Deathstroke #6

Simon Bisley is not supposed to make touching covers. The End.

When last we left Deathstroke, he had just been pummeled by a Nuclear Submarine. That's why this issue begins with a flashback to Ravager throwing a teeny, tiny dagger at rich and/or important people. I guess I didn't need to add that second conjunction in that last sentence. I'm writing this in America where the only people who are rich are important, amirite?!

Look at the size of his dagger! His father's blade is so much bigger!

Deathstroke is somewhere off in a tree or on a roof with his stopwatch keeping tabs on how well his son kills 50 or 60 people before reaching the rich old intended target inside the mansion. And he's the typical dickwad coach father. Yeah. If you're a father and you're a coach and you're reading this right now, realize your son thinks you're an asshole. Seriously. Have you never watched The Bad News Bears? The original not the one with Billy Bob Thorton. In fact, anybody born after Star Wars came out should watch the original Bad News Bears. That's the fucking world you missed out on, you poor helmet wearing can't go anywhere unsupervised cartoons always have a fucking message wretches.

You know what one of my favorite past-times as a kid in the 70s was? My cousin Jason and I would walk around the field at the high school near my house and we'd collect beer bottle caps. We'd also take the beer bottles we found and kick them through the redwood trees lining the perimeter of the field. We'd take turns kicking our bottle trying to break the other person's bottle. Sometimes we'd get lucky and find porn. This was more fun than Atari Combat. And maybe some of our cartoons at the time had messages for the children. But these were always tacked on at the end and weren't part of the plot. Kids today have Danger Rangers where the whole storyline revolves around making sure some asshole kid has his helmet on tight.

This is how you sound, Coach Dads.

Later, while relaxing at home, Grant (Ravager) pouts until his mom tells him to buck up and that his father treats him like shit because he loves him and wants him to be the best. Later, Slade accuses Grant of not wanting to be the best. But what if Grant does want to be the best but just isn't physically capable? I guess then Slade hates him forever. Or at least despises him until he dies and then Slade weeps and moans and wishes he'd treated his son better.

I guess a fictional character should have a fictional hero.

Deathstroke explains to Grant that he's reading about Achilles' death as a reminder to be aware of your weaknesses and to always hide those weaknesses before they become a liability. Grant probably thinks he's getting a lesson in how to be the best. But I'm pretty sure Deathstroke is calling Grant a liability and one of Deathstroke's weaknesses! What a bastard.

The next scene has Ravager tied to a chair getting his ass beat.

That looks like Midnighter! Now that would be a good fight: Deathstroke vs Midnighter!

Deathstroke doesn't make it to Ravager in the next 57 seconds but he does get close enough to witness the explosion! Now it's crying time! Boo hoo. This must be he event that made Deathstroke stop training sidekicks and to also change his mask to a half-skull, half-orange instead of the full orange thing.

After the how Ravager "died" flashback, the comic book finally returns to the present where Deathstroke is coming back to consciousness floating in the debris filled bay. Legacy Three is there to throw him around and kick him a bit and gloat. He also whines a bit about how easy the great Deathstroke was to defeat. That probably means Legacy Three is about to die.

And then this happens:

They actually were calling themselves The Harm Armory, hunh? They must have tweeted it after their first and only successful mission.

Once Slade knows this isn't about Ravager and that this Legacy guy knows nothing about his son, he's now free to kill him. Legacy Three just made a noob/newb/n00b mistake. He also brags that his suit is made of Nth Metal. Does everybody suddenly have access to that shit?

Slade escapes onto the nuclear sub and throws together a little machine off the cuff. He wires it into the nuclear system and Legacy Three believes Deathstroke is about to set off the reactor. But he doesn't. Slade just generates an electro-magnetic pulse which shuts down all of Legacy's systems, immobilizing him. And then he begins the slow and torturous process of finding out everything Legacy Three knows about April's parents.

Meanwhile, back at April's parents house:

And then the final page is the big reveal of Grant with his Ravager sword saying, "...isn't a son supposed to best his father?"

Once I started writing about the New 52 comics, I would read the occasional online review of comics I'd already read just to see what people think. I would especially do it with the really bad comics and see if it wasn't just me. It's actually surprising how much bullshit comic book fans will put up with and still believe a book is doing a pretty good job. Anyway, most of them refused to deal out spoilers. But what that really meant was they would spoil the entire comic book plot except for the stupid last page twist surprise! So they would talk about 18-19 pages of the plot but then refuse to reveal that Grant was behind it. Or that Two Face had become One Face. Or that Superman punched out Green Lantern. Or that Batgirl suddenly had the gun turned on her because The Mirror had thrown someone out a window. Or that Green Lantern had been disintegrated in the Yellow Lantern Battery. Or any other number of stupid last page surprise cliffhanger bullshit endings that generally don't need to be there.

Deathstroke Issue #6 Rating: No change. Nothing bad about the comic but nothing special either. I sure wish Deathstroke was whimsical in his violence. I'd be more entertained if the wholesale slaughter were a bit tongue-in-cheek. Probably just me though. Hardcore comic nerds would probably snort at me and say, "I suppose you'd rather see Judge Dredd in pink riding unicorns?" Yes. Yes I would.