Deathstroke #49 Review

Taking A Swing At Dad

Written By: Christopher Priest

Art By: Fernando Pasarin, Oclair Albert, Vicente Cifuentes, Jeremy Cox, Willie Schubert

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: November 6, 2019

It's the penultimate issue of Deathstroke so what that means is that everything should be ramping up here as we get to the big final issue next month, where hopefully all our answers to why there are two Slades will be answered...... and maybe more importantly, where we'll see who will survive this series and possibly move on to other books.  Previously, we saw the "bad" Slade go after Rose and Joey's boyfriend Terrance in order to find his mute son so that he could acquire the power that Lex Luthor gave him because in his mind, whether he's from this world or not or the figment of someones super powered imagination, that power belongs to him and he'll kill anyone standing in his way.  Let's jump into this issue and check it out.

This second to last issue of Deathstroke is strange in that we see Christopher Priest starting his "victory lap" as I like to call it, where he wants to remind people of what's come before in his series and the reason that it feels weird is that he's never really done that before.  In this issue we see four pages of flashbacks, where previously Priest would always just have an editor's note telling someone where to look to for something he's referencing and it's because of this change that it feels like the cracks of this final story seem to be showing.  Four pages is a lot to recap, so I'm assuming that there wasn't much story left to what we're dealing with, especially since we leave this issue not fully understanding where this new "Bad" Slade has come from.

Yeah, we get a "Multiverse" mention to his origins, but beyond that there's really nothing more than this Slade's desire for Jericho's new power and Jericho deciding that he needs to end his not father's reign of terror over the people he loves and possibly redeem his own actions throughout this series in the process.  Now, with these criticisms, I'm not saying that this issue is bad by any means, it just feels like a stop gap until we get to the main event in the final issue.  I just wish that there was more for the characters of this book to do than just not know what's going on and barely mentioning the origins of this other Slade. 

All in all, the art in this issue remains strong as hell and you do get some really decent Jericho moments here as he tries to do the right thing by taking on this manifestation of his father, but with the recap and the idea that Rose really doesn't have a lot to do other than think of Hosun and tell us how her and Terrance are still alive, I came away from this issue thinking that a lot felt left out or there just wasn't enough story for these characters to really be a part of it.  I do look forward to the finale next month, but I would have liked a little more here.

Bits and Pieces:

While we do get a lot of Jericho this issue and the idea of him struggling with what he's done in the past to what he think a hero should be, you don't get enough of the other supporting cast...... or really the real main character of this book.  The art is fantastic, but the story felt like it just didn't have enough going for it to fill up its page space.  

6.8/10