Marvel Trolls DC With Its Own DEATH-STROKE Terminators

Deathstroke the Terminator remains one of the most compelling supervillains in DC Comics history. Created by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez in The New Teen Titans #2 in 1980, Slade Wilson remains a relentless enemy who has appeared as both an anti-hero and a villain over the decades. It’s all the more fitting, though, that Marvel trolled DC’s toughest mercenary with a Deathstroke of their own who doesn’t quite live up to the name.

Tani Uiruson aka Death-Stroke, Leader of the Terminators, appeared in Spider-Woman #39 in 1981. It’s fitting that this Death-Stroke was created by none other than Chris Claremont (with art by Steve Leialoha). While Wolfman and Pérez’s New Teen Titans were tearing up the sales chart, Marvel had an equally big hit on their hands in the form of a relaunched X-Men, penned by Chris Claremont. It looks like Claremont and company were taking a bit of a potshot at their biggest rivals on the sales character.

This Death-Stroke was hired to kill David Ishama, then-boyfriend of Jessica Drew, otherwise known as Spider-Woman. David and Spider-Woman would fight off his henchmen, with Spider-Woman eventually squaring off against Death-Stroke. Tani, however, wasn’t quite as skilled as his DC Comics counterpart, with Spider-Woman taking him out with one punch. Unfortunately, Tani’s stint in the Marvel universe would be short-lived. He would appear in Captain America #395, where he fought against two other supervillains for a position on Red Skull’s Skeleton Crew. Though he fared a bit better in this fight, Death-Stroke was ultimately killed by one of his competitors, Cutthroat.

This wouldn’t be the first time Deathstroke inspired a Marvel knock-off. The most popular example, after all, is Marvel’s own Merc with a Mouth, Deadpool, created by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza. The alter-ego of Deadpool is Wade Wilson, compared to Deathstroke’s Slade Wilson, making it very hard to ignore the similarities. Deadpool first appeared as an assassin sent to bedevil the New Mutants, just as Deathstroke was hired to target the similarly fledgling Teen Titans. Despite obvious similarities, the two characters have developed into vastly different characters over time, with Deathstroke a relentless and stoic assassin and Deadpool a slightly more loveable – if totally psychopathic – mercenary. One key distinction might lie in their origins – while Tani Uiruson was created by Claremont as an easily-dispatched minion, both Liefeld and Nicieza fondly remembered Deathstroke, making Deadpool more a spiritual successor than simple parody.

The fact that Deathstroke has inspired not one but two characters certainly points to the impact and longevity of Slade Wilson. It also points to the interconnectivity of comic books, with a combination of inspiration and in-jokes stretching across company lines to form new legacies. Still, if all of this proves one thing, it’s that there is only one Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke, the Terminator.

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