The Green Team #3

Well Green Team! I'd like to say it was nice knowing you but fuck you rich, spoiled rotten bastards. I hope Deathstroke eats your rectums!

I cannot stand when a character in a story I'm consuming (this includes characters on reality television as well!) blames another character's actions on jealousy. It's not even Psychology 101. It's Psychology Pre-School After Nap Time Fun-Fun Activity Fun. But that caption I just wrote up there under the title? Purely based on jealousy. Who wouldn't want to be born with a silver spoon up their nose? And that's me saying that with the understanding that my personality and my strength of character would probably be diminished by about 65% (I did the maths!) due to easy living in a rich person's bubble and not totally understanding how hard the world can be. I'm willing to give up 65% of what makes me me just to have an easier life! I am such a shallow piece of shit. Ugh! That's another benefit! If I were rich, I would never even have considered that what I just considered makes me a shallow piece of shit! It's not fair!

Oh! Back to the "You're just jealous!" thing! Whenever a character says that, I instantly hate that character forever with no chance at redemption! I usually scream out something clever at the movie screen like, "Well, you're just stupid!" And then I try to get the person sitting in front of me to high five me. Unless the person in front of me is five or under, I'm usually left hanging. Screw you, adults! When someone offers up a high five, it's your job to awkwardly and embarrassingly and half-heartedly return that fucker! Unless you're at a sports game and then that shit becomes ritualistic. I bet the high five is the single biggest thing to blame for me hating sports. Also the way fans speak of their team in the first person plural. I didn't realize cracking peanuts and swigging beer was such an important part of the team dynamic! Congratulations on taking care of your part! High five?

Meanwhile in the comic book where there is less anger but more turning into robots, Celia was having issues with the cut on her arm. It seems to be infected and getting worse. Except first...DEATHSTORK! Shit. I mean...DEATHSTROKE!

All of Deathstroke's business meetings are working meetings.

I'm still pretty bitter about Deathstroke's comic book being so shitty. I'd like to know why Higgins was taken off of it to give to Rob Liefeld? Who buys a comic simply because it has Liefeld's name on it? This is how I know DC Comics doesn't know how to run a comic book company: they fucking hired Rob Liefeld. Look, assholes. Stop dreaming about the masturbation-filled halcyon days of the nineties where fans must have been fucked up continuously on ecstasy and whippits! He and his Image buddies may have become rockstars for who knows what the fuck reasons (seriously, I'm pretty sure I was the only sane person reading comic books in the 90s) but think it through a little bit. Those were the days when comic book companies began believing that the job of Writer was redundant. "Who needs a fucking writer when an artist can draw panel after panel of grim faced people from the future?" I don't know what the phrase "the tail wagging the dog" means but I think it might possibly describe the 90s comic business model. Maybe the phrase I'm actually looking for is "like a dog eating his own shit." Is that a phrase?

Wow. I'm not sure that paragraph actually went anywhere or had a coherent point but, fuck, I forgot how good it felt to blast Rob Liefeld and "90s style" comic books! I think "90s style" describes men drawn with lots of lines on their faces, women in poses only people that didn't learn to draw nude models in college would think were realistic, pouches, Rob Liefeld and 1000 characters with one eye because drawing symmetry is fucking hard, guns, grit, and Wall Street style speculation. There may have been barrels full of cash involved as well. And since all those went to Image, I can proudly say that not one dollar of mine was added to any of those fucking barrels. I know some people actually take pride in their accomplishments but I have to be proud of myself in whatever minor ways I can find since most of my memories are filled with disappointment, failure, and buckets of my own semen.

Masturbation was one thing I was good at! Don't take that away from me!

You know what amazes me more than people reading the comic books of Image in the 90s (Image has published a lot of terrific shit. So you don't have to email me defending them now!)? People reading my fucking commentaries. Y'all are weird.

Director's Cut Technical Commentary: "I've read one page of The Green Team #3 so far. And look at that TL;DR mess! Now keep your eyes open at the end of this commentary because you won't want to miss how I write one tiny paragraph to summarize the last ten pages!"

Some time in-between Issue #2 and Issue #3, Commodore 64 and Mo drove down to Miami in the Batmobile to meet with Deathstroke and see if he'd be willing to kill Riot for them. Even though these kids can pay some major money, Deathstroke seems adverse to killing Riot and would actually like to kill the rich kids instead. I'm not sure who Deathstroke is shooting at during this meeting. Probably like I said earlier: he just takes his business meetings during work hours.

Back in New York, J.P. and Cecilia have been besieged by Paparazzi. They're trapped in the hotel because Cecilia can't be seen in public with her new pink robot arm. Although it seems to me that people will see it and just think she's setting trends. Nobody would think it's a real cyborg arm! They'd just buy it as some new fashion trend and then all the teeny boppers will suddenly be roaming the malls with robot arms. And then Cliff Steele will be trying to get an interview on Old Fogey Radio to claim that he was wearing robot arms way back before it was cool! But before they can make any decisions on what to do, J.P. notices Riot watching them from a roof across the street.

I was so worried about Bubbles!

Apparently everybody knows where J.P. and Cecilia are hiding out because Cecilia sent the concierge to pick up Bubbles across town. Totally worth it.

Back in Miami, Commodore 64 speaks to Deathstroke as if Commodore 64 doesn't give a shit about what the weather will be like tomorrow. Luckily Mo's bodyguard, Abisha, seems to have a relationship with Deathstroke (not that kind! (well, maybe that kind! I shouldn't jump to conclusions!)) so Deathstroke is willing to keep from killing these kids and possibly take the job to kill Riot. Maybe. Possibly. Depending on how much money he can earn.

In the few pages he's appeared, Deathstroke has really redeemed himself! I'm beginning to respect the character again!

Mo and Commodore tag along with Deathstroke as he chases down Manfredi, the man he's been paid to capture.

This is the best issue of Deathstroke yet!

I should mention now that we're way past the error I'm going to discuss about Mo wearing one of Robin's old capes from out of the Batmobile. But while Deathstroke was asking about it, the colorist was smoking some really awesome hashish and just decided to make the cape suit colored. So between the messed up color and the sudden location change to Miami and Deathstroke shooting at who the fuck knew?, I was a little bit confused. And because I'm an established Writer (with a Big "W"! The biggest!), I can punctuate shit however the fuck I please.

Hmm, maybe after typing that last sentence, I should send a written apology to Howard Mackie. No, no. He was a shitty writer with a little, teeny, tiny "w". He did make a lot of money though! So if money is the proof of a great writer, he fucking wins that round!

Then I turn the page and see that fucking advert for the Annuals again. I really wish DC would just give me the fifth Wednesday of the month off!

And then the meeting ends successfully on a number of accounts!

That bugs the shit out of me when the comic book lies unevenly on the scanner! Look at that tilt! Look at it! Despise it! UGH!

Oh, and I seem to have forgotten to mention that Cecilia and J.P. escape when the entire hotel is airlifted away by Commodore's helicopters. And since the entire thing involved an actress at the center of it, everybody just shrugs it off as a publicity stunt. Hopefully, since Commodore had purchased the hotel earlier in the day, the Green Team didn't just kidnap a bunch of tourists.

The next day, everybody meets up in Monaco to battle Riot! That's because Riot's boss (who is probably the main Riot) lives there! I don't know how they figured it out. Maybe Deathstroke did the research. But when Riot attacks and J.P. tries to use Commodore's disc, he finds out that the discs attune themselves to the first person who uses them. So Commodore will always be Green. And Cecilia must always use J.P.'s disc now which is Gold. I bet that means J.P. will be the Pink Green Team Ranger #3! Mo winds up being the Powder Blue Green Team Ranger That Might Actually Be A Slightly Tinted White.

But Deathstroke arrives and does all the work capturing the various Riots anyway. Which is good because he's the only one getting paid.

Riot arrived in Harley Quinn's vagina?

Deathstroke is the one that traced the head Riot to Monaco but after capturing one for The Green Team to question, he takes his money and leaves. So Commodore unmasks Riot. He and J.P. are shocked to recognize the person under the mask as somebody they believed was dead. The reader never gets to see Riot's face though. And I don't remember them talking about a dead friend in one of the earlier issues but that doesn't mean they didn't. That just means I can't remember anything. Maybe it's Damian Wayne!

The Green Team #3 Rating: +1 Ranking. This was a terrific issue of Deathstroke. I wish the character I just read had been the one that starred in his own series! Then it might actually been entertaining and made some kind of sense.