tara wasn't a person to be loved or redeemed
Yet the amoral assassin who's been trying to kill the titans since day one is.

To be honest, TITANS need to reestablish the character back-stories back. Heck, i'd say that 90% of the appeal of the book.

Thanks to THE NEW 52 mess most readers are really confused about what happened and what didn't happened, and REBIRTH is mostly about reestablishing old pieces of continuity that people in general are aware and fond of.

In the case of TITANS is the whole "Where these characters friends?", "How did they meet?", "What were their adventures?", "Please, bring back these characters connections back".

>tfw youtu.be/lO2Zp4nwsFA is the final issue of Wintergreen/Deathstroke arc

This was one of those moments where you know the writers have lost their touch. Deathstroke does not work as antihero.

Good thing Priest sees Slade as the villain he is.

Wally's 19. He was still in his Kid Flash uniform when he disappeared and he stopped being Kid Flash when he was 19. This was before COIE when Barry died, too.

Want to place bets on who winds up going nuclear?

My bet is on Jericho when he eventually shows up.

I don't have any problem with reestablishing the characters, but the Titans have always been a franchise that struggles with retreading old work. Give us old AND new plots.

they did
called titans hunt and the first tt rebirth arc

>We’re doing a JJ Abrams-ing of “The Judas Contract…

Disgusting, Titans confirmed for shit. I won't be trying that book until the next reboot.

Abnett hasn't written a good comic run since Lanning, dude.

Titans Hunt was awful and dull.

Well, that's what they're doing it then.

It's a retreat of JUDAS CONTRACT for the NU52/REBIRTH landscape so that they can reestablish the Deathstroke/Titans connection and background in order to go on.

To be fair, the Rebirth arc is rehashing the last time Kadabra stole Linda from Wally. Though I guess that's kind of a given when you bring back a villain.

>not liking Aquaman
>not appreciating him saving Earth-2 even though it's too late

no the tt book
ra's is the villain

Aquaman is the definition of mediocre. I said he hasn't written a good book.

Earth 2 is the saddest patch job. He's trying to make something with liquid shit and it's an admirable attempt but there's not much of interest going on there.

Yeah I misread that, my bad.

We may have to agree to disagree then, I really do love Aquaman even if the second artist isn't that great.

I'm very curious how they are going to put his Flash career back into continuity, he and Barry obviously remember it.

They will probably do it as a brief stunt like Dick's Batman tenure.

This.

The Titans books were a mess since the day Scott Lobdell put his grubby hands on the characters.

Is a retreat? Yes, but one needed

They aren't. It's just going to be one of those things lost that Manhattan can't fix. Wally will have the memories of it but that's about it. They need that because they still don't want to age Barry and Iris the way Wally's career does and this is the compromise.

Aquaman is ok. If it's not your cup of tea, that's good, but the book is a lot better than Bunn's run.