Deathstroke the Terminator #21

Deathstork fingers Vagilante in her vagina. I think. Is that where the vagina is? Or is the vagina under the 'V'? Is that what the 'V' stands for?

The only way Deathstork can get it up is if he has a gun pointed at his face. And the only way Vagilante can lady get it up is if she has a gun pointed at Deathstork's face. So you'd think they'd be compatible, right?! Well, wrong! I mean, kind of wrong. But a little bit right too! See how the cover mentions love? I guess that means they love each other.

While you're rereading the cover and thinking, "Oh yeah! It does say love! You're so observant, Grunion Guy!", check out Deathstork's sword. I think it's swollen. Hee hee! Penis joke!

What would happen if you were a guy and you were feeling sexy and your were allergic to bees and then a bee stung your erection? I bet you could really impress some ladies, right?!

This issue is written by Alan Grant so I'm going to predict that it's better than the last time Vagilante appeared in a Deathstork comic book. That time, it was written by Marv Wolfman and the less I say about Marv Wolfman, the less ammunition I'll give his lawyers when he sues me for libel. Maybe I should only review comic books written and drawn by artists that are dead.

The inside cover has an advertisement for the 1993 movie Fire in the Sky and I have a problem with the copy.

How can you say "based on the true story"? It's just based on a story some guy told! If I told a screenwriter a story about how Marv Wolfman wouldn't stop telling me his rape fantasies at urinals at Comicon in the year 2000 and he turned it into a script, could he proclaim it's based on a true story? It's based on the true story that I told the story! But I don't think that's a defense against libel. Unless this time it was slander.

This issue begins with a prologue that puts Slade back in his ugly orange and blue outfit with the garish boots and flared gloves. He doesn't look as cool as I remember him looking when I first saw him in the early eighties. Other people I thought were cool back then: Doug Henning, Charles Nelson Reilly, Scatman Crothers, Richard Mulligan, and Roddy McDowall. I was an awesome kid.

Deathstork has just finished a disastrous job for The Company (I think that was some black ops U.S. government agency. It's hard to remember since I read Issue #20 months ago) so he's looking for something a little less stressful. He takes a job from an alcoholic breakfast drink that hides behind darkened mirrors. It's all very mysterious but it'll probably put him at odds with Vagilante and her sexy vagina. Unless her vagina is deadly.

I wonder if I say "Bloody Vagina" in front of a mirror in a darkened room, one will appear before me? I'm too scared to try it.

Deathstork is a self-hating criminal.

Vagilante attacks some criminals guarding a cardboard box warehouse. She's looking for Bloody Mary because Bloody Mary killed some cops and killing cops was wrong in 1993. Killing cops makes you a criminal. That's why Deathstork doesn't like Bloody Mary. But he likes Bloody Mary's money, so what can he do? Deathstork shows up to show Vagilante that his hands are practically welded together on the matter.

Ew! Stop using the "L" word!

After calling Vagilante his lover, he punches her in the face, bloodies her nose, and threatens to kill her if she interferes. I guess if murder doesn't make him a criminal, beating the shit out of his lover doesn't make him an abuser. It's tricky being Deathstork the hero! You have to have to redefine ideas, rationalize inconsistencies of character, and live in a deep well of denial.

Not that Vagilante is much saner. Later, she tracks down Slade in his apartment so she can fuck him. She's only doing it to get information out of him, of course. And of course Deathstork falls for it because he has a penis. His penis isn't any smarter than anybody else's penis. I bet it's dumber because it's quicker to react than other penises. As soon as Vagilante pops her tits out (which she totally does! She can show them in the Deathstork the Terminator comic book because they don't have any nipples on them), Deathstork's penis is all, "Hey hey now! What's this?! Sproing-doing-doing!" That means it's now erect and not that it has dementia.

I knew you'd be curious about the tits so here they are.

Deathstork apparently tells secrets about the job he's currently on when he sleeps so Vagilante now has a lead on Bloody Mary. That seems awfully convenient! Maybe Vagilante's vagina is full of Sodium Pentathol. Or maybe Slade was just pretending. Which Vagilante would totally know he was doing. And he's totally know that she totally knew! But that's as deep as that mind game goes because Slade is smarter (but only because of the military experiments performed on him).

So Vagilante is gone when Slade wakes but he knows she knows he was just fooling her so he knows she'll follow him when he leaves the hotel. She does follow him but she doesn't come after him directly. Maybe she's smarter than he is after all! Instead she calls the cops so that Deathstork has to beat up some police just doing there job which doesn't make him a criminal, exactly. It just makes him an asshole, I guess?

Deathstork catches up to Vagilante at the hospital where she's tracked down Bloody Mary. The two of them fuckfight for a bit before Vagilante discovers Bloody Mary just wanted to have her baby outside of prison so that it wouldn't become Bane II. Plus she wanted Vagilante to adopt it! Vagilante is all, "What am I supposed to do with a baby?" And Deathstork is all, "Ha ha! You have to take care of it now because I called it!" And Vagilante is all, "Damn! I guess I'll raise it to be a gun!"

This story wasn't written by Marv Wolfman (at least the non-Prologue part of it wasn't) so it's the greatest Deathstork the Terminator ever written. At least in this series from the 1990s.

The letter column is called Deathstorks which makes no sense. At least one letter shit all over Marv Wolfman's writing and terrible way the Deathstork books were part of the Total Chaos crossover even though nothing in Deathstork ever affected that story.