The best mercenary in the DC Universe has stuck around through the relaunch, but can he continue to rank in as the best in this new universe?
SPOILER WARNING!
We begin this story hearing someone talking to another person while we get to view different events from the past. The basic point of this is to let anyone know (who doesn’t already) that Deathstroke is one bad ass guy before bringing us into the actual conversation. Christoph who apparently is like Slade’s agent is offering Slade a job. Of course, Christoph has to sell the job to Slade which he does a pretty bad job of doing by pushing some buttons of Slade’s, but the man still agrees to it. So in comes the new team! I mostly stayed clear of Deathstroke’s run with the Titans but generally had not heard great things about having Slade in a team like that, yet here we are with a new one.
This team is… just horrible. Bunch of punk kids that I actually think Kyle Higgins wrote at the level he does just to make sure they come off as annoying, full of themselves, and though apparently the best upcoming mercenaries constantly bicker about stupid things like what to name their group. So the team members are Sharpshooter, Glasses, and a chick. All of them have names, but that is what Slade calls them (minus the girl who he never really addresses). Granted to say though, they all managed to piss the number one mercenary in seconds and despite Christoph having given them such high marks it is clear after the mission briefing that Slade is the real expert and the rest know crap compared to him.
The mission focuses on Slade. Sharpshooter flies them up, Glasses jams any signals they may try to send out, and the chick… all she apparently does is changes the ammo to hollow points. She was suppose to be some weapons expert or something, but really that is all she really does besides getting a cute girl in this comic. So yes, she is more useless than the Sharpshooter and Glasses. What is Deathstroke doing? Being a bad ass by jumping out of the plane onto the target’s, and ripping the door off to board it. He clears through the “guards” easily, and before taking out the target is given a briefcase with the guy telling Slade that they went to a lot of work to bring him up there. Blowing up the jet, Slade makes his way back to the “teams” own plane.
We finish off with the victory celebration, but for any who was fearing this horrible team up was going to continue? Don’t as Slade kills all of them in the end and I’m extremely glad he does. He only leaves Christoph alive to show him what was in the briefcase (which we don’t get to see) and Deathstroke states his annoyance at his crappy jobs lately to only get a response that people no longer think Deathstroke can cut it anymore.
The issue is good. It has some really good art, gives us not an origin story but at least background history on Deathstroke for new readers, and sets us up for a further story in following issues. As a fan of Deathstroke – he is one of my favorite comic book villains – I am looking forward to more issues and it was pretty strong, but nothing that fully gripped me and left me sad I’d have to wait a full four weeks for another issue. I do think a lot of that was just how annoying the three were that Deathstroke killed at the end.
read/RANT! 