Teen Titans 23.2
Special “Villains Month” Title: Deathstroke 1
Corey May, Dooma Wendschuh, Moritat, Angel Unzueta, Robson Rocha
Forever Evil Crossover
Spoiler alert! You have been warned!
The Teen Titans tie-in (or, more accurately, a Deathstroke and Team 7 epilogue) to Villains Month and Forever Evil suffers from two nearly fatal flaws from the get-go: It’s got bad editing and way too many creators attached to it. And it’s only a one-shot, for crying out loud. But regardless of the initial reactions and nearly constant continuity complaints throughout, it still manages to do the one thing that both Deathstroke and Team 7 managed to do when they were running: Entertain.
The story is far too complex for its own good, but from what I gather, it’s a back-and-forth tale about Deathstroke and Deathblow training together in the past and now fighting against one another in the present. We get a scene explaining (again, but differently) how Slade lost his eye. It’s dumb and contradictory, so we’ll just leave it at that. But we also get some really badass fight sequences. And, you know, Deathblow. So that’s pretty sweet. I’m always excited when the Wildstorm characters show up in DC books, even when they’re not presented in the greatest light. But showing Deathstroke’s softer (albeit probably just his lying) side at the end was a nice and unexpected touch. It’ll be interesting to see if whoever writes him next can pull off the complexity that Marv Wolfman, George Perez, and Geoff Johns so expertly penned in the original (and not-so-original) incarnations of the character.
I remain hopeful, if not a little bit skeptical. So save the buck and buy the regular cover. But even though it’s aggravating at times, I’m not going to place the blame on the creators. I’m going to say it’s all on the editors. They may have botched it pretty badly, but my guess is the type of people picking this book up are those who aren’t too worried about such things as continuity. They’re getting it for the action. And on that measure, no one could ever say that this book didn’t deliver. That alone makes it worth the read.
My Rating: 3/5
