Hooboy, this has been the entry I have been dreading and excited about all at the same time. It is sometimes difficult to articulate what makes a certain fictional character resonate to an individual. Like comedy, one's interaction with fiction is highly subjective. Sometimes you bring more the table as a reader than the writer intends.
Deadshot is, to this day, my favorite comic book creation. He has no powers, his costume is not really cool and, up until the late 1980s, he was kind of a joke. He first appeared in 1950 and, like most comic book villains, he is a dark reflection of his target hero. By 1950, Batman had already cemented most of his rogue's gallery. Joker is the chaos to Batman's order. Scarecrow is the abuse of fear to Batman's use of fear. Penguin is wealth gone wrong to Batman's wealth gone right. It is hard to get a new character to "stick" once most of your bases have been covered.
Deadshot first appeared as a douchebag in a tuxedo with tails, a top hat and a domino mask. He purported to be a crime fighter but was actually just a thief. His big gimmick was that he used guns while Batman did not. Not the most original take on the "Dark Reflection" idea.
Deadshot vanished for a long time and was then polished off and redesigned by Marshall Rogers for the December 1977 issue of Detective Comics (say, wonder why that date resonates with me?). Deadshot was recast as an assassin who "never misses" contracted to kill Bruce Wayne. The look was a little better (still garish) and his modus operandi a little less on the nose but he was still just a c-lister at best. He was good for popping up into crowd scenes of Batman's enemies breaking out of jail or teaming up to kill him but he didn't carry much weight.
Finally, he lands in the Suicide Squad when John Ostrander is put in charge of making the team for the Legends crossover. Ostrander single-handedly made Deadshot a three dimensional character. As the series begins, Deadshot has signed on for the dangerous missions of the Squad. Even after successfully completing a few, he stays with the team. One of the innovations of the Squad comic is that Ostrander would halt the plot for one issue a year to allow the characters to be built up. Over the course of the series, we learn Deadshot has a death wish. He would never kill himself but he doesn't care if he lives or dies. Sort of think Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon or Bronson in Deathwish.
Through his therapy/romance with the Squad's psychiatrist, we discover that he is carrying around guilt for the death of his brother. His father was highly abusive and, one day, when young Floyd Lawton had suffered enough, he perched in a tree with a gun waiting to shoot his father. Sure enough, his father began beating Floyd's brother (whom Floyd idolized) like clockwork. The branch holding Floyd gave way as he shot, causing Floyd to miss and shoot his own brother through the head.
As the Lawton's were wealthy, the whole thing gets covered up and Floyd leaves home. He studies at being a marksman the same way Bruce Wayne would study at a variety of disciplines. Having killed the only good person in his life, Floyd no longer much cares what happens to him or what he does to other people. He does end up having a son of his own. Within the context of the comics, Ostrander explains that Deadshot can never kill Batman because he looks up to Batman. Whenever the two fight, Deadshot intentionally misses.
This kind of relationship pattern defines the character from that point on. Like Wolverine always creating surrogate daughters, Floyd is always looking for an older brother to look up to. Anyone with a code of ethics or heroic leaning can earn Floyd's respect but he creates space between himself and others with his brusque personality and crude sense of humor.
Deadshot vanished from Suicide Squad for four issues in order to star in his own limited series by Ostrander. And it is dark. Super dark for a mainstream superhero publisher even if it was the 1980s. Floyd takes leave of the Squad once his son is kidnapped. One of the kidnappers is a child molester who wants to get at the boy very badly. In the course of the series, Floyd visits home and his backstory is revealed. Eventually, Floyd finds his son too late, accidentally killed by the molester after being violated. Floyd loses what little humanity he has left at that point, going on a killing spree. It ends with him shooting his own mother. Like I said, dark stuff.
This leads to maybe one of the best Suicide Squad moments. The leader, Colonel Flag, has discovered that the Squad has been blackmailed into performing missions on behalf of a corrupt senator. Flag goes rogue, killing the NSA liaison who coordinated the blackmail. The woman in charge of the Squad program (Amanda Waller) orders Deadshot to stop Flag from killing the Senator by any means necessary. The idea, of course, is for Deadshot to kill Flag. However, Flag definitely falls in the older brother category for Deadshot. Upon arriving at the scene where Flag plans to kill the Senator, Deadshot shoot the Senator himself...thereby obeying Waller's instructions to not let Flag kill him. Deadshot is gunned down by police and is hospitalized for a good chunk of the rest of the run.
Once he comes back, he is never quite the same. The character has no regard for his own life or those of his teammates. When he loses his costume at an airport, late in the run, he tracks down the baggage handler who stole it and kills him. For awhile, he refuses to wear the costume anymore, claiming he has killed Deashot. Eventually, the dictates of the medium required him to wear the suit again.
After the cancellation of the Squad, Deadshot would pop up occasionally. Sometimes he would be back to his solo assassin ways and sometimes be with the Squad. Pretty much every writer used Ostrander's character template for him.
And this is why I relate to the guy. He falls short, always. He wants to be the hero, the good guy, the one everyone admires but he knows he can't. He will always protect those he respects (even in the most insane ways...as we will see in a bit) but everyone else is just a victim to him. Misanthropy, a darkness in his soul and a desire to be better with no ideas how to get there are all facets of a character I can relate to. His complete disregard for the bonds of family is another I can sympathize with. Plus, he is hyper-competent at one thing and I would love to be (not shooting, writing).
When Gail Simone placed Floyd in the Secret Six, I was worried for his future. He is the perfect level of liked but not loved that makes him an easy kill for shock value. Like in Suicide Squad, the early days of the Six were filled with members getting offed. I feel there are no guarantees that Deadshot would stick around and that lack of certainty makes being a fan exciting. Unlike Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent, Floyd Lawton can be killed off.
Simone immediately took the "older brother" role model idea and planted it on her Catman character. Sure, Deadshot killed Catman's pride of lions, but they didn't know each other yet. In a perfect example of how one writes an evil character doing a good thing, towards the end of the "Get Out of Hell Free" card storyline, Deadshot realizes that his team is going to die if they deliver the card as they were hired to do. As he knows they are all prideful and don't really trust each other, he shoots two of them and runs over another two, taking the card for himself. At first you think it is a betrayal but everyone soon figures out that he is taking the card so that, when the hammer falls, it falls on him alone. A selfless action, done in the most violent and brutal way possible. Another reason I like him, he even fucks up his good deeds.
Likewise, in a second mini-series that came between Suicide Squad and Secret Six, Floyd is given another child and is recast as an anti-hero helping Green Arrow stop a super villain. It looks like a redemption storyline but, the tragedy of the character should be that his redemption has to come through personal sacrifice, not through the love of a woman or a child. Simone almost immediately nips this in the bud by having Floyd tell off the mother of his child so she will never want to see him again. This way, her and the child are safe from any enemies Floyd has. Once again, doing the right thing the wrong way.
The next year of the Six is relatively stable in terms of cast. Deadshot finds love with a new teammate (their date night is a lot of fun as the skinheads from issue 1 come back seeking revenge). Catman gets to deal with his "I wanna be Batman" issues a little when he considers taking up the mantle of the Bat. Simone gets to write Wonder Woman one more time as the Amazon guest stars in an arc about a slaver.
The second year gets moving with Ostrander coming in to write a Deadshot-centered fill-in. Going to show that Simone gets the character perfectly, the passing of the baton is totally clean. A new member joins who Simone didn't get to play enough with in Birds of Prey. Half way through the second year, the Blackest Night crossover hit. Ostrander and Simone team up to create a Suicide Squad/Secret Six crossover where Amanda Waller wants Deadshot back on her team and the Six want him to stay. Sure, these are groups of villains but I was pleased to see my favorite character so in demand.
I know the actual discussion of the Secret Six has broken down but I don't want to spoil too many developments in the series as that is half the fun of reading it. At one point Deadshot refers to himself and Catman as Butch and Sundance. This is most apt description I can imagine. The Six see themselves as basically good guys who happen to be outlaws. Perhaps if the series hadn't been cancelled, Catman could have drug Deadshot towards the light.
When the universe rebooted in the New 52, Deadshot was still a great marksman with a "who gives a damn" attitude but he was not fleshed out at all in the first year of the pretty horrible new Suicide Squad series. Now, he is Harley Quinn's boytoy and not all that interesting. If the old DC ever comes back, I hope the old Floyd Lawton does, too.
OK, next time we look at Catman and the rest of the second year of Secret Six ongoing.
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