Ravager
14 years ago - 3-year-old Rose begins learning to fight & protect herself from her mother Lillian Worth. From a young age she displays near photographic reflexes.
5 years ago - 12-year-old Rose's mother Lillian Worth is kidnapped by Wade LeFarge. Rose is able to free her mother and hold off LeFarge. Ultimately, Lillian sacrifices herself to ensure Rose's safety, leading to Rose cutting off LeFarge's head, killing him. She is taken into the Titans by Roy Harper, where she briefly bonds with his daughter Lian Harper, but the trauma from the loss of her mother leads her to run away. When Slade Wilson discovers her, he begins training her as an assassin. She takes his name, becoming obsessed with being his daughter.
1 year ago - 16-year-old Rose cuts out her own eye in a desperate attempt to emulate her father. Abandoned and arrested, Amanda Waller recruits her for the Suicide Squad.
Rose Worth, or Rose Wilson, has a suprisingly long history with the Titans. As much as we all give Geoff Johns a hard time because we are so familiar with his writing style now, it really pops when his stuff lands. There was some very basic math about Rose that anyone should have been able to do to tell us just how much potential she had as a character, but it took Johns on his Titans series to make it happen, suiting her up as Ravager as a dangerous new threat to the team, and then later as their new resident 'bad girl'.
Ravager's profile in DC has expanded in recent years, but as is often the case we really want to focus on the classic depiction of the character and her role in the larger story.
Ravager's profile in DC has expanded in recent years, but as is often the case we really want to focus on the classic depiction of the character and her role in the larger story.
Ravager's Comic HistoryRose was an invention of Marv Wolfman, showing up for the first time in Deathstroke #15 in 1992. The issue introduced Lilian Worth, a woman Slade had once helped escape war-torn Cambodia and, in the 80s action movie spirit of this incredibly 80s action movie series, had an affair with. In the jungle. Probably with a synth-pop track playing in the background. Rose isn't so much a character in this issue as much as she just walks through for Slade's associate Wintergreen to notice. Gasp! Slade has a daughter!
Rose made occasional appearances in the series, until the large storyline 'The Hunted", in which several supporting cast members were systematically killed by a character going by Ravager, later revealed to be Slade's half brother. She was targeted but fought him off, only to watch as he killed her mother. She would go on to be taken in by the Roy Harper-led, government-backed Titans. She even appeared in one training sequence, implying that she might wind up joining the team proper, but instead she quickly showed just how deeply the loss of her mother had effected her, storming off in anger. Later it would be established as she was Lian Harper's new nanny. |
The big turnaround for Rose came in 2004, as part of the new Geoff Johns Teen Titans. In a special #1/2 issue released by Wizard magazine, Rose is again confronted by Wade Lefarge, who has taken a job to kill her. The Titans arrive to try to save her, but before anything can happen, everyone on the scene is gassed, and Rose wakes up in a warehouse with Deathstroke and a tied up LeFarge. Slade gives her the change to be taken under his wing and trained as his new protege. All she has to do is kill Wade.
Soon we started seeing Rose as the new Ravager, Deathstroke's apprentice. She is clearly immediately very unhinged and obsessed with pleasing her father, even cutting out her own eye to make herself more like him. It's a really innovative way to evolve the idea of Deathstroke for a new generation of Titans, but Rose was also just cool as hell all on her own. By the One Year Later event she was officially a Titan herself, but even that role quickly seemed to small for her. She got her own solo backup story, and appeared all over the place right up to the New 52, and even had a major role in the earliest version of the rebooted timeline as a part of 'The Ravagers'. Rose has been reimagined yet again as part of DC's Rebirth publication era, now a featured part of Robin's standalone series and still a regularly occurring part of her dad's stories. |
Our Ravager StoryWhen we first put our timeline together, we really focused on the fact that Rose was Slade's daughter, that she had inherited some form of photographic reflexes making her an incredibly combatant, and that she had essentially been kidnapped and groomed as a new apprentice by her father before he abandoned her, leaving her to pick up the pieces with the new Suicide Squad.
Going over her history, however, there's really a much more complex story here involving her life with her mother. She actually grew up in a brothel in Cambodia, but one where her mother took excellent care of the workers there, and where Rose actually helped care for their children. The traumatic loss of her mother is a HUGE part of her story, one that actually plays out as the Titans try to help her. The fact that she would ultimately reject that help and wind up being manipulated by her father is huge for both her history and the Titans, and we wanted to make sure that was all present in the telling of her story. We did skip some large parts of her history: we don't have a long time pass between the loss of her mother and Slade taking her in, and we've largely removed any time of her actually serving as a Titan herself. She's always been a much more interesting character when she's an unhinged, unpredictable outsider. |
Rose's CostumeRose has gone through a number of permutations of her costume, and while I think we can all pretty safely agree that the one she wore through the bulk of her membership on the Teen Titans is absolutely the way to go, there might be some things we can take from other costumes that could work.
Perhaps the biggest costume departure we saw was right at the beginning of the New 52, when she was a character in the Superboy series. This is a really cool outfit all on it's own, and I think the mask design could absolutely be something Rose transitions to as she slowly separates herself from the legacy of her father. The skull and crossbones insignia is also dope as hell. Of course, Rose's current costume is by far the most prolific, and as she's becoming a huge part of modern Robin stories is likely going to see a lot more use. It maintains the insignia, and the weapon holsters and straps are way more utilitarian, which I very much like, but it is also steering her to look much younger and more casual. The modern trend to give all the young superheroes laced sneakers is often very cool, but I just think it's a miss here. |
Ravager's FutureEver since the New 52, the Suicide Squad has included Harley Quinn. It's worked really well for both her character and for the larger franchise as they've gone on to gain massive popularity, but from the very beginning of her membership on the team we've struggled with the idea that, from an entirely tactical standpoint, something just seemed off about recruiting what is essentially an insane gymnast for your covert paramilitary strike team.
We do adore Harley, but as we built our version of the Suicide Squad, it was clear that this just wasn't the role for her. She has other stories to be in. What the Squad needed, then, was a young violently unhinged martial artist whose arrogance and lack of any sense of her own mortality makes her unbelievably dangerous, who is also struggling to overcome her obsession with the person who made her what she is. Rose is such an absolutely perfect fit for our new Suicide Squad it's crazy. We love her here, and the surrogate family group that we're building here really feels like it's something that can come to define her. |