Who's This? An assassin with a death wish.
The facts: It's hard to believe Deadshot used to be a half-page mort, but in his first, top-hat-wearing appearance (Batman #59, June 1950), he certainly was that. The Marshall Rogers redesign (Detective Comics #474, December 1977) looked cool, but perhaps not "of Batman's world". It netted him a few appearances at least, especially in the early 80s, but Who's Who didn't seem to care. Then John Ostrander assembles a bunch of morts as the Suicide Squad and Deadshot becomes its coolest and longest-lasting member. Despite having a death wish, he never dies and is still in the team today, several reboots later. When there's no Squad, you can catch him in the Secret Six. And he's had two mini-series as well. The trick was making Floyd Lawton as interesting as any hero with their own civilian identity. An icon.
How you could have heard of him: Still around, but of course, he's been in mainstream media, an echo of him played by Will Smith in the first Suicide Squad movie, and showing up in several animated projects.
Example story: Suicide Squad #51 (March 1991) "Fractured Image" by John Ostrander, Kim Yale, Luke McDonnell and Geof Isherwood
The civilian clothes era of Ostrander's Suicide Squad gave us this solo Deadshot story in which the sharpshooting assassin walks into a bar in Marseilles, addresses the patrons in French, and mows them down.
But when he takes off his mask, he's some blond guy with no mustache. So what gives? The real Deadshot is back with the Squad fielding a request from Count Vertigo to put a bullet in his brain if his brain damage makes him go rogue. You know Deadshot will do it, and with a smile too. There's also an outstanding conflict between Floyd and Captain Boomerang, because ol' Boomer lost Deadshot his suit. Ah, there we have it. And Floyd knows it's turned up in Marseilles. So 36 hours later, our boy is in France tracking down the impostor, one Marc Pilar, trying to make a name for himself as an assassin. This Lawton finds out from his contact Ducard, who immediately betrays him to the new Deadshot. He's a kind of assassin's match-maker and we'll see who survives the encounter. Indeed, Ducard has been TRAINING Pilar.
That's Ducard watching in the blue. Pilar is first to fire, misses. Lawton's riposte?
Oh damn! Psychology strikes again. Ducard has calculated that death wish or not, Lawton won't be able to shoot the part of himself he most identifies with - his soul. Is he right? The action movies into a warehouse, which gives us the cover. Pilar goads Lawton on: "You can shoot at me, but you cannot bring yourself to kill me." But...
Ducard was wrong. This is almost like Lawton gets to fulfill his death wish without having to die. He kills Deadshot, Lawton remains. He'll get many chances to get Lawton killed as well after this, but consistently fail.
You get all the trademark Deadshot stuff. The man of few words who just doesn't care who he crosses, smoking through as many cigarettes a day as he can. Who's whole deal is taunting death to come and get him, but always reflexively preventing her from doing so. I do wish he'd gone after Ducard right then and there. Oh well.
Who's Next? A pilot hit by lightning.
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