Deathstroke #17 Review
I have been taking a bit of flack lately for being a Deathstroke fan (or Deathstork as somebody who thought they were more clever than they actually were put it) and I guess that is a fair and unfair thing to say. I say that because it has been pretty common for my introductory paragraphs to mention that up until a year or so ago, I could have cared less about Deathstroke, Deathstork, Deathdork or even Breaststroke. He was just a badass that would fight the Teen Titans, show up in Arrow, etc. have his fun and then be gone. So, when DC announced they were giving the character another solo go, I agreed to review it on a lark and because of our stupid mission statement of trying to review every book that DC Comics puts out each week. If you asked me then, I probably would have told you that I drew the short straw and laughed about it being my lot in life. How else would you explain my past review queue being filled with books like Stormwatch, Katana and Klarion?!? After a bit of a rough patch to start, however, I found myself enjoying Deathstroke for the simple fact that Tony Daniel and James Bonny were giving readers a straight up action movie style book that wasn’t trying too hard to be something it wasn’t. Is it the best book of the New 52? No, but if you like it, it has been one of the most consistently enjoyable reads month in and month out. Granted, if you don’t like what this book is cooking, then you can change that “enjoyable” to “awful” and that is totally within your rights. Because of that, though, it’s in my rights to like it. In conclusion, please don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’re better or smarter than me because you like Grant Morrison and I prefer James Bonny…at a fancy dinner party, we’d both be looked at as the “morons who read comic books” and that doesn’t bother me one bit. As Pat Benatar boldly said at the Yalta Conference way back in 1945, “We are strong, no one can tell us we’re wrong, searchin’ our hearts for so long, both of us knowing… Love is a battlefield.”
