Wintergreen
64 years ago - William Randolph Wintergreen is born in Oxford, the son of a aristocratic family.
52 years ago - 12-year-old Wintergreen attends military boarding school.
46 years ago - 18-year-old Wintergreen enlists in the British Army.
39 years ago - 25-year-old Wintergreen becomes an operative with British Intelligence.
30 years ago - 34-year-old Wintergreen first meets Slade Wilson when they are assigned to work together. Wintergreen first sees the utter brilliance of Slade's combat prowess.
27 years ago - 37-year-old Wintergreen recruits Slade Wilson to his tactical rescue unit. Slade saves his life several times over.
25 years ago - 39-year-old Wintergreen is shot in the field. He retires from British Intelligence and begins a private security firm.
23 years ago - 41-year-old Wintergreen is approached by Slade Wilson, who reveals that his has left the service to become a Mercenary, and asks Wintergreen to manage his business and affairs. Wintergreen closes his private security firm and chooses to become Slade's aide.
10 years ago - 54-year-old Wintergreen tries to convince Slade Wilson not to seek vengeance against the Teen Titans for the death of his son Grant Wilson. He does not know about his manipulation of Tara Markov.
8 years ago - 56-year-old Wintergreen discovers Slade Wilson's manipulation of Tara Markov. He leaves Slade's employ, and retires to his family home to write his memoirs.
5 years ago - 59-year-old Wintergreen is tracked down by Wade LeFarge and killed, his body strung up as a message to Slade Wilson.
Our Wintergreen StoryWintergreen appeared for the first time in New Teen Titans #2 in 1980, the same issue where Deathstroke debuted. From the beginning, part of Slade's whole deal was that he had this loyal manservant and aid, very clearly reminiscent of the relationship between Batman and Alfred. Over the years, as Deathstroke graduated from recurring villain to being the protagonist of his own series, Wintergreen followed, and his history in the British army and as part of MI6 became part of Slade's backstory.
While modern readers pretty universally all look at Deathstroke now and see what an incredibly awful person he was, those original stories were all written from within a pretty significant blind spot. Even as recently as 2005, when interviewed for the book Titans Companion, Deathstroke writer Marv Wolfman was adamant that Slade wasn't a villain, but was in fact an honorable guy. Ultimately, this was Wintergreen's role in Slade's story. He was there to be the one person who knew that, under it all, Slade was a good person, or he was there to actually BE the good person, taking care of things that Slade would or should have, if he was anything other than the selfish coward we all now recognize. That's essentially why we wanted Wintergreen in our story; for Slade to operate in that self-delusion of honor, he needs this person there, this person who somehow believes that there's a noble purpose to him. We also very deliberately wanted to indicate that Wintergreen did NOT know about Tara, and he leaves Slade when he finds out. We want to make sure Slade is confronted with the wrongness of what he's done, and Wintergreen is one of the few characters who are close enough to him to do that. |