Shadow War

[ducklord]

It was super obvious just from the tunnel, you don't need to know the fake Deathstroke has powers to make that conclusion. You see Geo-Force condemning the Al-Ghuls, it's at the Markovian embassy and the murderer gets away from a tunnel that was carved recently and without machines. You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to connect those dots.

Hey now, it could've just've easily been Zombie Tara Markov! Or, um, Cave Carson! Yeah, that's the ticket!

Seriously, this is one is gonna rank pretty high on the all-time "Batman Detective Failures" list.

[thwhtGuardian]

Hey now, it could've just've easily been Zombie Tara Markov! Or, um, Cave Carson! Yeah, that's the ticket!

Seriously, this is one is gonna rank pretty high on the all-time "Batman Detective Failures" list.

It's gotta be number one, I seriously can't remember anything this poorly done.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Talia once beat Lady Shiva down with a chair.* Let us not forget that, or that Lady Shiva does not f--- with Talia. She will challange Ra's, she will argue with Ra's, she'll stage a coup with Ra's, but Lady Shiva has never gone against Talia in comics. She avoids her, as we have been shown here and elsewhere, when Talia snaps and goes psycho, Talia is damn near unstoppable.

Slade also really only fights teenagers, as Ghostmaker just helpfully pointed out. Or he kills from afar. Having read all of his runs...I put my money on Talia as she can walk into a Cadmus lab unarmed and take down everyone, as we saw in Metal. Everyone. Including the psychics and metas.

*That was in Hush, which everyone has and claims to have read. Claims is the operative word here. In Shiva's defense, she wasn't paying attention to Talia as she was mocking Selina and Talia was tied up. Although Shiva, having known Talia for years, should have been aware that Talia is less inclined to stay retrained than Batman so she kind of deserved to be taken down in a bar brawl move.

Catching Lady Shiva once by surprise isn't the same as mauling trained combatants and meta-humans in a fight.

Talia isn't in Deathstroke's league, not physically. Especially given the fact that she was wounded and didn't use the pits to heal. if Slade didn't take a dive just to toy with her, then the writing is even worse than I thought possible.

[thwhtGuardian]

Catching Lady Shiva once by surprise isn't the same as mauling trained combatants and meta-humans in a fight.

Talia isn't in Deathstroke's league, not physically. Especially given the fact that she was wounded and didn't use the pits to heal. if Slade didn't take a dive just to toy with her, then the writing is even worse than I thought possible.

To be fair, he's been doing it for so long that jobbing is practically Slade's job. Other than in his own books I don't remember the last time Slade was taken seriously, to the point that when ever I see him now I kind of roll my eyes because no matter how hard the writer tries to sell him as a serious threat I just know he's going to fold fast so a poor showing here isn't the worst case of bad writing.

[Rac7d*]

Catching Lady Shiva once by surprise isn't the same as mauling trained combatants and meta-humans in a fight.

Talia isn't in Deathstroke's league, not physically. Especially given the fact that she was wounded and didn't use the pits to heal. if Slade didn't take a dive just to toy with her, then the writing is even worse than I thought possible.

Well it looks like she is now , consider your world rocked. Putting thease fighters on pedestal where there untouchable is why shiva only pops up everyone few books to intimidate and do nothing else. Becuase what’s the point of being a living obstacle that can’t be overcome. That’s what thease people do Batman, Robin, etc . They defeat people that most could never hope to. Deathstroke and Talia have been fighting all day, they are tired wounded angry , the fight was as fair as it can be for anyone against an enhanced soldier.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Well it looks like she is now , consider your world rocked. Putting thease fighters on pedestal where there untouchable is why shiva only pops up everyone few books to intimidate and do nothing else. Becuase what’s the point of being a living obstacle that can’t be overcome. That’s what thease people do Batman, Robin, etc . They defeat people that most could never hope to. Deathstroke and Talia have been fighting all day, they are tired wounded angry , the fight was as fair as it can be for anyone against an enhanced soldier.

There's still one more chapter left, and Slade will be leading the Society afterwards, so...my world isn't that rocked.

[The Cool Thatguy]

It was super obvious just from the tunnel, you don't need to know the fake Deathstroke has powers to make that conclusion. You see Geo-Force condemning the Al-Ghuls, it's at the Markovian embassy and the murderer gets away from a tunnel that was carved recently and without machines. You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to connect those dots.

They could have at least tried to be clever, though.

Instead of a massive tunnel that only a geo-mancer could have created, they could have just had the escape route disappear at an open construction site. Instead of punching through a wall, he could have easily just moved it around him, pretending to phase.

As Geo-Force is the only person with a grudge against both, it was pretty damn obvious. You'd think that they would have at least tried for a red herring.

[Nero]

Talia once beat Lady Shiva down with a chair.* Let us not forget that, or that Lady Shiva does not f--- with Talia. She will challange Ra's, she will argue with Ra's, she'll stage a coup with Ra's, but Lady Shiva has never gone against Talia in comics. She avoids her, as we have been shown here and elsewhere, when Talia snaps and goes psycho, Talia is damn near unstoppable.

Slade also really only fights teenagers, as Ghostmaker just helpfully pointed out. Or he kills from afar. Having read all of his runs...I put my money on Talia as she can walk into a Cadmus lab unarmed and take down everyone, as we saw in Metal. Everyone. Including the psychics and metas.

*That was in Hush, which everyone has and claims to have read. Claims is the operative word here. In Shiva's defense, she wasn't paying attention to Talia as she was mocking Selina and Talia was tied up. Although Shiva, having known Talia for years, should have been aware that Talia is less inclined to stay retrained than Batman so she kind of deserved to be taken down in a bar brawl move.

I don't consider Talia blindsiding Shiva with a chair much of a feat considering Shiva was distracted with Catwoman (whom Shiva was dominating in the fight, I might add).

I also don't buy into this narrative that Shiva is actively keeping her distance away from Talia, ironically the story line you referenced proved that point to be quite the contrary. DC often considers Shiva a deadlier assassin over Talia hence the reason why when Batman needed to regain his fighting skills after getting his back broke by Bane, he trained with the former rather than the latter.

It's also inaccurate and outdated to suggest that Slade just fight teenagers as he's also frequently clashed with Batman, Nightwing, Green Arrow and etc.

[SixSpeedSamurai]

Talia shouldn't be killing Slade like that. She's not on the same level. We don't know for sure that he's dead though, or he could be taking a Lazarus dip yet as well.

[Felipe Silveira]

Honestly, I don't see a problem with Talia defeating Slade. I think there is a very strong protectionism about him, let him get beaten.

[SixSpeedSamurai]

Honestly, I don't see a problem with Talia defeating Slade. I think there is a very strong protectionism about him, let him get beaten.

Kind of makes him a crappy top bad guy when everyone is defeating him.

[Felipe Silveira]

Kind of makes him a crappy top bad guy when everyone is defeating him.

Focus more on motivation and less on status, today Slade is a very bad villain. What he has to offer is just status. If the motivation is good, and well written, status is secondary.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Focus more on motivation and less on status, today Slade is a very bad villain. What he has to offer is just status. If the motivation is good, and well written, status is secondary.

Yeah, but we got neither.

And for all the hate Slade gets, it's worth remembering that there's virtually no crime that he's committed, that Talia hasn't done, or worse.

During this war, Talia is trying to avenge a mass murderer who's ruined thousands of lives.

And during their battle, Slade was fighting to avenge one of those lives.

This is a rare instance where Slade has the moral high ground.

He was framed, he didn't escalate, all to protect an innocent child he only knew for a few days.

[Nero]

It's also sad to see villains like Count Vertigo, Prometheus, Phobia, Dr. Destiny, Merlyn and etc be treated like afterthoughts in this. I'm not insinuating any of them were up there with the likes of Deathstroke or Talia but that doesn't mean they should be treated as flunkies either.

[The Cool Thatguy]

It's also sad to see villains like Count Vertigo, Prometheus, Phobia, Dr. Destiny, Merlyn and etc be treated like afterthoughts in this. I'm not insinuating any of them were up there with the likes of Deathstroke or Talia but that doesn't mean they should be treated as flunkies either.

Yeah, Talia and her people should have been the underdogs in this fight.

Instead, they drove Slade's people into hiding with freakin' mooks.