Grant Wilson
23 years ago - 6-year-old Grant Wilson's father Slade Wilson leaves the military to become a mercenary after he is enhanced in a government experiment, leaving his family.
15 years ago - 14-year-old Grant Wilson, looking for ways to emulate his father, becomes a test subject for H.I.V.E.
12 years ago - 17-year-old Grant Wilson leaves H.I.V.E. to become the assassin Ravager, an unwitting test-subject of their synthetic bio-enhancements
10 years ago - 19-year-old Grant Wilson takes a contract on the Teen Titans, overtaxing his enhancements and dying of a heart attack.
While some readers are probably more familiar with Grant as part of an extended family of Deathstroke's kids, originally he was very clearly not created to make many more appearances. He's an important part of telling the story of Slade & the Teen Titans, but that part is, if anything, concise. Still, he absolutely needed to be counted among the enemies of the Titans.
Grant Wilson's Comic HistoryThe introductory issues of Marv Wolfman & George Perez's New Teen Titans is so chock a block full of fun comic book tropes, one after the other, that it's actually kind of interesting to slow down and examine just one of those ideas. Deathstroke, who was set up from the beginning to be one of the Teen Titans nemeses (nemesises?), was introduced in the second issue rejecting H.I.V.E.'s offer to work for them, but he winds up getting pulled into the series because of his son, Grant.
Grant was actually intruded in the FIRST issue, when he was the one who recovered Starfire when she first fell to Earth, and brought her to his ex's apartment, where he quickly started to get pushy with her about getting back together. The issue ends with him ominously indicating the Titans to his allies in H.I.V.E. when he again menaces his ex in issue two and gets a well-deserved blast for it from Kori, he goes to H.I.V.E. to get enhancements so he can go fight the Titans, becoming the mercenary Ravager. He holds his own for a bit, but his enhancements eventually start to overload his body, and he dies in his father's arms, providing the catalyst for him to become the Titans biggest enemy. That, then, is the story of Grant Wilson; a lousy boyfriend who just continually punched over his weight until it wound up killing him. |
Our Grant Wilson StoryThis initial story really is the only thing you need Grant for. Modern comics LOVE to give major characters whole families of support characters, and Deathstroke is no different, so Grant has of course been brought back several times for a variety of roles, but I'd argue that if your goal is specifically to zero in on what every character's best contribution to continuity is, the absolute most important thing he can do is exactly what he did in the comics; kill himself by overexerting his enhancements fighting the Teen Titans and make Slade hate them.
We did, as usual, move a few small details around just to give Grant a more complete timeline. We've removed his brother Jericho, so Grant is the only child Slade has with his former commanding officer Adeline Kane, but we also want Grant to be desperate for his father's withheld approval, so it makes sense for us for Slade to basically have abandoned his child when he first becomes a mercenary. The idea of H.I.V.E. has evolved since it was introduced in these comics to include the H.I.V.E. Academy, and we think this is a perfect place for a teenage Grant to have gotten his initial training. |