Next Level: One Shot #1 Review: Deadshot Takes Aim at DC’s Dangerous New Future

WEEEPAAA, mi gente! Next Level: One Shot #1 kicks open the door with Deadshot already running, gunning, and questioning every terrible decision that dropped him into another impossible assignment. Gerry Duggan understands the assignment immediately. Floyd Lawton should never sound impressed by danger. A small army comes hunting him, bullets start chewing through the scenery, and this maniac reacts like somebody delivered the wrong sandwich. Annoyed. Sarcastic. Still deadly. Duggan’s voice carries the opening beautifully because Floyd’s pitch-black humor keeps the action fun while his exhaustion reminds us this cat has been through hell, died, came back, and somehow found the return trip even worse.

Fernando Blanco draws Deadshot like a trained killer instead of a superhero posing with expensive firearms. Floyd twists, pivots, braces, and fires with brutal efficiency. Every movement has intent. Bullets travel through the page with a nasty sense of momentum, while shifting camera angles make the firefights feel fast without turning them into visual soup. Blanco also works Deadshot’s targeting system directly into the layouts, dropping those giant red scopes over characters, buildings, and possible threats. Now the reader is not simply watching Floyd investigate. We are looking through his damaged, suspicious eye right beside him. Everybody becomes a target. Everybody looks guilty.

Rick Flag pulls Floyd into a conspiracy involving Cadmus, artificial duplicates, and powerful figures who may no longer be who they claim to be. Duggan does not waste time spoon-feeding the entire operation. Clues arrive between gunshots, arguments, strange encounters, and Floyd wondering whether Flag has finally driven off the mental cliff without leaving a forwarding address. Their history gives those exchanges some bite. Neither man trusts easily, both carry enough Suicide Squad trauma to sink Belle Reve, and each recognizes the other as the kind of stubborn fool who might keep fighting after the world stops being worth saving.

Storywise, this one-shot has a lot of traffic to direct. Deadshot travels through several corners of DC’s Next Level landscape, encountering new players, altered familiar faces, and enough suspicious activity to make paranoia feel like basic common sense. A few moments come close to reading like previews for books waiting farther down the highway. You can feel DC pointing toward the next title, the next team, and the next major collision. Duggan keeps most of that machinery under control by filtering everything through Floyd’s attitude, but the middle occasionally gets crowded. One or two appearances feel more like franchise business than necessary fuel for Deadshot’s immediate mission.

Jordie Bellaire gives the issue a filthy, dangerous pulse. Cold blues and industrial grays dominate the nighttime environments, allowing Deadshot’s red-and-white armor to slice through every scene. Those red targeting overlays become warning lights across the artwork, while bursts of orange and yellow make gunfire hit with proper heat. Rain, smoke, darkness, and sickly Cadmus greens keep the atmosphere grim without flattening the characters into muddy silhouettes. Bellaire knows exactly when to light the fuse and when to let Blanco’s shadows do the dirty work.

Buddy Beaudoin faces a sneaky challenge because Floyd narrates almost constantly while bullets, explosions, radio chatter, and character introductions fight for space. The lettering stays remarkably clean. Caption boxes guide the eye without smothering Blanco’s compositions, dialogue moves naturally through crowded panels, and every loud BLAM lands like percussion instead of wallpaper. Deadshot’s internal voice remains the loudest weapon in the book, but Beaudoin never allows it to overpower the visual storytelling. Clean shots all around, fam.

Floyd remains the reason this launch works. Beneath the death wish, smart-ass commentary, and professional arrogance sits a man who keeps pretending he has nothing left to care about. His choices expose the lie. Duggan never turns him soft or hands him a sentimental speech explaining his feelings. Thank goodness. Small decisions reveal the humanity Floyd keeps trying to bury, while his resurrection hangs over him like one more cruel joke the universe refuses to stop telling. He wants a worthy death, yet his instincts keep dragging him toward people who need saving. Messy dude. Great character.

Next Level: One Shot #1 delivers a sharp Deadshot adventure while planting the fuse for a much larger DC conflict. Some of the universe-building crowds the chamber, and not every cameo earns equal weight, but the creative team never loses control of the weapon. Duggan brings the venom, Blanco brings the tactical muscle, Bellaire paints the night in warning colors, and Beaudoin makes every shot crack. DC wanted a tour guide for its dangerous new frontier and picked the one lunatic willing to shoot the map, steal the vehicle, and find his own damn route. Good call. Deadshot has Next Level locked inside his scope, and after this opening round, I want to see him pull the trigger.

CRUSADERS SCORE:
4/5

Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Fernando Blanco
Colorist: Jordie Bellaire
Letterer: Buddy Beaudoin
Cover Artist: Fernando Blanco
Variant Cover Artists: Mark Spears; Jorge Corona and Sarah Stern; Carmine Di Giandomenico; Mario Foccillo and Pressy
Publisher: DC Comics