Deathstroke #18

I wish Deathstroke would pull out the glue and fix his title already.

Last issue of Deathstroke ended with Tomo, the guy that wanted to kill Deathstroke, killing Tomo's father, the guy that had no clue what was going on. I believe Tomo was trying to get Deathstroke to kill Tomo's father for him but his plan was stupid from the beginning. I was going to call it something else but I lost the word before I could type it. And since my vocabulary is chock full of synonyms, I decided to go with "stupid". That doesn't cover what I wanted to say but I'll go crazy trying to pull out the word I wanted at this point. The problem is before I could type the word I wanted, I thought about maybe using "hackneyed" except that wasn't even close to what I wanted to describe. But "hackneyed" did manage to drive the other word straight out of my brain and into the aether. Fuck you, getting old!

I've actually had that problem my whole life though. I'm really bad at remembering names and often give up immediately and just say something like, "Remember when we went to dinner with what's-her-name?" But other words I lose all the time. I know the word I want but I can't bring it forth. Often I can find it via Google because I can see it partially, so I can drop one letter at a time in the search bar and sometimes the word pops up. I did that with consummate a few commentaries ago. Knew that's the word I wanted. Could define it in my head and I could hear it starting but couldn't pull the rest of it out. Other times I can get to the word by circumlocution. As I use other words to define and explain the word I'm looking for, I'll eventually spiral down to the word I want and it pops up as if I had never lost it.

Maybe I have brain damage! I wonder if I can blame my sister for all the times she hit me in the head?

Oh! The word I wanted was convoluted. I wonder if I have a problem with "con" words?! No, I wanted to say "attrition" one time while walking back from a coffee shop with my girlfriend but couldn't access it. Although at the time, I thought I wanted a "con" word! Sometimes my brain tricks me because it is stupid.

Anyway, Tomo's plan failed and he ended up having to kill his own father while Deathstroke watched. I mentioned how many stories in Deathstroke deal with father issues and this issue begins with Deathstroke making a similar observation.

Actually, you should be sorry for stabbing him through the chest.

Tomo continues spouting his new age Japanese business philosophy that is actually very old school: killing, killing, and more killing! While he's lecturing anybody that still has at least one ear, Tomo's father is completing his final transaction.

That old man just wasted a dollar.

I'm pretty sure Deathstroke wouldn't have been too offended to kill Tomo for free at this point. But since the old man was Japanese, he had to save face all around and offer Deathstroke the dollar. Otherwise Deathstroke would have been offended and everybody would have been embarrassed and more bowing and apologizing than killing would take place. And nobody buys a Deathstroke comic book to see a bunch of embarrassed Japanese ninjas shame-faced and sorry.

Deathstroke shoots Tomo. It doesn't hurt him though because Tomo upgraded himself. He tears off his shirt in a very sexy and dramatic scene to show off his huge implants. They're actually pretty disgusting. So now Deathstroke has to kill a cybernetic ninja and 9,999 normal ninjas. And all for just one buck!

Now I guess the rest of the comic book will be a gigantic ninja battle!

Who is Stroger? I think Deathstroke may have already fried a few of Tomo's memory capacitors.

Deathstroke reminds the 9,999 ninjas (or however many are left) that Jenner Collins' will stipulated that the person that killed him be killed by their clan. 9,999 ninjas go, "Oh yeah! Duh!", and one of them says, "Jinx!", and then they all attack Tomo instead of Deathstroke. Honor is a sucker's game!

Oh wait! Deathstroke has something to say about Honor as he fights Tomo on the side of a skyscraper!

Why is there a "but" in there? Those all sound like problems with honor! Like I said: a sucker's game!

Deathstroke plummets to the ground with Tomo. He survives by landing on Tomo and then doing a stuntman roll. His healing powers and extra strength probably help him survive as well. But before Tomo dies, he whispers, "Lynch lied." And since Lynch is Captain Sideburns, the leader of Team 7 who is supposedly dead at this point in time, Deathstroke decides he's probably earned a free, non-offensive kill. Besides, you can't kill a man that's already dead! So it can't be offensive to not kill him for free, right?

Deathstroke #18 Rating: No change. This issue was like a bite-sized snack if the snack didn't taste like anything and cost $2.99.