Deathstroke #42 Review

Lend Me Your Ears

Written By: Christopher Priest

Art By: Carlo Pagulayan, Jason Paz, Norm Rapmund, Jeremy Cox, Willie Schubert

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: April 3, 2019

It's the second part of the Terminus Agenda........ not including the prologue that we got in the last issue of Deathstroke that didn't do much to set this story up.  Over in the Teen Titans though, we saw our teenage heroes take Deathstroke down and Damian Wayne lock our title character up in his own personal dungeon.  What's Slade Wilson going to do about this?...... and what exactly is the Terminus Agenda?  Well, hopefully we find out here.  Let's jump into this issue and check it out.

So Robin's taken things a little too far in Slade's mind and now it's up to the Terminator to put a little perspective on how the Boy Wonder is running his crusade on crime and while I like the idea of Slade almost being a captive Negan from the Walking Dead type character, the way that this issue presents Deathstroke breaking out of his restraints, and messing with the Titans on their comms while they try to take down another super villain comes off pretty confusing during the story.

Yeah, by the end you figure out what you were reading, but I just don't think that the execution to this story was really well done because while the reveal of what's going on becomes clear by the end, the situation in general throughout most of the story is kind of choppy feeling for how it's presented.  On top of that, the character of Blackrock that our Teen Titans are trying to take down is just thrown out there and you never get a sense of who this character is or why bombs are going off in this issue for what is supposed to be happening.  Hell, the last time we saw Blackrock he was working for a television show in the Superman: Lois and Clark before Superman Reborn changed all of that continuity so him being here feels like it was just some one-off event that just acted as a way to get Slade to get in our heroes' heads...... which was the point of this issue, but it just didn't feel important because it wasn't the point of the issue.

All in all, the art remains amazing in this series, it's just the story that's the problem because it takes a long time to really do nothing and by the time it's all over, I'm not even sure what the real objective was because there always seems to be a mystery that leads up to some reveal that as of right now, usually comes off pretty mediocre.  Hopefully I'm wrong in the long run and the Terminus Agenda really wows by the end, but as of right now it's just kind of another strange Deathstroke story that still doesn't give me a handle on who this character is now after everything he's done throughout this series.  

Bits and Pieces:

While you'll get Deathstroke playing some head games on our Teen Titan heroes, the execution of this issue left a lot to be desired in how it told the story.  I love the art here, it's just I have no idea what we're getting from this cross-over yet and what the point is, but hopefully the next two issues come together and wow me because I get excited whenever I hear Deathstroke is going up against the Teen Titans.

6.5/10