Deathstroke #44 Review

Funeral Frenzy

Written By: Christopher Priest
Art By: Fernando Pasarin, Ryan Winn, Jeremy Cox, Willie Schubert
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: June 5, 2019


It's time to dive back into Deathstroke, where previously we saw our favorite assassin die at the hands of Emiko Queen, the Red Arrow.  Yeah, we've seen deaths before and we've even seen Slade take a bullet through the head, right where we saw Red Arrow fired her arrow at him, but this issue we're focusing on the funeral of the Terminator and with that....... it looks like he's actually dead.  Let's jump into this issue and see if there's any revelations about the second coming of Slade Wilson.  Let's check it out.



For this issue of Deathstroke I'd like to say that we get a victory lap out of Christopher Priest, where we go back and forth and see the greatest hits of this character and show off different characters that have been involved with this series, like many writers like to do at the end of their run, but with this series that's pretty normal stuff........ So yeah, you get that, but it's par for the course by now.  It's just too bad that a lot of the things that happen in this issue don't really make sense, especially where Jericho is concerned.

The majority of the issue is about Jericho's feelings about his father's death and wanting to do good no matter what, which includes him wanting Superman to take down all of the villains that have shown up to Slade's giant funeral pyre, but the Man of Steel just wants to make sure that nothing gets out of hand as the many villains mourn their dead associate....... including the remaining members of the Legion of Doom, sans Lex, who is dead right now after the events of DC's Year of the Villain #1.  Going back to the things that aren't right here, we see Raptor show up, who died in Nightwing's series and there's some weird bits with Jericho's powers and how they work that seem to be put here because they needed to be for the story, but really don't make any sense in the long run.

All in all, this issue is a bit of a mixed bag.  We have a really decent funeral scene that gives us some great guest stars from throughout this series' run, but we also get a story that feels like it has a set of things that it wants to do and doesn't care about how it gets there or whether or not it makes sense.  That part bugs me, but thankfully, we get an issue that looks amazing all the way through and opens up some possibilities for both Jericho and Rose going forward that seem interesting. 

Bits and Pieces:

The funeral that everyone's been waiting for!  Well, maybe not, but we get a hell of a funeral here and some amazing art, but this issue felt really forced in some aspects to get what it needed to do done and even showed off characters that have died previously in other runs.  It's odd, but there's some decent stuff here overall, I just wish it came together better in the end.

6.3/10