Alternate Favorite DC Characters #9 - Deadshot

Character: Deadshot (Floyd Lawton)

Creators: David Vern Lee, Lew Schwartz, and Bob Kane. I'm guessing Bob Kane did not, in fact, have anything to do with it. Shout out to Steve Engelhart and Marshall Rogers, who plucked the character from obscurity and retooled him.

First appearance: Batman #59, but its cover had nothing to do with him, so you get this sweet Marshall Rogers, Terry Austin, and Tatjana Woods' cover from Detective Comics #474, his first appearance in over 25 years.

First encounter: I'm not sure. Maybe the episode of Justice League he first appeared in? I bought Batman #592 when it came out, so maybe that was it.

Definitive writer: John Ostrander and Kim Yale.

Definitive artist: Nicola Scott when he isn't wearing the mask. Luke McDonnell when he is.

Favorite moment or story: No shortage of options, but I'm partial to a sequence in Suicide Squad #66. The Squad has to cross a jungle to reach their target, and something about it attacks them on a mental level. Captain Boomerang is flipping out hurling boomerangs at phantoms mocking him. Even Amanda Waller is sweating it as she pushes past all the people whose deaths she blames herself for.

At the bottom of each page, though, is Deadshot walking calmly and steadily though the jungle. He's already given up or lost anything that could matter to him, already "killed" himself once. Which has produced a kind of peace inside him. There's nothing the jungle can reach to haunt him with.

What I like about him: Well, Marshall Rogers designed a distinctive costume, which always helps. The asymmetrical mask, with the one eyepiece set to project out slightly from it. The silver works as a nice contrast to all the red, and then there's the big crosshairs right in the middle of the chest. Which works as a symbol for an assassin, but also ends up being factored into what Ostrander and Yale did with Lawton's psychology, that he gives people an easy target to aim at. Characters having weapons in wrist bracelets or gauntlets wasn't a new touch, but it being these very obvious guns wasn't as common. And most artists draw them at a fairly restrained size; it doesn't evolve into some ludicrous, Cable-like shoulder cannon. Floyd doesn't need something like that, because he's meant to be precise about his work.

Beyond that, Floyd has this particular way, a set of seeming contradictions, of looking at things that I find interesting. Life and death don't mean much to him. He'll kill just about anyone; loyalty is a temporary condition. William Heller hires him to kill Amanda Waller, Waller offers him one dollar more, plus the possibility of more work to go back and shoot Heller, and Floyd immediately does so. However, years later Waller makes a similar offer to ditch the Secret Six and rejoin the Squad, and Floyd shoots her in the chest. Because she'd betrayed him recently, and past association didn't buy her anything.

Still, he's particular about those sorts of things. The most famous is probably Waller telling him to stop Rick Flag from killing a Senator by any means necessary. Which Floyd does, by killing the Senator himself, then nearly dying in a shootout with the police (because he had his own issues to work out at the time). He doesn't kill Heller, because Waller merely said to shoot him, not kill him. When a member of the group Jihad vows that she'll kill him if he doesn't finish her now, Floyd calmly shoots her in the head. When Count Vertigo asks whether Floyd would consider killing him, Floyd says sure, so Vertigo better be certain he really wants to die before he makes that request.

Floyd doesn't take much responsibility for his actions. To him, as an assassin, he's simply the instrument. When he kills someone, most of the time there's nothing personal about it. It has all the emotional content of flipping on a light switch. It's someone else who wants this person dead, he's simply the instrument they chose to carry it out. The weight of the death is on them. As Batman observes, if Waller had told Floyd specifically to kill Heller, Floyd would have done it. And Deadshot agrees. Why should he have a moral code when the people willing to hire him clearly don't?

However, he still maintains control over his actions. Just because he kills for money, and just because he might take a contract to kill anyone, doesn't mean he will at that moment, or that he'll just shoot anyone randomly at any time. At one point he actually reached out to Reverend Craemer, who had worked at Belle Reve while Floyd was on the Squad, for help. Because he feels his control slipping. He's starting to visualize killing everyone he sees, and that worries him. Floyd does think before he acts, and he wants to kill people only when he means to do it, not start shooting people randomly as they walk by on the street.

When Jaculi issues her warning, there's a silent panel of Floyd thinking it over, and then he kills her. He's deciding whether to take her at her word or not. When Wonder Woman tells him to take his best shot, if he doesn't wind getting his balls ripped off afterward, he thinks about it for a moment there, too, before deciding to take the shot. When he shot Waller, he put the bullet too close to the heart to remove, but not a fatal shot. Waller recognizes that's Floyd evening the score for her betrayal, but having done so, still leaving the door open to work with her again in the future (and Waller, being a professional badass herself, doesn't take it personally). If he'd wanted her dead, she'd be dead, but he just wanted a little payback, so that's what he took. The choice was his.

He doesn't care about Vertigo's soliloquy over whether it qualifies as suicide having Deadshot kill him. Probably seems stupid and naive to him. But he still waits and lets the man make his decision. Even if Floyd doesn't care whether he lives or dies, or care whether anyone else lives or dies, he still knows it's a decision you can't take back, so he lets the Count think it over. He's for hire, but he still makes the call on when or if the trigger gets pulled.

Despite his being for-hire, and despite his general indifference to his or anyone else's well-being, Deadshot will demonstrate a curious loyalty at times. Ostrander and Yale writes it as being tied up in the Lawton's ugly family history. Floyd being not exactly the black sheep, but certainly second-best compared to his brother Eddie. That Floyd feels (partially) responsible for Eddie's death, and feels it should have been him. So, at times, if there's a way to save someone else, especially if it could get him killed, Deadshot will take it.

The example I think of most often was in the initial arc of the Secret Six ongoing, when he turns on the rest of the team and takes off with the "Get Out of Hell Free" card. Even though he shoots Scandal and Jeanette, and runs over Catman with a car, he's ultimately trying to complete the mission without the rest of the group having to die. He'll do it and be killed, and that'll be fine. In Suicide Squad #50, when it turns out Rick Flag had a kid he didn't know about, and the kid's been abducted, Deadshot surprises everyone by volunteering for the rescue mission. Probably tied into Floyd failing to save his own kid, and seeing Rick as another version of Eddie, the good brother that wound up dying. And sometimes he'll bite his tongue when he doesn't feel like crushing someone's worldview for no reason (see above). For a character that claims to not care, Deadshot can be surprisingly emotional, it just isn't always clear when that's going to pop up, or how it'll manifest.

Plus, Deadshot's indifference to his own life means he'll do things that are very cool and exciting to read, that a character with his skills wouldn't necessarily do most times. Floyd doesn't have any powers, no flight or invulnerability. But when he was tasked with keeping Stalnoivolk in line on a mission, and the Steel Wolf decides to bail, Deadshot still jumps out after him and bluffs the guy into putting on the parachute. Because Stalnoivolk knows Floyd is willing to die, and certainly willing to use that laser pistol to kill him before that happens. Deadshot's not really the character you want to gamble is bluffing, given the typical stakes when dealing with him.

So all of that is interesting. He's a character that a handful of writers have each put a lot of thought into, and built something fascinating. Floyd's morality is enough of an empty book you can use him in lots of ways. Work as a lone gun against a hero, as part of a group, bad guy, bad guy being used for hopefully not-evil purposes. It all mostly comes down to him shooting people, but the details of it, that particular maze Deadshot filters decisions through is an interesting variable. Half the fun is watching other characters try to navigate it, both the ones who understand it (Waller), and the ones who don't (most other people). That moment when you realize someone has badly misjudged who they're dealing with.

Let's go through the credits! Floyd is more concerned with chafing than ghosts in Suicide Squad #66, by John Ostrander and Kim Yale (writers), Geoff Isherwood (breakdowns), Robert Campanella (finishes), Tom McCraw (colorists), Todd Klein (letterer). Batman needed more prep time do deal with that comeback in Suicide Squad #44, by Ostrander/Yale (writers), Isherwood (artist), Carl Gafford (colorist), and Klein (letterer). Jaculi would have learned to keep the threats to herself, but she's dead in Suicide Squad #18, by Ostrander (writer), Luke McDonnell (penciler), Bob Lewis (inker), Gafford (colorist), and Klein (letterer). Floyd demurs in the face of love or attraction in Secret Six #8, by Gail Simone (writer), Carlos Rodriguez (penciler), Bit (inker), Jason Wright (colorist), and Sal Cipriano (letterer). Floyd seizes the opportunity to teach everybody a lesson in Secret Six #1, by Simone (writer), Nicola Scott (penciler), Doug Hazelwood (inker), Jason Wright (colorist), SwandS (letterer).