Deathstroke #43 Review

Bullseye!

Written By: Christopher Priest, Adam Glass

Art By: Carlo Pagulayan, Sergio Davila, Pop Mahn, Jason Paz, Norm Rapmund, Andy Owens, Jeremy Cox, Willie Schubert

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: May 1, 2019

It's the finale of the Terminus Agenda...... you know, not counting an epilogue issue.  With that in mind, let's hope beyond hope that we get some answers to what exactly a "Terminus Agenda" is and why it took the entirety of this crossover to reveal.  In our previous issue of this arc in Teen Titans #29, we saw the shackles on the villains in Damian's dungeon disengage and with that....... Well, everyone wanted some payback for what was done to them.  Let's jump into this issue and see if our heroes can survive this inner assault on their base and just what Deathstroke's plans for Damian Wayne are.  Let's check it out.

While I haven't been the biggest fan of this crossover, there are elements here that I found really compelling.  Something though that I wasn't a fan of........ was the fact that when all of the villains escaped and went to the upper floors looking for some vengeance....... they all had weapons.  I have no idea how this went down, but guns o' plenty are in the hands of the people trying to kill our heroes and thankfully, it appears that covertly, Deathstroke is on the side of the Teen Titans.

This is an odd arc that really seems to boil down to the idea that Damian is hellbent on taking Deathstroke down because at one point, Slade rustled his hair....... and while I'm sure there's some more psychology behind for how Damian was raised, it really does seem to be all about this rustling, which is crazy, but for the most part this issue does have some fun moments where the Teen Titans are all learning by surprise that their are villains in their headquarters, who are hellbent on killing them.  It's too bad though that Atomic Skull's past with the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit seems to be forgotten here or possibly just glanced over from a line because I really liked that turn for Atomic Skull, which I doubt we'll get back after this crossover.  

All in all, I liked the art in this issue even though we have a ton of artists...... my biggest gripe about it is when we have some action scenes, some of the details of what were going on became confusing, but for the most part I had a visually good time here.  As for the story and this finale..... There are some fun moments and some intrigue that seems to suggest that someone within the Teen Titans may not be on the up and up, but all of this really seems to be for the shocking cliffhanger.......which for all accounts.... was pretty damn shocking and I can't wait to see where both Deathstroke and the Teen Titans go from here because of it.  I just don't think this warranted four issues, plus a prologue and epilogue issue within a crossover to get us here.

Bits and Pieces:

While there are certainly some exciting and shocking moments to this issue, it does feel like there was a lot of padding in it, not to mention that it took a crossover and a bunch of issues to do it, but all in all I enjoyed the art and thought that this issue was probably the strongest out of this story.

7/10