Comic Review: Deathstroke: The Terminator, Vol. 3: Nuclear Winter

Published: October 17th, 2017
Written by: Marv Wolfman
Art by: Steve Erwin, Will Blyberg, Art Nichols

DC Comics, 257 Pages

Review:

I was really high up on this series after reading the first two volumes. Sadly, this one was a big step down and I’m hoping it was just a minor hiccup, as I continue to read on beyond this one.

I think the big issue with this was that Marv Wolfman felt the need to crossover Deathstroke with the Teen Titans, as the anti-hero has had a deep connection with those characters since he debuted in their comic a decade before this.

However, in this era, the Teen Titans title had gotten really weird and the team was full of a bunch of D-team noobs undeserving of their spots, at least in my opinion.

That being said, this collection of issues was a clusterfuck and that mainly has to do with this just collecting the Deathstroke issues within a larger crossover story. Additionally, this tacks on a completely unrelated story at the end, which was just chapters taken from the Showcase anthology series.

Overall, this just felt like a bunch of random ass shit thrown into one beefy, double-sized trade paperback because they needed to dump it all somewhere.

Hopefully, volume four doesn’t do this and it gets back to kicking proper ass.

Rating: 7/10
Pairs well with: the other volumes in the original Deathstroke: The Terminator series from 1991 to 1996.

Comic Review: Deathstroke, Vol. 4: Family Business

Published: December 20th, 2016
Written by: James Bonny, Phil Hester, Christopher Priest
Art by: Tyler Kirkham

DC Comics, 157 Pages

Review:

This is the conclusion to the Deathstroke run that happened before DC’s Rebirth. This series started with Tony S. Daniel writing and doing the art. However, this finale was written by James Bonny, who came in at the end of the previous volume.

Even with a change in writers, this stayed consistently good throughout and it helps bring a satisfying end to the story of Slade Wilson trying to rebuild his relationship with his children Rose and Jericho.

This picks up right where the previous volume ended, as it ended on a cliffhanger.

This also features a subplot with Ra’s al Ghul and the League of Assassins, who involve themselves in Slade’s war with Lawman, Snakebite and Victor Ruiz. With Ra’s, we are given a big plot twist, as he’s always got deception up his sleeve. Both Ra’s al Ghul and Deathstroke leave this story with their lives but it sets up a real blood feud between the two villain heavyweights.

There are also cameos by Red Hood and Batman. The Clock King shows up in the last issue collected in this volume, which is actually the first Deathstroke issue of the Rebirth era. Needless to say, this ends leading right into Christopher Priest’s lengthy run on this character.

In the end, I really liked this series a lot, even more so than Priest’s, which I found to be mostly great.

Rating: 8/10
Pairs well with: the rest of the 2014-2016 Deathstroke run, as well as the Christopher Priest era that followed.

Comic Review: Deathstroke, Vol. 3: Suicide Run

Published: August 16th, 2016
Written by: Tony Salvador Daniel, James Bonny
Art by: Tyler Kirkman

DC Comics, 136 Pages

Review:

Man, oh, man. I’ve really been enjoying the hell out of Tony S. Daniel’s Deathstroke run and it may be my favorite run on the character since his solo series debut back in 1991. But honestly, I find these stories to be even more fun than those and I like how the personality of Deathstroke has changed over the years and especially, how he’s presented in this series.

Deathstroke is still a badass, cold mercenary but he’s become driven in an effort to find his missing daughter and to try and fix their relationship.

I also like that he was made younger and how that kind of freshens him up and gives him extra vigor.

Additionally, I really like his interactions with Harley Quinn throughout this series, as she’s the version of the character I like best. She’s not a goofy female wannabe Deadpool, as she’s become in recent years, and she’s more of a broken yet clever person, playing everyone in the story in a way that benefits her. Plus, she’s also pretty badass too.

While this volume does end on a cliffhanger, I didn’t mind that, as this has been so good, I’m going to read the fourth and final volume, regardless. But at the same time, even with a cliffhanger, this is a good self-contained story that’s broken out into two parts: the first sees Deathstroke raid Belle Reve, where he has to fight Suicide Squad members and the second, which sees him fight Red Hood and involves a major double cross that sets up the finale.

From the writing to the art, this is solid from top to bottom. It’s a great run on the character and even though I loved Christopher Priest’s run that followed, it didn’t have the same sort of energy and pace.

If you are a fan of the character, you should probably check out the entire Tony Daniel run from 2014-2016.

Rating: 8.5/10
Pairs well with: the rest of the 2014-2016 Deathstroke run, as well as the Christopher Priest era that followed.

Comic Review: Deathstroke, Vol. 2: God Killer

Published: March 1st, 2016
Written by: Tony Salvador Daniel
Art by: Tony Salvador Daniel

DC Comics, 134 Pages

Review:

Hands down, this is one of the coolest and most fun Deathstroke comics that I have ever read. Kudos to Tony S. Daniel for crafting something so damn energetic and enjoyable!

The story follows Deathstroke, as he is given a special weapon that has the power to essentially kill a god. It also controls its wielder and can change shape and morph into whatever is needed to win the battle. Slade is sent to Wonder Woman’s island and tricked into resurrecting an evil god that can bring destruction to the world.

Initially, he gets into fights with Wonder Woman and Superman, while using his new, magical weapon, but the three figure out that they had better work together if they’re going to bring this evil god down.

The story is very mythological based, which is kind of neat for a Deathstroke tale. It goes into new and exciting territory and also pairs him up with two iconic heroes that he seldomly interacts with. Within this story, I like the dynamic of the three working together and it feels like DC’s holy “Trinity” but with a darker, harder edge.

This is fantastical, action packed and badass.

On top of that, Daniel’s art is superb and I like his style quite a bit.

Man, this was just a blast and it completely caught me off guard.

Rating: 9.5/10
Pairs well with: the rest of the 2014-2016 Deathstroke run, as well as the Christopher Priest era that followed.

Comic Review: Deathstroke, Vol. 1: Gods of War

Published: June 23rd, 2015
Written by: Tony Salvador Daniel
Art by: Tony Salvador Daniel

DC Comics, 125 Pages

Review:

I enjoyed Christopher Priest’s fifty-issue run on Deathstroke, which just ended a few months back. I recently went back and read The New 52 era stuff at its beginning because I wanted to delve into more of the character in recent history.

That series was pretty shitty and a letdown, especially since I was interested in seeing Rob Liefeld’s take on the character due to his most famous character, Deadpool, being a parody of Deathstroke.

Where this series takes place is wedged between The New 52 and Priest’s era, which makes it the most recent run on the Deathstroke character before Priest took over.

Overall, this was a badass read and I really liked this story and how it sets everything up for the three other volumes that follow. It’ll also be interesting seeing how it sets the stage for Priest’s lengthy stretch.

This series is written and drawn by Tony Daniel, a guy who is pretty good at both. Honestly, I’ve always dug the guy’s work and out of everything I’ve read and looked at over the years, this is in his upper echelon.

The story focuses on Deathstroke’s family, which is a major plot point that carries over into the Priest run. In addition to his kids, however, this arc features his father and delves into Deathstroke’s backstory, filling in some blanks and letting you know the type of man he was created by.

Deathstroke’s father is the primary villain of this story but there are other characters who all seem to be on their own side and ready for a double cross at any moment. It’ll be interesting to see how some of these threads resolve themselves over the later chapters.

In the end, this was a really enjoyable and invigorating start to this Deathstroke run. I put off reading it because The New 52 run bored me to tears. But I’m glad to see that the Deathstroke title seems to be in good hands for this specific series.

Rating: 8/10
Pairs well with: the rest of the 2014-2016 Deathstroke run, as well as the Christopher Priest era that followed.

Comic Review: Titans: The Lazarus Contract

Published: November 14th, 2017
Written by: Christopher Priest, Benjamin Percy, Dan Abnett
Art by: Brett Booth, Larry Hama, Phil Hester, Carlo Pagulayan, Paul Pelletier, Khoi Pham, Norm Rapmund

DC Comics, 132 Pages

Review:

I’ve read the entirety of Christopher Priest’s fifty-issue run on Deathstroke, which just finished, actually. So I did read his two issues that were part of this larger crossover arc but I missed the Titans and Teen Titans parts, as I wasn’t pulling those titles at my local comic shop. So this is the first time I’ve read this story in its entirety, which I should’ve done earlier as it would’ve added more context to the Deathstroke series, as a whole.

This is sort of a spiritual sequel to the famous The Judas Contract storyline from the Teen Titans comics in the ’80s while also connecting to the events of Deathstroke’s first appearance in The New Teen Titans issue 2 from 1980.

Here, Deathstroke wants to go back in time to save his son Ravager a.k.a. Grant Wilson. He blames the Titans for the death due to their involvement in the event, even though they’re not really responsible. So after learning about the Speed Force and its ability to send speedsters through time, he harvests that power from Kid Flash after winning over his trust.

That being said, we get a speedster Deathstroke, which is just really f’n cool!

Anyway, the story starts off with a bang and it brings in both the Teen Titans and adult Titans teams to deal with the threat. While it focuses mainly on a close knit group of main characters, all the others do get involved but mostly stay in the background, only adding their two cents when its needed to advance the plot or give a larger perspective.

However, even though the management of characters is well handled initially, this does become more of a convoluted mess as it gets towards the end. It just feels like there is too much going on and despite this having a lot of characters, it starts out feeling like a smaller, personal story.

Overall, this is still pretty good and all three writers (Christopher Priest, Dan Abnett and Benjamin Percy) did a good job working together.

Rating: 7.5/10
Pairs well with: the old Teen Titans story The Judas Contract, as well as Deathstroke/Teen Titans: The Terminus Agenda.

Comic Review: Deathstroke, Vol. 2: Lobo Hunt

Published: December 14th, 2010
Written by: Rob Liefeld, Justin Jordan
Art by: Rob Liefeld, Art Thibert, various

DC Comics, 266 Pages

Review:

I guess this came out in a time where I wasn’t paying close attention to new comics. Because I would’ve been on board for Rob Liefeld’s take on Deathstroke, especially since his most famous creation, Dead Pool, was done as a sort of parody of the character.

But, man. Having read this now, I kind of wish I never knew about it.

I hate to be harsh but the writing was a disjointed mess that was all over the f’n place. Plus, this collection doesn’t finish Liefeld’s story! It ends on a cliffhanger where Deathstroke and Hawkman are about to fight a horde of evil hawk dudes and then you turn the page and it’s a totally different story.

I mean, what the fuck, DC? Was the Hawkman story a crossover? Where’s the rest of that story? You just jump right past it and into another arc done by a completely different creative team. And frankly, the second half of this book should have just been a volume three, as it is drastically different than the Liefeld stuff that’s left incomplete.

This collection is garbage. It’s poorly organized, its a total clusterfuck narratively and tonally due to the creative team change midway through.

Honestly, this is only worth checking out if you are a Liefeld die hard. And even then, you’ll still be disappointed.

Although, I should mention that I thought it was neat that Liefeld utilized Jim Lee’s WildC.A.T.S. characters, as they’ve pretty much faded away into oblivion since Lee sold them to DC.

Rating: 4/10
Pairs well with: the Deathstroke collection before this one and then the other New 52 stuff after it.

Comic Review: Deathstroke: Defiance – Conclusion

Published: December 6th, 2017 – January 31st, 2018
Written by: Christopher Priest
Art by: Diogenes Neves, Sean Parsons, Jason Paz, John Trevor Scott, Jeromy Cox, Denys Cowan, Bill Sienkiewicz, Ryan Sook (cover)

DC Comics, 102 Pages

Review:

The first part of Defiance is collected in Deathstroke, Vol. 4 but the final three chapters (issues 26, 27 and the first annual) aren’t yet collected and I wanted to finish the story so I could review it without waiting months and forgetting the details of what came before it.

This was a story arc with a lot of promise and it directly calls back to the great Teen Titans classic story The Judas Contract. Unfortunately, this doesn’t live up to the old school tale, even if it exists as its long awaited sequel.

I feel like this long arc was a missed opportunity to try something new with Deathstroke and to sort of make a Teen Titans team with a harder edge. In a lot of ways it mirrors how Cable came into the New Mutants and turned them into the much more adult X-Force. It’s kind of funny, considering that the Cable/New Mutants/X-Force plot was heavily influenced by The Judas Contract.

I did enjoy this but there was a lot of build up to this tale and it fell flat in the end. This leads into the short Chinatown story, which also didn’t cut the mustard for me, and then the Deathstroke Vs. Batman arc after that.

I’ve invested a lot of time (and money) into this series but now the build up to the Defiance team’s formation was just discarded and for what?

I know that some of the plot points here will circle back to be addressed later but the way things go here, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will happen in the Deathstroke title, it could just branch back out into the Teen Titans books or maybe a new Power Girl series, if one is on DC’s docket.

Rating: 6.75/10
Pairs well with: Deathstroke: Defiance and Deathstroke Vs. Batman.

Comic Review: Deathstroke, Vol. 4: Defiance

Published: April 24th, 2018
Written by: Christopher Priest
Art by: Diogenes Neves, Carlos Pagulayan, Jason Paz, Larry Hama

DC Comics, 132 Pages

Review:

This is the biggest storyline so far in the current Deathstroke series. It sees Deathstroke try to further atone for his past sins while becoming the leader of a new group he has formed with his children and a few former Teen Titans.

Also, Deathstroke and his team wear some pretty cool looking black and white costumes.

This has been the biggest and most popular story in the most recent and ongoing Deathstroke series. So once I got to this volume, I was really excited to jump in, especially with all the plot threads leading up to it being fresh in my mind. There are several characters that this series is trying to balance but it has done a good job, so far, of keeping things moving and flowing properly.

And sure, Deathstroke is often times overshadowed by other characters in his own series but it all ties directly to him and his journey since the current series started.

The biggest problem with this chapter, however, is that it doesn’t wrap up within this volume. The Defiance team’s story carries over into what will be the next installment, which isn’t released for a few more months. I’d like to jump into it while this is all fresh but I guess I’ll have to pickup a few of the single issues I’m missing to fill the few holes in my collection.

What I like about this though, is that it feels like a throwback to Cable coming into New Mutants and eventually forming X-Force. There are some parallels to it and it makes this feel like something I would have read in the early ’90s when I was first getting into comics at a deeper level.

This is capped off by a story that sort of interjects itself into the Defiance plot and forces the series to switch gears momentarily. But that story was really cool and pits Slade Wilson against several of DC’s top villains who are trying to test if he has turned over a new leaf or if he is still “evil” at his core.

This was a good collection but it leaves you hanging.

Rating: 8/10
Pairs well with: The other Deathstroke stories since DC’s Rebirth. Also, the current runs on Nightwing and Red Hood and the Outlaws.

Comic Review: Deathstroke, Vol. 3: Twilight

Published: October 17th, 2017
Written by: Christopher Priest
Art by: Joe Bennett, Jason Paz, Larry Hama, Norm Rapmund

DC Comics, 165 Pages

Review:

Deathstroke is at it again. What do I mean by that? Well, he is back to being a hardcore badass. Not that he ever wasn’t a hardcore badass. He’s always been a hardcore badass. But here, he continues being a hardcore badass and even if he isn’t the sole focal point of his post-Rebirth series, he still takes over the pages that he’s on.

That being said, I don’t mind that he sometimes feels like a co-star in his own series, as everything happening in these books is tied into Deathstroke and is all leading towards something bigger. Or, at least, that’s what this build feels like.

A big portion of this story has to do with Slade Wilson meeting Tanya Spears, the young girl that took on the name of Power Girl, after the original Power Girl left. This serves to setup the Defiance storyline, which is the one directly following this arc. Tanya is a big part of that story, as are many of the other people this book focuses on.

While this feels like it is a filler story, if you’ve been paying attention to this series, thus far, there are a lot of clues and things that are dropped throughout this. It also resolves a few minor plot points and builds on the love and tension between the core characters, mainly Slade and his children, Rose and Joseph.

The highlight of this book though is the introduction of Tanya, how she saves Slade and then works as his ally until a plot twist comes into play.

In the end, this is a good volume in the current Deathstroke series. I haven’t been let down by this series yet.

Rating: 7.5/10
Pairs well with: The other Deathstroke stories since DC’s Rebirth. Also, the current runs on Nightwing and Red Hood and the Outlaws.