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.

Coulson Lives

In The Avengers, everyone was sad when Agent Coulson died, and with good reason. He was a great character. But some people say that things aren't as they seem. I don't know about you, but I've been keeping up with Stan Lee on Facebook and Youtube, and there's something I've noticed in some of his videos. On his Youtube channel, there are many different types of videos, including a series of cartoons titled Bad Days, which is about comicbook characters having bad days (I probably didn't need to explain that). But anyway, in a fair amount of these little cartoons, the words "Coulson Lives" appear in the background for maybe one or two seconds. It might be in graffiti, on a passing vehicle, or anything like that. If it was just once, I'd say maybe Marvel is just trolling us (and doing a good job of it). But it's been in way more than one video, so I was thinking something might be up. If I remember correctly, Coulson was wounded from a fight with Loki, then pronounced dead by another character. He looked pretty dead to me, but it wasn't one of those deaths that can't be faked or secretly survived, like falling into lava or something like that. So I suppose he could have survived and they faked his death to motivate the Avengers. To be honest though, that would surprise me. I think it would be more reasonable if they found another explanation (NOT time travel!). However, I did hear that not only is Joss Whedon working with Marvel on a TV show about SHIELD, which is already awesome, but that Phil Coulson is going to be in it! And apparently it will take place after the events of Avengers. If that's true, I feel like the Coulson Lives messages were a subtle way of telling just the fans that we haven't seen the last of him.

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.