Deathstroke #2

Get it? Deathstroke is missing an eye! Or was missing an eye? I think he's better now that he's in a young body again.

I was wondering what Tony S. Daniel's pitch to DC was for a new Deathstroke series and I think I figured it out. He probably walked into the pitch meeting, set down his Slurpee and Skittles, threw his arms up over his head and said, "Imagine, if you will, Deathstroke the Terminator...as a young man!" He paused for about twenty seconds so that the gasps of his audience wouldn't drown out the rest of his pitch. "DC is into selling comic books, right?" Lots of old gray heads bobbed up and down. After they were all done sucking each others' dicks, they said, "Yes!" Daniel continued: "And, no offense to you old farts running things up here in Paycheck Plaza, but kids don't want to read about old people. That's why Deathstroke failed last time!" One of the braver executives raised her hand and said, "Are you sure it wasn't because we allowed Liefeld to write and draw it?"

"What?! NO!" screamed Daniel as he climbed up onto a swivel chair for effect but realized his swaying and tottering as he tried to keep his balance wasn't inspiring confidence so he climbed back down before continuing. "It is never the writer or the artist's fault! The fault is always in the readers or the editors! The editors should have realized that the kids don't want to read the adventures of an old guy and they should have fixed that! Well, since they're so fucking stupid, I've come along and I've fixed it! Deathstroke shall be made young again! The kids will flock to this comic book once they realize it's not about a sexy hot old lemon party man but about a super sexy hot young stud!" Applause filled the room. Roses were thrown. More dicks were sucked.

And that's why I'm sitting here reading another shitty comic book by Tony S. Daniel!

This issue begins with Slade Wilson discovering his new youth.

Slade counts the rings on his penis to verify his age.

Guess what happens on pages two and three after Slade sees his penis for the first time in years in stereo vision? It's a double splash page! I forgot to predict it but since I've predicted one for every single one of the credit pages in a comic book Tony S. Daniel is drawing and writing, you have to assume the prediction was implied.

Deathstroke pulled two swords out of his ass in order to confront the man that took time to build an arts and crafts Throne of Weapons so he could look cool when Slade finally woke up.

Slade's entire reaction to suddenly waking up youthful is to look at his penis and laugh a lot. And then, it's right back to getting serious and figuring out who his mystery date is. Hopefully we'll revisit the entire suddenly being young thing because that's a major life event! That's a big change! I want a scene with Slade sitting at a bar discussing the ramifications of suddenly being young again. How did it happen? Are there any side effects Slade should be worrying about? Will he be able to find a younger audience? I have a feeling the penis look and the laughter were all we're going to get and that Slade doesn't have any more questions about it.

When the person in the throne doesn't answer Slade's question of "Who the hell are you?", Slade tries to cut his head in half while yelling at him to answer. That makes sense! It's absolutely what a person that thinks of themselves as "a good guy" would do! Totally acceptable to kill a person for not answering you after you've asked them a question one time. So fucking rude to expect a person to repeat themselves.

The person in the chair is a hologram created by the person not in the chair: Red Fury. The only thing I know about Red Fury is that he needs to fire his costume designer.

Was there an edict handed down from up on high in the DC Offices that declared no more billionaires? So now along with Oliver Queen and Bruce Wayne, Slade Wilson is also broke.

It turns out that Red Fury hired Slade Wilson to do a job for him but that job was so super sensitive that even Slade Wilson couldn't know he was doing the job! So Slade Wilson spent a week doing who the fuck knows and now he's got to drink a magic potion to restore his memory so that he can fix whatever went wrong during the time he forgot! I have a feeling the plot is this convoluted because Tony S Daniel doesn't really know what he's doing. So he's throwing all the spy tropes against the wall and he'll just keep the ones that stick over time. All the reader needs to know right now is that some guy named Odysseus is trying to kill Slade and Red Fury, and the only way to stop him is to find a bunch of other mystery people involved in the secret mess that nobody remembers.

"Dur! Stop him what now?"

The next panel shows an army of those guys from the cover charging into the ruins of Deathstroke's headquarters. And when you turn the page, Slade Wilson is in full Deathstroke gear with a couple of rifles blowing the shit out of Eye Men. And that, kids, is why Tony S Daniel sucks at drawing his own shit. He has no idea how to pace a comic book or how to choreograph a fight scene or how to realistically map what's going on in the space within the panels. Where did Deathstroke's outfit come from? Did they just wait until he found it, put it on, and armed himself?

Slade is fighting 300 people which, if he kills them all, will be half as many kills as he's racked up over his entire career! I think Slade low-balled his kill count last issue when he said it was 600. Just that fight on the bullet train when he fought an army of ninjas should have been at least one hundred in just an hour or so!

Slade manages to kill 299 people and survive bringing a mountain down on top of his head. And yet Opossum gave him such a hard time last issue? Opossum must be the biggest bad ass of all the mercenaries ever in the DC Universe! He's my new favorite!

Instead of using the magic potion on himself so that he'll remember what's going on (thus saving Tony S Daniel from having to explain anything! Whew! That was a close one!), Slade makes the last surviving attacker drink it so that he'll tell Slade all about Odysseus.

More like EYEronic, amirite?!

Turns out The League of Assassins, Lady Shiva, and Bronze Tiger are all working for Odysseus. Isn't Ra's al Ghul going to be a little jealous that his people are being used to chase down a hack like Deathstroke?

Bronze Tiger looks a little bit different than he did in Red Hood and the Outlaws which is a good thing. Hopefully he's just a guy that kicks ass now and not a fucking cereal mascot. Who thought it would be a kick ass idea to turn him into an actual tiger?!

Red Fury spoke two sentences to Slade Wilson that threw Slade's one and only trusted associate, Benjamin Williams, under the bus. So guess who Slade trusts more? You got it! The guy he just met in the ridiculous costume! Fuck the guy Slade has been working with for years! Remember in the Swamp Thing Annual how Etrigan tried this trick on Swamp Thing concerning Cappuccino and Swamp Thing knew better than to believe the fucking asshole that didn't mean anything to him? How Swamp Thing continued to trust and believe in the person he'd worked closely with? And he didn't even know Cappuccino for as long as Slade has known Benji! I guess that just shows that Charles Soule is a better writer than Tony S Daniel. Not that there was any doubt of that in anybody's minds!

Slade decides to drink the last of the magic juice so he can remember what happened during that week he forgot about. It turns out the guy he was hunting, Odysseus? It's his son Joseph! Although it's weird that in his memory when Slade comes face to face with him, he calls his son "Jericho." No wonder Joseph hates his father! How cold is that, calling your son by his code name?!

Deathstroke #2 Rating: When last we saw Jericho, he was able to take over people's minds without disappearing inside of them. I guess he retains that ability and is even able to control hundreds of people at a time. Has he taken over the entire League of Assassins? Also I shouldn't say "when last we saw Jericho" since the previous incarnations of Slade Wilson across three very different versions of him in his last New 52 comic series, his portrayal in Team 7, and his completely revamped history in Villains Month Deathstroke #1, it's best to just assume that none of that shit ever happened. Except that time he fought Stillborn! I'm still pretending there is an idiot name Stillborn in the DC Universe. I think his real name was Deadborn but that's just semantics since, based on his origin, Stillborn actually fit better.