Can Slade be called the world's deadliest assassin?

 The character of Deathstroke has been called "the world's deadliest assassin" multiple times, along some others, but still, he comes to mind first for many readers when the subject of who deserves this title. Some people have put this in question however, claiming that he barely kills people and can't beat the Teen Titans. Today, will be going through some things Slade has done that make him worthy of his title. 

How many people Slade has killed?

We don't have an exact number, only some approximations. One of my favorites being from Green Arrow as you can see bellow. 

Besides that, Slade did have a hand in the destruction of Bludhaven, over 100,000 lives lost. Nightwing blames Slade for that. 

But how about actual characters? Slade did kill Beast Boy, the Atom(Ryan Choi) and Phantom Lady. As you can imagine is hard to kill a comic book character, that depends on the editor not the character. (See The New Teen Titans #10, Titans: Villains for Hire Special and Infinite Crisis #1 for those kills) 

Slade did kill several other characters but most of them were created for one particular story, so i don't see that as impressive. With the exception of the greek titan Lapetus(Lapetus? Iapetus?) that as his title implies, he's supposed to be a big deal, a "Justice League level threat"(Deathstroke 2014 #10) and he already existed, just not being seen in the DC universe. In the upcoming Shadow War event is said that his next kill is Ra's Al Ghul, so let's keep this is mind as well. 

That leave us with 4, possible 5, characters he has killed. If i was counting one off characters that number would be greatly higher. Of course, Deathstroke has come close to kill many others, such as Catwoman, Deadshot, Cheshire and etc. The survival of those puts the "deadliest assassin" title into question but i feel like that's more on the editors not the character. 

How Slade stacks in fighting skill?

The list of people Slade has fought is bigger than my arm, so to keep things simple(for now), lets use the Bat family. Writer Tom King has made a list with the best hand to hand fighters of the Bat family, the top 3 best of that list are Cassandra Cain, Drick Grayson and Bruce Wayne. Slade has bested Bruce 3 times, Gave Dick a run for his money multiple times  and was able to trade blows with Cassandra in two occasions. It's clear that Slade can't beat Cass at a fair one on one fight, but the fact is, he can keep up with her, that by itself is impressive. But how about Slade skill with firearms? Using Deadshot, the world's deadliest shooter and sometimes also claimed to be the deadliest assassin we can have a good idea. Slade has keep up with Floyd multiple times when it comes to shooting, cleary being able to give him a run for his money about who shoots the best. 

Its important to remember that is said Slade is at a similar state to Floyd after this confrontation

To close this section, it's important to mention Black Canary, Dinah is one of DC's best fighters and she and Slade have a history of several confrontations. Slade can be seen being on pair with Black Canary multiple times, and he won during a time when Dinah had Green Arrow at her side, post training and preparing himself to fight Slade specifically. Other 2 that come to mind are Bronze Tiger and The Silencer. Slade has give them both reasons to sweat in a fight. 

Green Arrow(2001) #75

Deathstroke vs metahumans

We're already established how good Slade is against humans, but how about people with superpowers? Similar to Batman, Deathstroke has plans and resources for multiple adversaries. Let's talk about the Teen Titans. Some people throw shade at Deathstroke claiming that he can't beat a group of kids and that's just insane. One of those "kids" is a speedster, other a woman with amazon powers, an alien with super strength that shoots energy blasts, a cyborg that also have super strength, a shapeshifter that can turn into any animal, a witch whos also the daughter of the powerful demon Trigon and a boy trained by Batman who has grown to surpass him when it comes to fighting. They are not regular kids. And Slade has won against them multiple times. Judas Contract? He won, he got the Titans, Terra got Nightwing at the end for Slade. His contract was completed. Titans East? We won there as well.

He can be seen fighting against all of them at once and still be getting the upper hand.

The list of metahumans and aliens and overall characters with superpowers Slade has faced is insane. Superman, Wonder Woman, Lobo, Osiris and so on. And Slade has put up a fight with them all. He isn't invincible, he did lost many times, but that's not the point. The point is, we're talking about a guy who can go toe to toe with pretty much anyone. 

"Altstroke", Dark Multiverse

Christopher Priest created a Dark Multiverse version of Slade, nicknamed Altstroke, he said in a interview with Multiversity Comics that Altstroke is what Deathstroke should and would be with DC editorial gave the character proper treatment.

Now, how is this any relevant? Altstroke has killed many of the Titans and Batman with ease. 

How others think about Slade?

Most of the time Slade is considered a big menace for others. For instance,  Batman, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Nightwing and others always feel a level of danger when Slade shows up. However, I would like to focus on one individual for this section, Lex Luthor, the smartest man on the planet. Luthor sees Slade as the best,  he's someone Luthor calls when facing a problem.

 In conclusion

I could go on about tons of references and comics books talking about this and that, but that's not the goal today. The goal is to make some clear and simple points about why I think Slade fits for the title of world's deadliest assassin. How many he has killed? More than enough. Is he a good fighter? Hell yes. People respect or fear him? Yes again. He's a big deal, like him or not. Think of Slade as a jack of all trades, he's simply good at almost everything. He just fits for the title. But feel free to argue in favor of others, even tho I feel Slade fits for the title that does not mean he's the only character who could be DC's best assassin. 

Special thanks to Steve, that helped and inspired some of this post. You can find him on twitter @BootyTyrant