Deathstroke #36 Review

One Flew Over Arkham Asylum

Written By: Christopher Priest

Art By: Ed Benes, Fernando Pasarin, Richard Friend, Jason Paz, Wade Von Grawbadger, Jeremy Cox, Willie Schubert

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: October 3, 2018

In case you don't remember, way back before we had the Deathstroke Vs. Batman arc we had Slade Wilson tossing the superhero motif aside and going back to basics, which sadly put him on the threat list of all of his old allies.  If that wasn't enough, it turns out at the end that Slade may actually be crazy and all the times he's seen his A.I. version of Wintergreen, it's all been in his head.  Let's jump into this issue and continue where our story previously left off and see if Slade is crazy and what he's going to do about it now that he's locked up in the worst nuthouse in the world.  Let's check it out.

Alright, we're back to a Deathstroke story that's going on concurrently with our other titles and maybe, just maybe we'll get some answers to all those lingering questions before Damian Wayne's parentage took up six months.  With that though, our first issue of this arc really just deals with Slade's sanity, while showcasing some of Gotham's worst villains as his therapy mates.  Yeah, this is a slower issue that shows off a really cool way for the patients of Arkham to get the help they need, but as far a Slade goes........ Well, there isn't much new to this.  

The big thing that we get out of this issue is a character who may or may not be suffering from delusions that he's being abducted by aliens, who the staff and patients of Arkham refer to as "Space Man".  Yeah, you don't get a lot of him here, but puts in just enough to become important by the issue's end.  Also, we continue our journey into the mystery of who "Willow" is and if you don't remember, Willow is the personality that comes out of Rose Wilson, who may or may not be an ancient warrior princess, who is hellbent on destroying the White Lotus Gang for going after a nun who was kind to her.  Going all the way back to issue #29 though, it seems like Claire may be dead..... All I know is that Deathstroke went to go save her, she hit her head at some point and after Deathstroke picked up her body, he was ambushed and we never saw her again.  So yeah, no idea about Claire, but Willow is still out and about and causing Rose trouble.

All in all, the art in this issue is still decent, but it doesn't seem as up to snuff with what we've gotten previously in both look and color, but it's still pretty damn good.  As for the story, well this is a slow issue that with all the editor's notes pointing out callbacks seems to be here just to get people back on board with what we left off with months ago and while it sets up an interesting concept and has a hell of a cliffhanger, it just seems like a whole lot of stalling because of the break in the story we had.  I'm still on board with this arc because it seems pretty damn cool, but I just hope that things pick up a bit as we progress and we continue to explore open threads that were set up months ago.

Bits and Pieces:

This issue may throw a bunch of people off because of it jumping back into a story that was setup over six months ago before the Deathstroke Vs. Batman arc went and interrupted it, but since I've been waiting for this, I was all about jumping back into crazy Deathstroke and seeing what Priest has been doing with this character since his run began.  Yeah, this issue is a bit slow at times but overall I had a fun time here and can't wait to get to the bottom of what's going on in the world of The Terminator.  

7.5/10