Deathstroke, Grifter, Legion Lost Issue 1

I don’t know what mood Mr. Soot was in when he bought these books but they are very violence heavy. This batch is better than the last few that have been coming out which is cool. Oh, great. Now he’s stomping through the halls singing “Old Gray Mare” at the top of his lungs. I don’t have much time left to write these for now so lets get started.

                                      Deathstroke 1

This issue does not waste any damn time getting started. It begins with a mission that Deathstroke was on where faced against a group of armed soldiers still manages to cut the head off of his target and a few other unlucky bastards that are in the way. He’s now relegated to being an expensive bodyguard. A man named Christophe wants him to work with a new young team of assassins.

Deathstroke meets the team that I wont bother naming (you’ll see why) and they head on their mission where they have to rendezvous with a plane midair and take out their target which is a man dealing in nuclear weapons. When he gets on the plane he is met with some creatures mixed with Clayface DNA and starts kicking them out of the plane before being shown a briefcase. Deathstroke blows the plane up and heads back to base.

While the team celebrates a successful mission Deathstroke says “I think there is no ‘up and coming.’ There’s only competition. And I don’t work with it.” He then commences to shoot every single one of the poor bastards. Dude is hardcore! He is told by Christophe that the higher ups don’t think he’s got it anymore. I don’t know about you but he doesn’t seem like the kinda guy I would say stuff like that to.

This was a good fast paced issue. Story and art by Kyle Higgins and Joe Bennett really fit this character that I don’t know anything about other than he can fight well against Batman and has just one eye. I look forward to the next issue to see where they go with this.

Grifter 1

Wait. Grifter got his own comic? The guy from WildCATS?! How in the blue hell did this happen? Anyway, the story starts with him on an airplane (don’t take planes in the DC Universe!) and he starts hearing voices. A woman attacks him with a pick and he takes her out before fighting as he falls from the plane. We flashback to him ripping someone off who was trying to rip him off. He’s set to meet with this chick and leave the country. He ends up snatched by some ghost demon thing and wakes up tied to a table.

He escapes and beats someone to death, which freaks him right the hell out. He thinks he was unconscious for only seventeen minutes but it turns out it was for seventeen days. Flash forward to him surviving the fall from the plane and the government looking for him for murder. The story ends with him in a cemetery in New Orleans putting on his mask.

This was a fun little issue but something felt like it was missing. It felt like I walked into the middle of a story that had started a long time ago. This is a reoccurring problem with some of these DC 52 stories. Its supposed to be introducing readers to new stories but I shouldn’t be this puzzled by the first issue. Not puzzled by questions that can be answered later, but by answers I have to find online. Story by Nathan Edmondson and great art by Cafu.

Legion Lost 1

This is the epitome of what I was just talking about. Its like they said “Hey, lets throw a bunch of characters into one issue that involves time travel which is already confusing and see what happens!” This team full of people I don’t know and doubt I’d want to get stuck looking for someone who is spreading some disease in our timeline. They catch him, he breaks free, they crash and a couple people die and I don’t care. Maybe this is for fans of Power Pack or something. I don’t know. Story by Fabian Nicieza and inconsistent art by Pete Woods. I will pretend I didn’t read this.