Deathstroke #17

In the art world, this stance is known as "I didn't plan my space correctly and began drawing the figure too low and too big so I had to make him kneeling and disappearing into the ground."

The Review or Whatever!
I could go all "'nuff said" on this review and simply point out that one of Deathstork's enemies last issue called him "Douchéstroke" and let people figure out if that's for them or not (I've learned how to type the "e" with an accent now so I can easily refer to Deathstroke as "Douchéstork"!). But I feel I'd be remiss in not pointing out all of the other shit that has gone horribly wrong in the telling of Douchéstork's Rebooted Reboot of his New 52 Reboot tale. Like for instance, Slade Wilson is now a young man for some reason. It doesn't matter how or why because it matters little to Slade. The only thing he needed to do was check his balls and they seemed fine, so that was the end of that. The only reason for his sudden youth, I suspect, was Tony S. Daniel must have believed it would attract the youth market who would suddenly be interested in shipping him with other characters. Although I'm not sure if the new creative team realizes that Slade was only recently turned into a young man.

This was supposedly five years ago. Perhaps Slade the Silver Fox was just really into Just For Men back then?

The guy Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kidding out of the panel with Slade is another one of this comic book's stunning errors. He's a man who has given himself the metahuman moniker of Lawman. Fucking "LAWMAN"! Seriously! Who thinks up this shit?! Not me! If I were to come up with this story, I would have called him Sheriff Guy!

Speaking of the term "guy", I learned today on Twitter from one of my heroes, Susie Dent, that the word "guy" as in Tumblr's "You guys! Pay attention to me" guys derives from Guy Fawkes. It's because his effigies were known as guys, like in "Bring me all of those guys to throw on the fire!" It then did some other stuff and now here we are! Or something. Shut up.

Dammit! I just realized I missed the perfect opportunity to say, "You guys! Actually, didactic stuff about how guys entered the vernacular said in a fairly condescending way!"

Douchéstork has been searching for his missing daughter Rose because he wants people to actually think he cares about her (he doesn't). In doing so, he's made enemies with some Street Fighter II character named Snakebite and found himself in Shitstain, Montana, about to die. He probably won't die because the guy masterminding this ambush is the idiot I mentioned earlier who wanted to be called Lawman. That doesn't even sound cool! I'd rather be called Turd Police.

Lawman is angry because he was killed on the battlefield and Slade left his corpse there. Their enemies brought him back to life and used him as a metahuman blood bank. That's why Lawman is so angry with Slade. Because Slade decided to save himself instead of dying trying to drag a corpse off of a raging battlefield. As reasons go, it's not the worst motivation for a villain. I can only say that because I've read stories by Ann Nocenti and Scott Lobdell.

I would like to think that if I ever died and my friend left my corpse so he could save his own life and my corpse was later brought back to life and horrible things were done to my reanimated body, I would be so ecstatic to be alive again that I wouldn't give a shit. Definitely the last thing I would be thinking would be, "Ew! That Doom Bunny is going to pay for thinking about himself and his wife and kids and not making my dead body his first and only priority! I'll teach him never to abandon a corpse again!"

Okay, so I've now established that Lawman doesn't just have a silly name, he's also an idiot with no facility for logic.

In the literary world, this is known as "I didn't plan this story at all and am now providing this explication to tie it all together even though it's a bunch of bullshit nonsense."

Lawman also works with some new covert organization named NOVA (which I'm sure will be a really clever acronym when it's finally revealed) which targets "metahuman criminals and those who use their powers for currency." Why couldn't that be the entire reason for hunting down Slade? Why all the "I was your friend and you left my corpse to be reanimated and tortured, you jerk!"? I think the whole NOVA thing works just fine without introducing all the stuff that makes Lawman appear silly (I mean the stuff besides his name. No fixing that. Except, you know, giving him a different name that isn't stupid).

Okay, now that everybody understands what's going on and how Lawman definitely is going to kill Slade because he also can't wait to be known as the man who killed Douchéstork, Lawman shoots Slade in the head and dances a jig. Oh no, wait. I got ahead of myself. That was my speculation as to how this scene would end in the most logical way. I forgot about the part where Lawman has no facility for logic.

Oh, that's right! Give him a fighting chance! Ruin your whole Harvestian plan that took forever to pull off just to throw it all in the toilet here at the end! Way to go, Flawman.

Red Hood has also been dragged off to Buttereddick, Montana, so he's able to save Douchéstork (whom he named, by the way. I mean, except for the stork part. He came up with the terrible "douché" part. What's with the fucking accent, Todd? Is that how Alfred used to pronounce douche?) in the nick of time! Whew! I thought for sure Douchéstork was going to save himself.

Lawman uses his mind powers (oh yeah. He has mind powers. Seems sort of useless for somebody without much of a mind) to convince Jason Todd that he sees Batman. Jason follows illusory Batman back to Gotham or something. I don't know. He just leaves the comic book at this point. Does it matter?

Douchéstork is once again about to be killed by Lawman but this time Rose Wilson saves his life. For some reason. I'm sure it has to do with Daddy Issues. That seems to be a running theme in DC Comics. That's why my blog's banner is the way it is. Not the Blogger one! The Tumblr one!

While Rose is being stabbed by Lawman, Slade gets up behind him with his sword and cuts off his head! No, wait. He puts the sword down and does this instead:

Daddy's an idiot.

And since Douchéstork is now unarmed, Lawman simply goes ahead and does this:

I guess Lawman just can't be beat!

Just before Lawman kills Slade and Rose, Jericho pulls some mental shenanigans which makes Lawman think Rose and Slade have disappeared. I didn't know he had that power. Slade and Rose limp over to him so that Slade can remind his children why they hate him when he calls his son Joseph "Jericho." And hanging out with Jericho is Ra's al Ghul because whatever. It might tie into some earlier part of this series but I can't remember. It might also just be the only thing the creative team could think to add for a big last page surprise. "Horrible story still tainted by Tony S. Daniel's awful writing ability finally over! And look who's now in it! Surprise!" I don't think the surprise was enough to make up for all of the other shit in this story.

Poor Deathstroke has been garbage for so long. At least it's been consistent, I guess.