Slash’s Deathstalker comics flip the script on ’80s barbarian debauchery

After the success of Excalibur and Conan The Barbarian in the early 1980s, a wave of sword and sorcery and barbarian movies flooded theaters and video stores throughout the decade. There was bigger budget fare like Legend, Ladyhawke, and Conan The Destroyer, and then there was a whole slew of gory, racy sword and sandal titles made for little money that littered video store shelves like Conquest and Barbarian Queen. They were snatched up by legions of horny teenagers who wanted to see a lot of T&A and heavily muscled warriors dispatch their enemies with ease. Such adolescent fantasy was found money for indie film studios.

Perhaps the most infamous of these titles was 1983’s Deathstalker, the first in a tetralogy of films about a roaming warrior who was more concerned with survivalism and forcing himself on women rather than doing anything remotely honorable. But when he got caught up in a quest to obtain three magic items and dispatch a tyrannical, sorcerous warlord, he did something almost noble amid the cheap Renaissance Faire sets, bad dialogue, clunky editing, and misogyny. (It did get points for good swordplay.) Despite its many irredeemable qualities, the $450,000 flick reportedly made nearly $12 million at the box office.

So how is it that Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash decided to assemble a creative team through Vault Comics to turn Deathstalker into a three-issue comic book mini-series and a new movie 40 years later? The answer seems to lie in the source material: Both the comic and presumably the upcoming film are informed by the movie’s much better and highly tongue-in-cheek sequel, Deathstalker II: Dual Of The Titans, which emerged four years after the original. Simply put, using Deathstalker II as a jumping-off point is a much easier sell than the trashy, tawdry original film. Vault’s series—written by Eisner award-nominated writer Tim Seeley (Hack/Slash, Local Man, Revival) and illustrated by Jim Terry (Hack/Slash, Heavy Metal, The Crow)—seems to be a sequel to Deathstalker II. It acts as a transition into the forthcoming film being co-produced by Slash, directed by Steven Kostanski (The Void, Psycho Goreman), and starring Daniel Bernhardt (who played Viggo’s head of security Kirill in the first John Wick) as an older but maybe not wiser version of Deathstalker.

What made Deathstalker II work is that the titular rogue was played as a narcissistic buffoon, a Robin Hood type who steals from the rich to enrich himself, and as a warrior more interested in glory than conquering women. In fact, some of the ladies chased him with hopes of marriage, which highlighted his commitment issues. The far less icky and less graphic sequel also made fun nods to Indiana Jones, Han Solo, James Bond, and even swiped imagery from another tongue-in-cheek medieval romp, 1982’s underrated The Sword And The Sorcerer, which performed well at the box office. There was also a tribe of female warriors in the second Deathstalker who held their own against any man. Some of the dialogue was so silly that the leads struggled to maintain their composure in a few spots. It was slightly reminiscent of the funny, long-running Sergio Aragones series Groo The Wanderer, a PG-friendly comic that completely lampooned the concept of Conan. By 1987, the barbarian/sorcery movie subgenre really had run its course, so making jabs at the genre felt very apropos.

Vault’s Deathstalker comic is a stylistic mash-up of the first two live-action movies—macho barbarian antics whose cliches are counteracted with cheeky commentary. Slash, Seeley, Terry, and Kostanski tasked themselves with undoing the terrible tropes they loved as childhood fans of that ’80s sleazefest, delivering up comedy amidst the carnage—and there’s plenty of it here. But don’t worry, Gen X fans—Deathstalker hasn’t been neutered. There’s no shortage of gore, but thankfully there are no sexual assaults in this version. He’s not as reprehensible now; however, he’s still not the brightest warrior out there.

The new story serves up its fair share of lopped heads and limbs, bare flesh (male and female), and pig-man monsters. It does up the ante on scale; Seeley has remarked that the new creators wanted to deliver some of the big-budget thrills promised by the great Boris Vallejo movie posters that looked way cooler than the flicks themselves. Remember the giant monster on the poster and VHS cover of the first film that never showed up? Again, it was the ’80s, a time of movie marketing chicanery, particularly at the home video level, that has probably never been equaled.

Each of the three Vault issues finds Deathstalker facing a new quandary. First, he’s on the run from a cult after his attempted delivery of a virgin needed for a ritual is ruined… because she sleeps with him. Then, after seeking help from his ex-wife, Reena, who will never fall for his “charms” again, she gets him conscripted into a warlord’s army where he is forced to fight in a war he doesn’t believe in. In the third and final issue, Deathstalker gets caught between the warlord he escaped from and a deranged scientist who created zombie-like hordes after trying to cure the plague which is a major plotline running through the whole mini-series.

Our anti-hero’s mantra of “heroes and fools are the same thing” carries over from the first movie, while various elements and characters emerge from the second, like the cloned female seer. Deathstalker is obsessed with his “very good sword” (literally), and in one scene a fellow warrior also compliments it, although you wonder if he’s referring to something more personal. Our anti-hero even starts to mature, just a smidge. He has a drunken quasi-therapy session at a bar with a pig-man, although that ends in a brief brawl in the mud (yes, he still has some growing up to do). What is most surprising, however, is how a look back at the people whose deaths were caused by Deathstalker’s idiocy and bad decisions is actually poignant.

Seeley enjoys serving up one-liners amid the fighting to balance the drama, and Terry conjures some fun facial expressions, perfectly capturing our anti-hero’s frequent sense of befuddlement. Plus, he brings a raw sensibility to the battle scenes themselves, while Kurt Michael Russell splashes them with vivid colors and requisite earth tones without overdoing that red blood.

The comic manages to walk a line between being a little un-PC and overturning past conventions. Still in R-rated territory, Deathstalker is definitely for fans of the sword and sorcery genre and perhaps those who enjoy hybrid movies like The Evil Dead trilogy. It’s probably too much to hope for, but this series hints at a movie that could serve up the action of the genre with a wry commentary on its tropes without getting too in the weeds.

That being said, Deathstalker is not digging for anything deep here. It’s riffing on a genre beloved by certain people, many of whom hopefully grew up to realize that the original stuff was far too alpha for its own well-being. This series clearly knows its audience, and for genre enthusiasts whose tongue is planted firmly in cheek, it’s a fun romp. A Barbaric/Deathstalker one-shot crossover arrives in August. The movie is currently shooting in Canada for a presumed 2025 release.