Deathstroke #45 Review

Family Affair

Written By: Christopher Priest
Art By: Fernando Pasarin, Jason Paz, Wade Von Grawbadger, Jeremy Cox, Willie Schubert
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: July 3, 2019


It's time to move on now that Slade Wilson is taking a dirt nap, but from what we saw in the last issue, it doesn't look like either Rose or Jericho are willing to take that first step.  Rose seems like she wants to put her father's assassin affairs in order and Joey...... Well, Joey looked like he was losing his mind for his involvement with his father's death.  Hopefully with Slade gone now though, his kids will become well adjusted members of society......... Yeah, I'm not holding my breath either so lets jump into this post funeral issue and see what this brother and sister are planning to do with their lives.  Let's check it out.



For this issue of Deathstroke we see how Rose and Jericho's lives have been spun into disarray, not only because of the death of their father, but because of the lives they chose before that ever happened.  It's all about choices here as Rose goes up against Red Arrow's mother Shado, who's trying to swipe Slade's final contract away from Rose, who's attempting to finalize her father's affairs....... and its the choice of what Rose will do once she learns about Red Arrow's involvement in Slade's death that will ultimately define her future as hero or villain. 

With that, we see that Jericho's life is in complete disarray with the choices he made that led to his father's death and the roles he wants to play in both Rose's life and his mother's.......... not to mention his boyfriend Terry, who's getting a little upset at playing fourth fiddle to everyone else.  It's a very personal story between Slade's kids here, while wrapping that around an assassination attempt that full of spider-bots.  It's an odd background for these very personal moments to happen and sadly, for the reveals that we get by the end of the issue, it also feels like of forced to get to this situation.  This isn't a bad issue by any means, but besides for the personal bits that actually add intrigue to this story, everything else that is driving what happens next forward just kind of feel out of nowhere.

All in all, I love the art in this issue, which really, the art is always awesome in Deathstroke, but I found myself kind of bored with the setup of everything here because it just kind of felt forced to get us to the next part of the story and then to the setup for the next issue.  Yeah, I'm happy to see the "The Offer" given at the end of the issue because I've been wondering what that would come off looking like and it gets me excited for Jericho going forward, but Rose is acting like Jericho was acting in the previous issue and out of nowhere it seems that Jericho is all fine and dandy for no reason here.  This is still a decent issue with all the character development it's giving our surviving Wilson siblings, but because everything else felt forced, I wasn't having as much fun as I would have liked.

Bits and Pieces:

While you'll get some great art that depicts the family squabbles of the Wilson children in a world where they're father is no longer alive, what you'll also get is some really forced narrative to move the story forward in a very awkward and editor noted way.  It's not all bad, but when one of the highlights is Lex Luthor talking as a cliffhanger, you have a bit of a dud of an issue.  Thankfully, a lot of the character moments elevate this issue for it to become bigger than it should have been.

6.8/10