By ALEXANDER PECHA
Arts Editor
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Last week I reviewed Deathstroke: Volume 1 and found it a ton of fun, though it was a bit lacking in the writing department. Well, this week I’m back with the second volume of Deathstroke, called Lobo Hunt, which should raise the eyebrows of anyone remotely familiar with the DC Universe. The second volume of Deathstroke is actually the ending of Deathstroke’s New 52 run, a fact that deeply hurts me like I just lost a pet but also makes complete sense considering the downward spiral that the series quickly takes.
For those of you who aren’t aware, Deathstroke is the go-to assassin in the DC Universe. He’s taken on Batman, Nightwing and even the entire Justice League at one point. He’s also been making a ton of appearances in other DC franchises, like the hit TV show Arrow, the Batman Arkham Asylum games, and so on. Deathstroke does what he does out of a love for the job, though he’s not too callous, which makes him more relatable than your average murderer. The series I’m reviewing is part of the rebooted DC Universe (called the New 52), so it hopefully doesn’t require the amount of research that comic books normally do to understand what’s going on, though this proves to be false, as I will explain.
The new volume takes off with its title premise with Deathstroke trying to hunt down Lobo. That plot, however, only takes up a small portion of the whole volume, which then turns its attention to Deathstroke trying to figure out the history of his armor. This is a plot line that was… suddenly dropped, actually. The plotline about Deathstroke’s armor is literally dropped from issue to issue in the volume. One issue has Deathstroke about to team up with Hawkman to beat up some assassins, and then the next issue he’s in Eastern Europe, which leads to the final plotline of the volume.
I was terribly confused at first until I paid special attention to the people who wrote and drew each issue, and realized that there is a complete crew shift between issues. They did change writers between volumes, but this is different. This is a writer and artist change mid-plotline.
This results in the new writer dropping the armor plotline and introducing one about Deathstroke’s family, which he quickly does some exposition about and then just runs with it. This sudden shift is jarring at best, utterly horrendous at worst. The final plotline with Deathstroke’s family is hastily thrown together and has little to no emotional weight.
This is really off-putting because the first 70 percent of the volume is the same brand of awesome that the first volume was, with Deathstroke kicking some serious butt and doing what he does best (i.e. killing things). But the family plotline is confusing, depends on the readers having read pre-New 52 comics, and is all-around not the ending that Deathstroke deserves. The pain is somewhat eased by the fact that there is apparently a new Deathstroke series in the works and coming out in a few months, but it still doesn’t help the fact that this volume takes a huge nose-dive in the last 30 percent of its pages.
The art also has a similar change as the plot does mid-volume, though not for the worst at least. The art style also changed slightly between volumes; however, like the switch between writers between volumes, this wasn’t mid-plotline and as such completely acceptable. I actually love the art in the first half of the volume. It’s very colorful while keeping the color palette in control to match the attitude of the subject (i.e. a murderous mercenary-assassin).
I like it more than the first volume for sure, which is saying something since the first volume’s art was also extremely good. The second half of the volume changes art again, though this time not for the better. While the art in the last part of the volume isn’t bad by any means, it’s more on par with the first volume’s art, and not nearly as great as the first half of the volume. Overall, the art stays great to good through the volume, even as the plot nose-dives into overall meh-ness.
I really want to love this volume of Deathstroke, and I do love the first 3/4 of the volume. But the last part of the volume is really, really bad. I’ve stated that Deathstroke never had an incredible plot; it instead got along with its awesome action and cool-as-a-cup-of-glass characters; but the plot of the last 1/4 of the volume is just… that… bad. However, in the end, I reluctantly recommend this volume. The last part of the volume does suck but the first part helps outweigh that.
We can only hope that the new Deathstroke series coming out this fall doesn’t make the same mistake as the last fourth of this volume does. If it does, maybe Deathstroke will actually come out of the comic itself and knock the DC executives around a bit until they make some good decisions.
