Deathstroke the Terminator

Deathstroke the Terminator, or just Deathstroke if you prefer, has to be one of the coolest and toughest characters in the DC universe. With his sword and his staff and his guns and his eyepatch, he is someone you do not want to mess with. And even though he's getting a little old, he's still capable of fighting the entire Justice League. Because of this, I'm really glad he's been in so many things recently. He's been in Arrow, Injustice, and he's going to be in Arkham Origins once that comes out. And all of them have portrayed him rather well. That wouldn't really be worth remarking on if he hadn't been portrayed so badly in Smallville. This is the part where I usually say something along the lines of "Hey, you should go check out what I'm talking about if you're not familiar with it so you can better see what I'm saying," but not today. Not today. If you haven't seen Smallville, that doesn't really matter to me. Watch it if you want, since it has good moments, but whatever you do, steer well clear of the part with Deathstroke in it. Or at least they say it's Deathstroke. In reality, I think it's just a lame version of Colonel Tigh from Battlestar Galactica wielding a sword. Don't believe me? I'll prove it.

 So yeah that's pretty bad, right? Don't even watch the part of the show with him in it. He even uses the wrong kind of sword. He uses a katana, and katanas are cool, but Slade is supposed to use a straight sword. I'm ok with them giving him an Asian style sword, but couldn't it at least have been a gin or a straight shirasaya or some other kind of straight sword? Promise me you won't watch it if you're a fan of the real Deathstroke. Spare yourself the pain. Save yourself! And if you're not familiar with the character, I suppose you can watch it if you really want to, since that'll make the real Deathstroke all the more impressive. He's supposed to look something like this: 

 Now isn't that way awesomer? And without his mask, he still looks awesome! So thank all that is holy that he's been cool in his recent media appearances! Whoops! I just realized I accidentally introduced probably a couple people to what Deathstroke should be, so if that's you, my warning not to watch his Smallville appearance applies to you now. You're welcome. Anyway, Deathstroke was decent in the Teen Titans show, but they called him by his first name instead of his chosen alias, which is probably because it's a kids' show and the makers didn't want the villain's name to have the word death in it, but still. Those kids should show some respect, even if they have no choice since their actions are controlled by the writers of the show. Also, they gave him a long ponytail sometimes, and I never liked that. More importantly, that show was never really on my radar that much, so I'm glad he's appearing in things that are. His recent comicbooks have been fantastic and I realized I've been saying fantastic more often after marathoning Christopher Eccleston's Doctor Who episodes, which I maintain are severely underrated, even though Rose was annoying sometimes, and her mom was annoying too, and I kinda hated the Slitheen, but none of that is the Doctor's fault, and I strongly disagree when people say you can just skip his run; I personally wish he had had more seasons, but without cutting into David Tennant's time, since he and Matt Smith were terrific too, and why does Matt Smith have to go I wish he didn't and I started this really long run-on sentence talking about Deathstroke, didn't I? I suppose I could go back and edit that out. But I won't. Even though it feels like travelling back in time and changing history but not nearly as cool or important, I'm arbitrarily deciding that this is a fixed point in time, and if I change it, time and the universe will be all messed up, but the truth is that I'm leaving this stream of consciousness the way it is because I like to ramble sometimes. Anyway... Ok there are so many more directions I could take this, but I'll save that for another time. Maybe one day I'll just write a post of everything I'm thinking about at the time, and you can see the weird directions that my mind goes, but right now, I'll finish talking about Deathstroke. He's one of my favorite characters in Injustice, which is a good game by the way, and he was cool in Arrow, even though the show itself doesn't live up to its full potential and they took some liberties with the lore. Arkham Origins isn't out yet, but if it's anything like Asylum and City, it'll be fantastic (see?), and even better since the story is largely about the assassins of the Batman mythos, who are some of my favorite characters. Deathstroke is the best, but I also really like Deadshot, who was also in Arrow, but got killed off too soon in my opinion. Deadshot was actually kinda cool in Smallville, unlike Deathstroke. So that's all I have to say about Deathstroke. It'd be nice to see him in a movie though. So I guess that wasn't all I had to say, but now it is.

Comicbook Easter Eggs

Something that just makes me smile when I read comicbooks is when I find a little easter egg. If you don't know what I mean by that, the term easter egg refers to a little hidden secret that serves no purpose except to entertain the people who find it and understand it. These are often references to another franchise that's completely unrelated to what you find the easter egg in. I'll give some examples. In Marvel's Annihilation, there's a scene with a fleet of ships full of refugees, and one of them is a Battlestar. They don't say anything about it and you only see it in the background of one panel, but it looks identical to the Galactica. In Annihilation Conquest, the series that takes place right after, there's a part where Nova Corps centurions are fighting Phalanx drones, and one of the centurions is a blue version of Pikachu. Some of you may hate me for this, but I'm not a fan of Pokemon. But I still found the easter egg amusing at the very least. Another thing like this is in a Judge Dredd story, the Three Amigos. Dredd and his two "amigos" are fighting an army with a very unopressive dress code, and some of them are wearing Star Trek TNG uniforms. Not only that, but they're recognizeable as Ryker, Georti, Troi, Worf, and maybe Picard. I don't quite remember. The artist put all that effort into drawing Star Trek characters into one panel, and I appreciate that. Probably the most obscure one I've seen is one that I'm not 100% sure was intended, but I'm 90% sure. In Green Lantern: the Sinestro Corps War, an anonymous member of the Sinestro Corps looks exactly like a Baltan, which is an alien race from the Japanese TV show Ultraman. Good show by the way. The Sinestro's skin was blue instead of brown, but his proportions and his distinctive head and hands were the same. Also, in DC's series 52, they made at least one reference to the show Moonlighting. I've never seen this show, so I didn't get any of their references, but in the trade paperbacks, there's a section of text after each issue where either one of the writers or the artists discusses his thoughts on that issue and the series, so the reference was pointed out but not explained. But anyway, I love finding easter eggs in comic books.

I Don't Trust Robots.

First of all, I need to make a couple things clear. One, when I say I don't trust robots, I'm saying I wouldn't if I knew or met them in person. Two, I like robots; most of them are awesome. I just don't trust them. There are too many robots that were either created for evil, or made for good but turned evil. Think about it. Cylons, Terminators, the Droid Army from Star Wars, every Decepticon, Ultron, the Manhunters, and so many more. Mind you, there are robots I do trust, but they have done much to earn it. For example, I trust Optimus Prime because he has proven himself to be a very honorable person. Yes, some robots (not all, but some) are people too. I trust R2 - D2 because in six movies and a TV series, he has yet to fail the Republic or the Rebel Alliance. Under the right circumstances, I might even trust Soundwave. He's extremely loyal to Megatron and never fails him. For that to happen though, I might need to be Megatron. The same goes for Tekik if I had founded Sinestro Corps ..... which I suppose is technically impossible because only Sinestro himself would name it Sinestro Corps. It would have to be called something different, but you know what I'm saying. Also, I trust some Cylons, but only some of the human models. Well, actually, I suppose if I was their leader, I would reluctantly trust the Centurions. By this time you've probably noticed that the list of robots who have earned my trust contains both good and evil ones. It's a lot harder for me to trust an evil one, but not impossible. The circumstances just have to be right. There are also a lot of good robots I don't trust. For example, C3PO. He's friendly and not one for betrayal, but he's not very capable. He can do his job well as an interpreter or something like that, but he's been blasted apart, had his head put on a Battle Droid body, etc. too many times. Or let's jump to the Transformers universe for a minute. Rodimus Prime lead the forces of good for a time, but I wouldn't trust him. He's infamous for being one of the worst leaders ever. While that may be a little harsh, he did do a bad job. He once trusted Grimlock to operate a complex machine. Grimlock. Seriously. Grimlock is my second favorite Autobot; I even have a G1 Grimlock figure on my desk right now, but even I know that he's not qualified for complicated tasks. He's extremely powerful, but not very smart. He was created for war, so fighting should be, and usually is, his only job. His lack of versatility is why I only partially trust him. You're allowed to love a TV character without fully trusting him, right? But back to Rodimus, overestimating your friends is as bad as underestimating your enemies. Now let's go to Terminator. I would eventually be able to trust Marcus from Salvation and Arnold from T2 or T3, but it would take a while. I think I would be very skeptical of their good intentions, but I would give them a chance to prove themselves. once they did, I doubt I would have any problems trusting them. At least until the future in the Arnolds' case. Both of them were evil until they were captured by the Resistance. But both of them die in our time, so I guess I wouldn't need to worry about them. But that's one of the many movies, shows and comic books that have taught me not to trust robots.

Robots

I want a robot servant and bodyguard, but just one, since if there were too many, there could be an uprising. I'd be cool if it had that old style computery Cylon voice, and maybe the little eye that goes back and forth. I would also need some kind of safety mechanism so that even the one robot doesn't turn on me, like something that reads its thoughts and alerts me if they include betrayal. It should have a version of the Three Laws, but more specific to me. Something like: A robot cannot harm me, or through inaction allow me to come to harm. A robot must obey every order I give it. A robot may defend itself unless such action conflicts with the first or second law. And if it didn't have the Cylon voice, another option would be to have the voice and personality of Jarvis from the Iron Man movies (not Edwin Jarvis, even though he's cool too). Or maybe it could be like Tekik of the Sinestro Corps; he's pretty awesome!
 

"By your command"