The Judas Contract / YMMV

Adaptation Displacement: More people are familiar with its adaptation from Teen Titans than this comic.
Alternative Character Interpretation:
- Was Terra Evil All Along and working with Slade to destroy the Titans just out of irrational hate? Or was she a good and innocent teenager, corrupted by Deathstroke? It depends on the writer... on the future writers that reference Terra or this story, to be precise. The story as written by Marv Wolfman leaves no room for doubt: Terra was completely evil, even Obviously Evil.
- When Slade was talking down Changeling from killing him, was he counting on the fact that Changeling is a hero and wouldn't murder a defenseless man in cold blood? Or was he truly tired from seeing that his efforts to avenge Grant amounted to nothing and had only served turn his son Jericho and Adeline against him?
- Slade, while talking to Changeling, admits that he never saw himself as a villain. Is he defending his viewpoint, or is it a Heel Realization on seeing the consequences of his actions?
- Terra afterwards may or may not have been resurrected, since her grave is empty and her successor is a dead ringer for her. The second Terra is also a good person. Did she block out the memories because I Hate Past Me? Or were the means used to revive her less than reliable and caused Laser-Guided Amnesia?
- Did Terra die from her powers going out of control or was she Driven to Suicide? If the latter, was it a suicide attack or just plain suicide?
Hilarious in Hindsight: Orwell's famous 1984 book was enough to make a colossal fad of paranoia and conspiracy, so when the contract was carried out in the middle of the craze, ramifications were huge.
Karmic Overkill: This is the reason why the story has become so divisive over the years. The story depicts Terra, a teenage girl, as a sociopath who reveled in her evil deeds. She ends up being killed when she loses control of her powers while Deathstroke is treated as a sympathetic Anti-Villain. This is despite the fact that Deathstroke is the one who came up with the plan to capture the Titans in the first place and was in a sexual relationship with Terra, a girl young enough to be his daughter. Additionally, though the story certainly does talk about Terra being evil a whole lot, her actual evil actions mostly consist of her acting as a spy as part of Deathstroke's plan, and having a rude personality: over the course of the story, she fails to kill a single person apart from herself. Modern adaptations of this story tend to make Deathstroke the eviler of the two and excise the sexual relationship entirely.
Narm:
- Some of Deathstroke's methods of capturing the Titans are... very old-school villain-y. His method of capturing Gar stands out: A massive pile of drugged envelopes, knowing Gar (attention junkie he is) will personally lick each envelope shut, eventually absorbing enough of the drug to knock him out. What makes it more baffling is Slade turns out to be waiting in the room once Gar finally passes out and could've used any other method. Exactly what Slade would've done if Gar hadn't felt the need to answer all his fan mail at that exact time is unclear.
- Gar crying during Terra's funeral was meant to be one of the saddest moments of the comic, but he is drawn off-model, with one eye considerably bigger than the other and the pupils looking at opposite directions. The bizarre expression contrasts with the somberness of the priest's eulogy and makes the scene much funnier than it should be.
Shocking Moments: In the context of Wolfman's New Teen Titans run: Deathstroke is finally beaten, but not before completing his contract on the Titans (one of the series longest standing subplots up to that point), Terra plays her hand as a traitor then dies, Deathstrokes origins are revealed including a wife and second son who ends up joining the team, and finally Dick Grayson graduates from the old red and yellows and becomes Nightwing.
Values Dissonance: The comic clearly leans towards treating Terra as the true villain of the story, with the fact she was a 16-year-old girl in a sexual relationship with a man thirty years her senior being used to highlight how vile she is. In 2003, Changeling was back to calling out Slade for his part in hurting Terra. In the modern 2010s, their relationship would be called a form of grooming, and in the DTV adaptation, the DC Rebirth Deathstroke series and The Other History of the DC Universe it is unambiguously portrayed as such.

YMMV / The Judas Contract

Edit Locked