Deathstroke is headlining a new spinoff series for DC vs. Vampires, an Elseworld story that pits the heroes and villains of the DC Universe against an army of vampires. The six-issue miniseries DC vs. Vampires: All-Out War debuts in July and comes from the creative team of writers Matthew Rosenberg and Alex Paknadel, and artist Pasquale Qualano. The series joins the May one-shot DC vs. Vampires: Hunters and June's DC vs. Vampires: Killers. Guillaume Singelin will pull double duty by writing and drawing a backup story.
"One of the last secret, underground human cities is facing total annihilation and its leader – John Constantine – must plan a suicide mission to assassinate a key lieutenant in the vampire empire!" Newsarama's description of DC vs. Vampires: All-Out War #1 reads. "Against unreal odds and with an unlikely team including Booster Gold, Deathstroke, and Mary Marvel, does the Hellblazer have one more trick up his sleeve?"
John Constantine takes on the job of gathering heroes, antiheroes, and villains to help save society. Along with the already revealed characters like Booster Gold, Deathstroke, and Mary Marvel announced above, the main cover for the first issue by Alan Quah, other characters to factor into the miniseries include Bane, Deadman, and Azrael.
DC vs. Vampires #6 was the last issue to come out on March 29, as the series takes a break before picking up with its final six issues. It was notable for revealing that Nightwing is the Vampire King controlling his army of bloodsuckers. Deathstroke also plays a major role in the "Shadow War" crossover between Batman, Robin, and Deathstroke Inc.
Rosenberg is co-writing the main DC vs. Vampires series with James Tynion IV. In an interview with Screen Rant, he discussed how trust is broken between the heroes when one of them could secretly be a vampire.
"I love that idea [that] so much of what these characters do is built on trust. It's trust in humanity, and it's trust in the people who fight beside you, and trust in the fact that you can win," he said. "And we're just doing everything we can to whittle away at that trust. What do these characters become when they don't trust anyone, when they're not sure they can win, when they don't know that humanity as they know it is going to be the good guys?"
He added: "And I think it is very fun, because you see a different side of these characters that you don't see a lot. I know that Batman has his plans for what if anybody on the Justice League turns evil, but at the end of the day, he trusts his life with these people and he trusts fighting side by side with them. And this is the story where he has to pull that back, and he can't trust anybody. A big scene in the series is him closing his circle tighter and tighter until it's just the Bat family and, even then, inside the Bat family it's, 'Do you trust them all equally?' Where does he stand with everybody?"
Alan Quah, Kael Ngu, James Stokoe, and Ejikure provide covers to DC vs. Vampires: All-Out War #1, which you can find below. The first issue arrives in stores on July 19th.
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