Sunday Splash Page #232

 

"Luchador Punisher Claims Another Victim," in Hawkeye vs. Deadpool #0, by Gerry Duggan (writer), Matteo Lolli (artist), Cristiane Peter (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)

Released in late 2014, by which time Hawkeye was barely showing up (3 issues in the last year of its run), the book is, despite the title, more of a team-up between the Merc with a Mouth and both Hawkeyes. The dead guy above had a list of every SHIELD agent, and realizing this was dangerous information, tried giving it to Clint. Who was in a bad mood because everyone (including Deadpool, out trick-or-treating with his daughter and Agent Preston's family) was complaining about him not handing out full-size candy bars and blew the guy off.

Duggan makes a few nods to each characters current status quo. Deadpool having a daughter and a couple of SHIELD agents for friends (and that Preston is inhabiting an Life Model Decoy of herself). Clint owning a building, having a hearing aid and knowing sign language. There's one two-page sequence where Duggan and Lolli mock the Pizza Dog issue of Hawkeye with a bunch of bubble panels showing symbols representing the hunt for clues. Except Deadpool's banging on one of them asking what the hell is going on while a couple of old ladies discuss what being in the "Revengers" did to that poor man.

It does feel more like a Deadpool story that happens to involve both the Hawkeyes. So we get gags about Deadpool using the "Ooper" app to get around town and making unreasonable demands. He pulls Clint's old sky-cycle (and one of his old costumes) out of mothballs to do an airborne drive-by. He gets to be a bad influence on Kate by handing her a rocket launcher and encouraging her to commit acts of domestic terrorism. Relax, it was for a good cause. America needs to be reminded of the weaknesses in its critical infrastructure! No, wait, that was Timothy Olyphant's argument in the 4th Die Hard movie.

In the third issue (which is issue #2 because Marvel started with issue 0 for some reason), Jacopo Camagni joins Matteo Lolli as artist on the series. I can't tell there's any real pattern to when one of them draws. Camagni's work is looser, more exaggerated than Lolli's but it's similar enough (and Peter's colors maintain a consistent feel) there's no whiplash when it shifts.

I'm honestly surprised this is still in my collection, considering the villain is the Black Cat during her "Queenpin" phase. She's employing a scientist using mind control on people that makes them commit suicide if they're about to be captured. She employs Typhoid Mary, she kills a few people herself. It's stupid, because the villain could be Madame Masque, or Typhoid could be the boss, or whatever. There's nothing about the evil scheme that uniquely requires the Black Cat, so why use her? The story says nothing about her character. But that's true of that entire phase for her character. Cast aside everything interesting about the character in favor of generic superhero comic mob boss bullshit.

Random Back Issues #86 - Deadpool #296

I will never stop laughing at Deadpool making Captain America look bad in front of children.

Set after Secret Empire, everyone is after Deadpool for working with HYDRA Cap (who Wade refers to as "Stevil Rogers"), and killing Phil Coulson. His daughter Eleanor hates him, Rogue kicked his ass, and what's worse, Stryfe called in his favor.

During Civil War II tie-ins, Stryfe gave Wade the cure to a bio-weapon Madcap exposed Eleanor and Agent Preston's family to. In exchange, Deadpool had to kill five people for Stryfe. He'd just finished that at the end of last issue and here comes Captain America. Little late to the party, Sentinel of Liberty.

Deadpool swithces between trolling Cap and flinging accusations at him. That Cap only brought Wade in when he lost his super-soldier serum and needed someone to fight for him. Wolverine was dead, Deadpool was a convenient patsy. Cap counters joining the Avengers gave Wade structure, and he wouldn't have asked Wade to kill Coulson. Of course, Wade can rightly argue that a Steve Rogers did, indeed, order him to kill Coulson, and also asks if Cap would insist Black Widow be arrested if she'd been the one who did it?

Given the amount of questionable shit Natasha's gotten up to over the years, this would seem a fair point. Maybe Cap figures Natasha gets punished enough by having all her stories involve old enemies out for revenge.

While handcuffing Wade, Cap remarks he was surprised Deadpool didn't kill Stevil when he broke into his prison cell. 'Pool's counter (along with that headbutt) is Stevil being dead benefits Cap. Now he has to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. Deadpool's meta-sense clearly failed him as I'm pretty sure Stevil got shoved down the memory hole as fast as possible.

Deadpool suggests Stevil is the one who really represents America. He probably watches NASCAR and American Idol, so Sally Floyd would no doubt agree. Cap has been pretty calm up so far, but that pisses him off enough to slam Wade into the pavement hard enough to crack it. Then he gets goaded into pinning 'Pool to the ground with his own sword. In front of a bunch of horrified schoolkids.

Wade leads Cap into the sewers, along the way tricking Cap into punching some poor road crew worker by putting his mask on the guy. Again, the public is horrified, but Captain America won't give up! He will beat up as many municipal works employees as it takes to stop Deadpool! The chase ends at an abandoned subway station, the current location of Agent Preston's damaged and deactivated (both by Deadpool) body. Wade says she's the only one he'll surrender to, and insists Captain America fix her. When Cap protests SHIELD is disbanded, Wade screams, 'You're Captain Freaking America! Make An American Fix Her!' Might be better to outsource the job, but Cap probably can't take any more bad press after this escapade. No doubt Marvelverse Fox News was a big fan of HYDRA Cap and is already clamoring for his release from prison. 

To cover his escape, Wade has explosives on all the support columns, which would cause the office building above them to collapse, killing a lot of people. Captain America, not finished underestimating Deadpool, assumes he's bluffing. Wrong, but Wade only sets off one as proof and leaves. Duggan's run has 4 more issues to go, with the next 3 spent on Deadpool trying to get the super-criminal underworld to kill him, before Duggan presses the reset button on his own run in issue #300.

[3rd longbox, 200th comic. Deadpool (vol. 4) #296, by Gerry Duggan (writer), Matteo Lollo (artist), Ruth Redmond (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer)]

Sunday Splash Page #189

 

"Another Fine Mess Ben's Gotten Himself Into," in Fantastic Four: Grimm Noir, by Ron Garney and Gerry Duggan (storytellers), Matt Milla (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

This one-shot came out just last year, right before the pandemic shut a lot of stuff down. Ben Grimm has been having nightmares, and thinks they might be connected to the disappearance of a neighbor across the street. He ends up having to fight D'Spayre to rescue the neighbor and himself.

I have no idea why this exists, or why it was released when it was. If it ties in to something important from the Dan Slott Fantastic Four run it's concurrent with, or anything like that. Maybe Duggan and Garney just wanted to do a story about Ben fighting his fears. Lot of creative teams have gotten mileage out of that.

Most of the issue is drenched in black. Like there's a single spotlight focused on whatever we're seeing, so everything else is obscured. It's raining constantly. Ben's eyes are either in a shadow cast by his brow, or the white of the eyes themselves is colored black, so that the blue stands out even more. There's a bit of Joe Kubert in Garney's artwork, in the angle of the faces or some of the scratchy lines he uses. Moreso when he gets to draw Ben as a human, rather than when the story focuses on bizarre creatures and body horror (nothing too graphic, depending on how you feel about a rock guy falling to pieces.)

Like I said, seemingly inessential, but as far as random one-shots go, not bad.

Random Back Issues #54 - Deadpool #6

In the name of presenting both sides, the New York Times will run an editorial arguing this was the right move because those people on the coasts haven't taken cyber-Jesus into their hearts, or they'd know about the hurricanes already. So they deserve to die.

During Gerry Duggan's post-Secret Wars run on Deadpool, there would be these issues flashing ahead to 2099, showing how things were going for Deadpool. The answer, as it usually is, was "poorly, depending on which Deadpool you're talking about."

You've got one Deadpool in some sort of digital-looking suit, flying around on some A.I. dragon, with a whole legion of "Bobs" for henchmen. She and her crew make "stims", so, drug dealers. Deadpool is supposed to take drugs, not deal them! Worst cosplay ever! But she starts the issue on the run from the police, who she claims she can't actually fight all of. Well, sure, but if you're really Deadpool, you should just enjoy causing as much destruction as you can before being thrown in jail. 

Damn, I've become a gatekeeper fan, what a horrifying fate. You know what? Nevermind, you're Deadpooling just fine as you are.

She chooses to escape instead, retreating to a crappy apartment where we find regular Deadpool as an old man with a beard, shackled to an easy chair, forced to watch C-SPAN 2099. Wade isn't happy to see her, and when she asks if that's any way to speak to his daughter, replies he has no daughter. And she replies. . .

 

Well, if the alternatives are "no dad", and "Deadpool for a dad", yeah, that's probably the right call. Maybe she can go join the Straw Hat Pirates? I'm pretty sure we've only seen three of their actual, biological dads (Luffy, Usopp, and Sanji's), and they all either abused or abandoned their kids. She'd fit right in.

This isn't Eleanor though. This is Warda, a child he had with Shiklah at some point along the line. She wants to know where her mother is. Wade's mind is more of a mess than normal, with an additional eighty years of whatever added to it, so good luck. He tells her she's trying to find Jimmy Hoffa, and when she responds she doesn't know who that he is, admits he can't remember either. He suggests Preston might know (where Shiklah is, not who Jimmy Hoffa is), even though they were on the outs as then. Preston was a spy, so she knew all sorts of things. He also says he can't remember why he was angry at her.

 

All he can remember about what happened with Shiklah is some sort of fallout that may have been related to Elle dying. Given Wade's memory problems, I think that's questionable testimony. Just as likely he conflated two things, although Shiklah did, during the Civil War II tie-ins, possibly suggest she'd kill Eleanor for making him soft. (We'll find out Eleanor's mutant power during these 2099 issues and that would have made it a real challenge for Shiklah.) I'm not sure if I can believe him wearing that outfit. It's almost too stupid-looking, even for Deadpool. More like something Liefeld would draw for Cable.

Warda tells him she wants to hurt him as much as he hurt her, and sets the C-SPAN on repeat before leaving. Then Wade cries for Eleanor, which um, wrong kid, Wade. But then he notices the Texan up there vowing to dissolve the EPA to solve the problem of the environment, and wonders why everyone doesn't just listen to the Texan?

Elsewhere, the Bobs deliver "stims" to The Rose 2099, who is a woman with either a holographic or actual crystalline rose around her head. On their way home, the Bobs are jumped by a mysterious woman wearing a mask and a red cape with weird white lines on its inner lining. She wants to know how to find Deadpool (meaning Warda), and wants her to know it.

This would run through at least three more of these before being resolved in a larger-than-normal 25th issue. I liked them better than most of the arcs in the present day Duggan did during that stretch. Probably because watching Wade have to deal with a century worth of accumulated family shit was kind of funny.

[3rd longbox, 195th comic. Deadpool (vol. 4) #6, by Gerry Duggan (writer), Scott Koblish (artist), Nick Filardi (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer)]

Sunday Splash Page #139

 

"Let the Lady Kill How She Likes," in Deadpool: Dracula's Gauntlet #4, by Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan (writer), Reilly Brown (penciler), Nelson DeCastro and Terry Pallot (inkers), Jim Charalampidis (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer)

We looked at this very issue of this mini-series two months ago for Random Back Issues #42. Originally done as a digital release, then later released in physical copies, it's wedged in between the two halves of the Posehn/Duggan Deadpool run we looked at in Sunday Splash Pages #134 and 135. 

After Agent Preston is moved from Deadpool's mind into an LMD, and Wade has taken revenge on Agent Gorman and gotten his money for killing all those undead presidents, Deadpool wants to take a break from insanity. Naturally, his vacation is interrupted by a job offer from Dracula (unfortunately still rocking the Final Fantasy villain remake he got during that X-Men event where Jubilee became a vampire.) Dracula wants Deadpool to retrieve a coffin.

During an incident in Greece involving a minotaur, a zebra, and two mopeds, the coffin breaks open revealing Shiklah, succubus queen of the undead. She's supposed to be Dracula's betrothed, to bring peace between their people (although Drac just wants control of her family's empire.) Naturally, she falls for the wacky merc who won't shut up and doesn't stay dead when she kisses him. Wade, despite insisting she's just a job, finds himself growing attracted to her wide-eyed interest in a world he's all-too familiar with. 

Also, she's hot.

This is kind of a bonkers mini-series, where Duggan and Posehn throw every damn thing in here. Blade shows up, that stupid Thunderbolts team Deadpool was on with the Red Hulk, Punisher, and Elektra. HYDRA, AIM (with MODOK), Werewolf by Night and Frankenstein's Monster. Deadpool stabs someone with his hand. Not that the hand is holding a bladed weapon. He stabs them with the jagged bone of his severed hand.

The mini-series sets up Wade getting married in his ongoing series, which ultimately (after Civil War II) ended very badly. Because that's how things go for Deadpool. But it's a tremendous amount of fun getting to that point.

Sunday Splash Page #137

"Couldn't You Just Cheat On Him With a Younger Version?", in Despicable Deadpool #287, by Gerry Duggan (writer), Scott Koblish (artist), Nick Filardi (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) 

I ended up taking a break from Deadpool for most of 2017. The post-Civil War II arc was a waste of time of Deadpool trying to hunt down and kill Madcap, only to fail and let him escape. Then, they'd gotten in the habit of doing extra-sized $10 issues, where the extra content was usually underwhelming. Then there was a crossover between all the Deadpool related titles as Shiklah went to war against the humans. Then there were Secret Empire tie-ins. 

So I skipped about 8 months. By the time I came back, they renamed the book, did the "legacy" numbering, and Deadpool was a wanted criminal for his part in HYDRA Captain America's crimes, hated by all. Although Duggan really tried hard to convince us everyone was pissed Deadpool killed Phil Coulson. Agent Preston, sure? Nice Captain America, yeah possibly. But why would Rogue give a shit about Phil Coulson?

Stryfe had saved Wade's daughter and Preston's family when Madcap exposed them to a bio-weapon, and called in his marker. First Wade was supposed to kill Cable and cut out his heart. Which he did (sorta), but the impact was totally neutered by Duggan having Cable state he never liked or trusted Wade. If Cable's just one more person who thinks Wade's a fuck-up, instead of the last person who believed in him, then who cares? Did Duggan think the audience had some sort of intrinsic interest in Cable himself? Pfft, nobody actually likes Cable.

After that, Deadpool had to kill three more people (including Cable/Deadpool supporting cast member Irene Merryweather for reasons that were never, to my knowledge, revealed), while dodging the X-Men, Captain America, and Rogue. This did lead to one good issue, where Wade repeatedly makes Cap look bad in front of the public, which had been so willing to accept the "evil, Cosmic Cube-created alternate version" excuse. I gave up on the book after that.

There was another arc of, I think, Wade putting a bounty on himself and trying to get the villains to kill him, without success. Then the final, 300th issue, that I bought used a month ago. Which opens with Wade spraying himself with some alien super-weapon and calling out the Avengers, only to learn the weapon is something that makes everyone puke. Yes, it's multiple pages of an extended vomit joke. Be glad I didn't use the full-page splash of Giant Man inundating an entire street. 

Then he meets Gerry Duggan, kills him, steals his car, and tries to wipe all his memories back to at least the Gail Simone era. Unless "Black Box" was a reference to Gareb's presence in Cable/Deadpool. Hard to tell. Basically so Skottie Young could take Deadpool back to being an amoral mercenary. Well, at least there was a reason this time for the character setback. That's more than Daniel Way gave us. And I guess I can't fault Duggan for knowing Marvel would undo everything he did, and at least this way he got to do it his way.

Since it hasn't finished yet, we're skipping over the current Kelly Thompson-written run, and moving to assorted one-shots and mini-series. There's still about a month of Deadpool stuff to go, but we'll get through it.

Sunday Splash Page #136

"Mass Dumbassery is More Like It", in Deadpool (vol. 4) #17, by Gerry Duggan (writer), Mike Hawthorne (penciler), Terry Pallot (inker), Jordie Bellaire (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer)

The previous volume of Deadpool ended because of Secret Wars. Because the Avengers, as written by Jonathan Hickman, are useless and didn't fix the Incursion mess. The book was naturally immediately restarted, and Duggan took the opportunity to make Deadpool massively popular in-universe, becoming a pop culture and merchandising sensation.

Popular enough to franchise his likeness and hire 4th tier characters like those schmucks up there to dress up like as act as the "Mercs for Money" (Murdock sued him on behalf of Luke Cage to prevent the use of "Heroes for Hire"). Popular enough to bankroll Old Man Steve Rogers' Unity Squad Avengers team. The funny thing is this run actually started about 4 months before the first Deadpool movie came out.

The first 35 issues of this run are Wade starting out at the absolute best place he's ever been, and then steadily losing it all. His mercs grow increasingly angry with him as he stiffs them on their paychecks. Which he's doing because Avengers are expensive, and Wade, trying to live up to Captain America's belief in him, is throwing every cent he's got into the team. 

The sad thing about the run is, Deadpool is trying really hard to actually be a hero, be an Avenger, be better, and fails completely. His mercs leave, his wife gets frustrated and starts taking other lovers. And, you know, declaring war on the surface world. He loses track of Michael the necromancer and Ben Franklin's ghost until he needs them for a tie-in to a Dr. Strange event, then loses both of them. He tried to reach out to Madcap, who he thought was alone and sad, but it's too late. The damage Wade did in the past was too much.

The high point of this portion of the run is the Civil War II tie-ins, surprisingly. Because Duggan and Hawthorne just take the piss on the entire stupid thing. Every issue is Wade getting into some pointless fight that could have been resolved if people had just talked about it reasonably. And it gives us Wade dropping the Macho Man flying elbow on the Black Panther, and them hitting each other with toilets.

And then, of course, there was that whole thing where a sentient Cosmic Cube somehow got used to make it so Steve Rogers was always loyal to HYDRA. By the time Wade realizes things are wrong and he shouldn't trust Captain America, he's in too deep, and everyone's using him as Example #1 of how they should have known something was wrong with Rogers all along.

(Just for the record, the Cosmic Cube thing was Maria Hill's fault, as she'd tried to use it to alter villains' minds, and it got turned around on the heroes. She's the worst. Even Gyrich doesn't fuck things up as spectacularly as she does.)

Sunday Splash Page #135

"Dying is Easy, Comedy is Hard," in Deadpool (vol. 3) #43, by Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan (writers), Salva Espin (artist), Val Staples (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer)

The first half of Posehn and Duggan's Deadpool run ended with Agent Preston's mind and soul being removed from Deadpool's mind and placed into a spiffy Life Model Decoy body, and with Wade finally receiving the money for re-killing the undead presidents, and him killing the turncoat Agent Gorman, who embezzled the money in the first place. 

Having gotten his unwanted tenant out of his head, Wade's actually feeling a bit lonely. The second half of this run is him building a new network of friends and loved ones, then trying to figure out how to juggle what all those people expect of him. It actually kicks off in a mini-series, Deadpool: Dracula's Gauntlet, which we'll get to in a month or so. The end result, though, is that Deadpool meets Shiklah, a succubus who is next in line to rule over the Monster Metropolis below New York. Back in the main title, Wade and Shiklah get married (in an oversized issue that apparently set a record for most characters on a single cover).

After that, he finds the daughter he thought might have died in North Korea with her mother during an Original Sin tie-in (one big issue with the second half of the run versus the first is they go from no event tie-ins to about six straight months of event tie-ins). He gets inverted into a nonviolent "Zenpool" right as the X-Men all become assholes (I mean bigger assholes than usual) as part of Axis and try to kill the few remaining survivors of the attempt by North Korea and the guy harvesting Wade's organs to create their own, knockoff X-Men.

Wade's caught in a situation where he doesn't want to be a killer, because he'd like to try and be a parent to Eleanor (and a mentor to Evan Sabah Nur, the kid who might become the next Apocalypse some day). But Shiklah likes him because of his capacity for massive violence, and Zenpool wasn't massively effective against the Inverted X-Men. Then ULTIMATUM shows a complete lack of sound judgment and tries to mess with his loved ones again, and Wade goes John Wick on their asses. 

Then Secret Wars cancels the book.

There's also a few funny one-off stories in here. Scott Koblish does another inventory issue, where Wade and Cable protect post-Howling Commandos, pre-SHIELD Nick Fury from time-traveling Hitler, plus one about the magic of "gracking", aka fracking using gamma energy, that involves Sarah Silverman teaming up with the at-the-time Thor creative team of Jason Aaron and Jason Latour to fight the minotaur that runs Roxxon these days. 

I'm not making any of that up, that's actually part of the comic.

Plus a story where we find out the organ-harvesting, child-abducting asshole pumped Wade full of memory-erasing drugs and had him kill his own parents. OK, that's not actually funny. But Koblish drew it all in a send-up of Liefeld's style (including making sure to never draw feet), which I guess is supposed to be funny. I'm not judging. I can't draw feet, or hands. Shit's hard, OK?

Sunday Splash Page #134

 "Still More Hygenic than Chuck E. Cheese", in Deadpool (Vol. 3) #8, by Gerry Duggan and Brian Posehn (writer), Mike Hawthorne (artist), Val staples (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) 

After Way's run finally ended, Marvel handed Deadpool over to Gerry Duggan and comedian Brian Posehn. Their first arc involved a necromancer named Michael, who resurrected all the dead Presidents in the hopes they would help America find its way. Instead, the angry old white men went berserk, trying to destroy the country. Deadpool, once again alone and hated by all, is hired by SHIELD agent Preston to take care of this problem so neither SHIELD or Captain America make the cable news for punching FDR or whatever. Preston is killed by Sorcery Enhanced Undead George Washington, and Michael saves her by placing her essence inside Deadpool's mind.

The first 25 issues revolve around two goals. One, get Preston out of Wade's head and into a body of her own, for both their sakes. Two, Wade is determined to hunt down Preston's boss, Agent Gorman, who has stiffed Wade on the money he was promised for killing all those Presidents.

These goals are complicated by a variety of factors. Finding Preston a body she's OK with being the obvious one. But also the fact that Deadpool's life is rarely quiet. They run up against a demon Deadpool pissed off in a "lost" inventory issue for his non-existent series in the '80s, where he was supposed to get Iron Man drunk, but rather than push Stark out of sobriety, Wade knocked him out and piloted the armor drunk himself. Credit for lateral thinking, at least.

After that, some things Deadpool tried very hard to forget, or was made to forget, came scrabbling out his past. Like how someone had been doping him and stealing his organs for years. And how he might have fathered a child during a brief hookup in another lost inventory issue from the '70s where he teamed up with Power Man and Iron Fist. 

Note that I'm not saying either of those two is the father of the child. I'm also not saying they aren't. You'll have to find the comic and read it yourself.

While Mike Hawthorne draws most of the issues after the initial, President-killing arc (which is drawn by Tony Moore), all the inventory issues are done by Scott Koblish, in some pretty solid attempts to ape the art styles of the eras they're supposedly from. Hawthorne's got a good style for superheroics. Clean lines, good energy, knows how to use panels in a fight scene to act as distinct moments in a fight, but also make it clear how one panel leads to the next.

I first picked up issue 20, which was another of the inventory issues, my least favorite to be honest, since Kirby pastiche ain't really my thing. But the issue after that was when Gorman made his big play to be rid of Deadpool and Preston once and for all, and Deadpool reminds everyone how terrifying he can be when he puts his mind to it.

Random Back Issues #42 - Deadpool: Dracula's Gauntlet #4

Has Dracula never heard of online dating?

We're looking at the midway point of a mini-series today, but it has enough random shit happening it avoids most mid-story lag. As Wade explained, he found Shiklah inside a coffin he was sent after by Dracula, so the shitty JRPG Antagonist version of Dracula can marry her. Shiklah doesn't seem terribly interested, so she and Wade are taking their time returning to NYC. They got captured by a HYDRA sub, but by the time Bob frees them, AIM had captured the sub.

While Wade and Bob go retrieve Deadpool's weapons (and Wade realized he might be catching feelings for Shiklah), She's busy kicking the shit out of the beekepeers, who counter with their L.A.L.F.: Libido-less Artificial Life Form. Created by abducting a transient from Times Square in the Guiliani Administration. That tracks. Succubus wiles won't work, so Shiklah transforms into her giant horned monster form, and tears the poor thing to shreds before draining the life force from a lot of AIM guys.

MODOK shows up to catch her and ruin the fun, eager to dissect her and understand her powers. His attempt to return to his ship is thwarted by Deadpool chucking a grenade into the tractor beam as well, which damages the beam projector and sends everyone plummeting towards the Earth. Except MODOK, who has a flying chair. Or he did, because Wade somehow levered him out of it to commandeer it. Not sure how that worked, but OK.

Wade catches Shiklah and Bob - wouldn't have expected him to decipher the controls that quickly, but OK - but Bob loses his grip and breaks both his legs when he hits the ground. Shiklah offers to ease his suffering and Bob pleads to not let her eat his soul. Look at it this way, if she does, you don't end up with Madcap growing out of your stomach like a Kuato cosplay in a few years.

They get Bob medical help, at a veterinary clinic while the news reports of MODOK as being a 'profoundly disabled man who had his wheelchair stolen.' The vet inquires if Deadpool's a terrorist, and is assured that Wade is in fact the Captain Britain of 2099. They must have changed the flag quite a bit, then. It's unclear if the doc fixed Bob the way 'Pool asked, but since Wade paid cash, he's fine putting one of those dog cone collars around the Bob's neck.

Back on their own, our lovebirds are attacked by an enthralled Werewolf by Night. Wade takes that to mean he's in heat, while Shiklah says he better hope not. Wade finds a suit of armor to fight in, though it doesn't help much. Shiklah just blasts the collar off and Jack's back to his old self. Just in time to be punched in the face. Jack explains Drac isn't happy with how long Wade's taking, and that Shiklah's brothers are alive, and being annoying twits.

Dracula, out of patience entirely due to dealing with Shiklah's idiot brothers, prepares a new team to find Shiklah. Frankstein's Monster, a Living Mummy, a Brood mercenary, and Marcus, the centaur bit by a werewolf and bonded to a symbiote. He has no weaknesses, except that he's diabetic. I would think fire and sound would also still be a problem, but maybe centaurs are immune to those? And can't the symbiote do something about his pancreas?

[4th longbox, 8th comic. Deadpool: Dracula's Gauntlet #4, by Gerry Duggan and Brian Posehn (writer), Reilly Brown (penciler), Nelson DiCastro and Terry Pallot (inkers), Jim Charalampidis (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer)]

What I Bought 2/29/2020

Well, I got a little more rest this weekend than I did last weekend. Not on Friday night, woke up coughing at 4 and couldn't get back to sleep. But Saturday night went better. Take what I can get. Still couldn't find a copy of the first issue of Canopus, so we'll look at the other two remaining books from last month.

Amethyst #1, by Amy Reeder (writer/artist/color artist), and Gabriela Downie (letterer) - I don't know which gemstone is represented by "line of sheet music that barfs up narhwals", but they should ask for a refund on that symbology.

It seems like the events of the original, 12-issue Amethyst series, are in play here. Amy learned she's the princess of an other-dimensional kingdom, fought Dark Opal, still has parents who love and remember her on Earth, etc. She's been on Earth for an unspecified amount of time, but returns to Gemworld for her birthday. She finds her kingdom shattered, her subjects missing. People she believed were friends behave coldly towards her, and she can only find one person willing to help.

I have a few theories, most revolving around this being some sort of trial for Amy. Prove she can get things done without guidance, without everyone else. She admits when she tries to rally Turquoise's people that she's never really had to try and do diplomacy before. Citrine handled that. Amy could just focus on flying her winged horse and magical zappy blasts. Unfortunately, that's probably not all that's involved in running a kingdom. The presence of Dark Opal kind of argues against it just being a test, though, but maybe he's not such a completely irredeemable person in this timeline.

I really want to see how Reeder portrays the various kingdoms, visually. We only saw the remains of Amethyst's castle in hers, although all the little floating pieces were eye-catching. All we needed was some flying turtles and it'd be a great Mario level. The houses in Turquoise's land are kind of barn shaped, with mushroom chimneys. I don't know if there's a significance to that, but it makes what otherwise seems like your standard medieval town a little more distinct. Also, people in Turquoise's kingdom have four arms now, although they only separate at the elbows, and their clothes are a little pirate-like. The kind of thing I associate more with port towns. Sleeveless vests and pants tucked into knee boots. Stuff like that. Don't know if that means anything, just an observation, but I enjoy studying it.

Fantastic Four: Grimm Noir, by Ron Garney and Gerry Duggan (storytellers), Matt Milla (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - Hey, Namor's found gainful employment as somebody's butler! Good for him.

Ben's having a lot of nightmares about falling to pieces and failing to protect Alicia. There's a singer named Rosemary who lived across the street that's gone missing. Then he has a nightmare where a shadowy figure abducts Rosemary. he describes what he sees to Alicia, she sculpts, Reed doesn't recognize him, but Wong does. Except "Wong" is really D'Spayre, and the sculpture is him, and now Ben's in a nightmare realm. He digs his way out, puts the boots to D'Spayre, rescues Rosemary, things are good, for now.

It's kind of a fun story, although I don't get why D'Spayre wanted Rosemary around to sing for him so much. In understand her singing was improving Ben's mood and lessening the effect of D'Spayre's attacks on Ben, but it seems like he really enjoyed her singing as well. I'm also not clear why D'Spayre's own demons would attack him after Ben beat him up for a bit, but I'm pretty vague on the guy's powers, other than being a low-rent, second-rate Nightmare.

I'm also not sure it's much of a noir, at least in tone, but that's another matter. Ben has the stubborn, scrapper mentality of a noir detective, but not really the cynicism.

Garney and Milla's artwork are really the sell here, and they do a lot of good stuff. Milla sometimes colors the whites of Ben's eyes black in his nightmares, which both highlights the blue of his eyes, and makes him look more monstrous. D'Spayre's this shifting form of black-and-white. Sometimes he seems to be wearing gloves and a cape, other times it's just his body that's a mix of light and dark. Some high-contrast stuff with Ben when he's in his hat and trenchcoat, almost Frank Miller style to just hint at his rocky texture under the brim's shadow.

So the story isn't great, but it's nice to look at.

Finally A Post-Apocalyptic World For Me

And I don't mean because they have robot gorillas controlled by artificial intelligence.

Volume 1 of Analog contains the first 5 issues of Gerry Duggan and David O'Sullivan's 'cyber-dystopian noir'. I feel like they needed to fit the prefix "neo-" in there somewhere, but oh well. The idea is the Internet has somehow been tampered with so that there's no longer any secrets online. And in the four years since then, no one has figured out a way around that, so if you need things sent secretly, you hire a "Ledger Man", such as Jack McGinnis there.

I don't know why you don't just call them "couriers", but whatever. Jack actually had something to do with the downfall of the Internet, after being approached by some Zuckerberg stand-in named "Oppenheimer", blowing a lot of smoke about needing analysts to pore over all the information online to avert future tragedies (after allowing a foreign power to pay him to tamper in the last election).

As it turns out, that guy is still a problem for Jack, and not the only one. The U.S. government managed to get its shit together (in only 4 years? impossible) and has adapted to the new way of moving information. They'll have Jack and every other Ledger Man's cooperation, or else. Jack also has a black irish anarchist girlfriend who makes her own trouble without needing splash damage from Jack's, and what's left of at least one A.I. that's very curious about people. So there's a lot set up to play out one way or the other.

Jack is sort of glib, the kind of contrary type who doesn't appreciate being pushed around or told to conform, and will therefore cause trouble even as it keeps getting him beat up and thrown in vans. By the time he was being thrown in a van in Tokyo on his way to being thrown out of Japan, I couldn't keep track of which group was giving him the boot. I'm kind of predisposed not to like him, since he's one of those New Yorker asswipes that calls the rest of the U.S. flyover country and thinks the sun rises and sets on their craphole city.

Duggan aims for a lot of dry, unaffected wit from most characters. Two cops find the last surviving member of a gang of white supremacists than Oona (the anarchist lady) killed single-handed the night before hanging from a bedsheet in his hospital room, and their immediate discussion is whether this means more or less paperwork. (Answer: 'More short-term, less long.') Jack's dad tells him not to shoot the last guy that attacked his house because he's right next to the sauce he's making for his meatballs. The mileage varies on that stuff.

O'Sullivan gives most everyone a weary, aged look. It's been hard lives for most of them, and they take their toll. Jack usually has stubble and deep lines running along his jaw and cheeks. I guess that explains the jaded reactions to all the violence, though. The art reminds me a little of Shawn Crystal's, but the people don't look as feral, or have as exaggerated proportions.

Alternate Favorite Marvel Characters #3 - Deadpool

Character: Deadpool (Wade Wilson)

Creators: Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza

First Appearance: New Mutants #98.

First encounter: X-Force #2. Deadpool fights and loses to Kane, who was only notable for being able to shoot his cybernetic hand at people and choke them with it remotely. Deadpool talks quite a bit, though less then you might think. Deadpool comments that's pretty gross, although one imagines he'd make a more innuendo-laced comment these days. But the issue establishes that he distracts people with talking, people find him annoying, and he has a personal teleportation device.

Two issues after that, he showed up at the tail end of a Spider-Man/X-Force team-up to abduct both Juggernaut and Black Tom Cassidy for "Tolliver". I have never known who Tolliver was or what he wanted those two for. That's not a hint for you to tell me, either. I'm fine not knowing.

Definitive writer: Either Fabian Nicieza or Gerry Duggan. I don't like Duggan's take on Wade and Cable, so that's a strike against him, but I thought he covered Wade's tendency to wreck every good thing he manages to cobble together extremely well. Not surprising, since he gave him more to lose than any other writer. I could see Nicieza's pop-culture reference heavy writing getting on someone's nerves, but I mostly enjoy it.

Definitive artist: Reilly Brown's pretty good, Shawn Crystal worked for the more zany adventures Daniel Way occasionally wrote, and Declan Shalvey drew more haggard, dangerous Wade that worked very well for that particular story. But I'd go Mike Hawthorne now. He's very good at giving Deadpool an expressive mask, he draws a good fight scene, his version of Wade's face is pretty messed up, rather than "relatively normal with some lines in odd places scribbled across it", which is what you get with some artists. If Deadpool's face looks less messed up than Jonah Hex', you're doing it wrong.

Favorite story or moment: Cable/Deadpool #41. Wade and Nate were on the outs, because Cable kept doing his "I'm from the future so I know what's best for you" bit and messing with Wade's life. They took opposite sides in Civil War, so Cable arranged to make Wade look bad enough the U.S. government fired him, even though being treated as a legitimate agent meant a lot to him. Wade agrees to help make Cable look bad in Rumekistan, kind of as payback, Cable reveals he knew it was coming all along and literally pantsed Wade on international TV. Then he hooked Wade's subconscious up to the Infonet, so all Wade's issues he tries to ignore would be able to taunt him 24/7 on every TV screen in New York City. You will not be surprised to learn Wade eventually snapped and started shooting up a bar. With that grasp of human emotions and psychology, it's clear Cable is Cyclops' kid.

So things are bad between them. X-Men stuff leads to Cable's island nation getting trashed and beginning to sink. Sabretooth was loose on the island, because the X-Men thought having him around was a good idea, and is holding Irene Merryweather hostage against Domino. Then who comes dropping out of the sky?

My favorite part of all this, besides how much Wade enjoyed shooting Sabretooth repeatedly, is when Irene and Domino reach the evac boat and tell Cable who showed up.

Look at that. Even old grump Cable, who think he knows everything, is not only surprised Deadpool showed up to help, but genuinely happy about it. He goes to finds Wade, and after launching Sabretooth into the Pacific, they set about trying to wipe any dangerous information before other parties get their hands on it. Cable ultimately teleports Wade to safety before the island explodes.

That is why I was disappointed by how Duggan handled their relationship in "Deadpool Kills Cable" last year. For all they're very different and stubborn people, and for all that Cable can't stop trying to manipulate a guy who has been used and abused by people for his entire life, and Wade can't stop making the worst possible choices to deal with problems, they do still look out for each other when it counts.

What I like about him: I've written a lot about Deadpool, not a surprise considering how often I've bought his various titles and how often Marvel ships his comics. I've used him as a recurring character on the blog, largely as an element of chaos. The panda is too sensible to think of most of Deadpool's plans, Calvin wouldn't have the nerve or the skill. Deadpool's an opportunity to let things get really silly, or violent, as the desire arises.

But what about when people with actual skill use him? Well, he can be funny, and funny in a lot of different ways depending on the writer and artist. Bizarre pop culture references and metaphors, bodily humor, ridiculous props. Meta references to the fact he's a fictional character. I love Deadpool's commitment to branding, whether it's having his logo on the soles of his boots, or brass knuckles that say "DEAD" and "POOL". Even his grenades have been known to have his logo. Just how much he annoys other characters or makes them uncomfortable can be hilarious.

Or there's general absurdist behavior. With Deadpool, any action or decision is within the realms of possibility. He'll fight a Skrull invasion dressed as a baseball team mascot. He famously tried to pick a fight with Wolverine by giving Kitty Pryde the ol' Shoryuken (not a euphemism). He'll dress as a pimp to shake down a bodega to draw out the gang that's already shaking down said bodega. He'll get a bunch of Iron Fist's students to fight a super-villain (sort of) because his body is too shattered to use. He could take a bunch of money and buy a crappy little boat so he can be a pirate. He can decide the best way to keep a succubus Queen from having to marry Dracula is to marry her himself. That didn't end well, but that's the danger of applying questionable decision-making to problems. And he enjoys his plans so much, most of the time, that it's easy to be carried along with his enthusiasm.

His healing factor means he can take a lot of punishment, so you can do something with that. Have Logan decapitate him, then let Weasel spend a couple pages scrambling around trying to pick up the head while Logan kills HYDRA agents. In that sense, he's a very malleable character to the strengths of whatever creative team is working with him at the moment.

That's all well and good, humor's great. The interesting bit is you can flip that on its head and use it to make him terrifying. Like when he brings down ULTIMATUM's helicarrier, and after Coulson congratulates him, Wade explains he just used his plan for bringing down SHIELD's helicarrier if they didn't give him the money he was owed. Coulson clears his throat and goes to a) update Wade's threat level in his file, and b) figure out where that money is.

For all his jokes and zany hijinks, Deadpool is still a highly trained and periodically ruthless killer who is nearly unkillable himself. That guy kills a room full of ULTIMATUM guys and paints the walls with their blood as some joke? That's frightening. You can do jokes about how he doesn't remember fighting Captain America with the Fixer in St. Louis and all of them getting hit with a diarrhea ray. Or you can have him trying to solve how someone killed a well-known terrorist leader, and he figures it out while actually thinking about chimichangas the whole time, because he's the one who killed him, but he doesn't remember doing it. And he can't figure why he did other than, he felt like it. It can be funny to see him running around with his severed arm tied to his body fighting goon squads, until you realize he chewed his own arm off to get free to kill these guys.

Deadpool is very human, in that he falls prey to the same flaws as a lot of us, just in more spectacular ways. Wade wants to be a good person most of the time, but he wants to do it on his terms, when it doesn't inconvenience him too much. He'll take the easy way out sometimes, avoid tough conversations with people he cares about. The reason that move Cable pulled worked so well is because Wade didn't want to deal with his inner conflicts. When he realizes he doesn't know how many people he's killed, then he starts thinking about why he not, and what he even hoped to accomplish with those deaths. And rather than answer that, he lashes out instead.

Deadpool's been victimized a lot in his life. Department K, or Weapon X, whoever, that used him as a guinea pig, then dumped him down a sluice gate into a pile of corpses when they thought he was of no use to them. When someone in charge decided that was a dumb idea, they sought him out to harvest his organs and tamper with his memories, even having him kill his parents just to test how effective their mind-wiping drug was. Logan let him on X-Force, but treated him as a soulless killer, a weapon. You'd think Logan would know what that's like, but he treated his "daughter" the same way, so let's just leave it that Logan's a shitty mentor figure. Cable would hire Deadpool for jobs without letting him know it was him doing it, to let Wade think he had some autonomy. True or not, Deadpool feels like Captain America used him as a gun because Cap himself was old and Logan was busy being dead.

And so Wade has a tendency, publicly anyway, to blame his problems on others. Privately, Wade will acknowledge his own hand in the trainwreck his life routinely becomes, but when he's around others, he'll blame them, or anyone else. Maybe because everybody seems to dismiss the crap he's been through. People always makes excuses for Logan after he murders up 40 guys, how he's been through a lot, suffered a lot. They look the other way for the shady shit the Black Widow continues to do. But Wade feels he doesn't get that acknowledgement. I'd say his consistent friends - Weasel, Blind Al, Outlaw, etc. - recognize it and allow for it, and that Wade ignores that, because it's convenient to him. It's not one of his better traits, but it's understandable, and like I said, Wade does internally acknowledge how he often ruins things himself.

Jamie Madrox mentioned he pulls practical jokes as way to get people to notice him, so he didn't feel alone. I wonder if Wade acts so irritating because it forces people to acknowledge him as a person. They can't just treat him as a weapon to use or destroy, because he's pissing them off too much for that. They have to yell at him to shut up, or tell him how disgusting he is. Which undoubtedly hurts, but at least they see him, the person. Or a version of him, at least, which may be better than nothing.

Deadpool is fully capable of compassion, but like a lot of people, he's selective about who receives. He's more likely to show compassion to those he sees as victims, as opposed to people he thinks have made their own bed. He tried to do a lot for the Kim and the rest of Butler's Korean test subjects, those X-Men he partially created using Wade's body. Wade got them out Korea, got them money, and when their health began to fail, he convinced the X-Men to help. When Beast needed some of Wade's organs to keep them alive, Wade gave them. When the X-Men went temporarily evil - thanks Axis! - Wade found his friends another sanctuary. He'll save a random kid riding by on a bike while he was in the middle of fighting a demon. Just because. When some kind of tampering is making him try to kill Cable, he'll shoot himself rather than let that happen.

On the other hand, when he was trying to deal with that demon, he killed his necromancer acquaintance Michael and sent the guy to Hell so he could bargain with Mephisto. From Wade's point of view, Michael already sold his soul and was doomed to Hell. Wade was just using Michael's bad decision to help the rest of them. Same with Madcap. He was trapped inside Wade's mind, Wade was in a bad place, he tormented Madcap. Later, he tries to make amends when he feels he can afford to, but it's too late. He'll punch random people or threaten them because he's got problems he can't deal with and they happen to be annoying him at the wrong moment. That's not unusual, to take out our other problems and frustrations on people who have nothing to do with them. Although I can also see how having to share your mind with Madcap would get irritating real fast. Wade didn't ask for him to be there.

Deadpool is a good friend. Sometimes. We discussed the efforts he went to trying to help Cable out, and that doesn't cover the time Wade jumped across multiple dimensions trying to find Cable's soul to bring him back to life. Or when he was sent through time to kill Cable, but kept saving his life. Or the time he fought Power Man and Iron Fist to protect Weasel. Gail Simone didn't write Deadpool for long, but when his brain was increasingly scrambled by Black Swan, he had Swan use his powers to help his friend Ratbag instead (also an example of Wade helping someone who was a victim of circumstances outside their control). He worked hard to help Evan believe the best of himself, that he wasn't going to become Apocalypse, and to protect him from Stryfe. He went to the wall for Kim and the others, and he fended off a lot of people trying to keep Agent Preston safe until they could figure out some way for her to have a body. He killed everyone in ULTIMATUM to try and keep his daughter and her new family safe. Which is extreme, but he'd already tried letting their boss live in such mortal terror of Deadpool that he wouldn't think of messing with him. It eventually stopped working, sooooo, new plan. Or old plan really.

And sometimes he's a terrible friend. He kept Blind Al locked up in his house, and kicked the shit out of Weasel when he dared to figure out where Wade lived. He's tried to kill Cable on multiple occasions, even after they became sort-of friends. When Preston came after him, he shut her down and left her mind trapped in a deactivated, trashed LMD until he could get around to telling Captain America to fix her. He treats Bob like his personal punching bag. (Though Bob is an agent of HYDRA, so he probably deserves it, he's been a loyal friend to Wade.) He killed Irene Merryweather for Stryfe to protect his daughter. Wade is leery of letting people close, because there's a lot of ugly stuff in his history, and once they see it, they might not want to be around him. Better to drive them off first, even if he's confirming all his worst fears about himself in the process. He sabotages himself a lot. He's had a good thing, then wrecked it somehow so many times he's convinced it's always going to happen, and then he ends up making it happen. He pushes them away before they can turn against him, which causes them to turn against him.

It's just all very interesting to me because I can't ever be sure which way Deadpool's going to go at a given moment. Even when he's at his lowest points, or things are starting to spiral out control, he can still do something good or kind. And other times, he can be completely cruel and indifferent to the suffering he's inflicting. It isn't as though he has no moral compass - it may be skewed, but it's there - but he'll either ignore it, or justify his actions in some way. Which again, isn't all that different from a lot of us. We may do something unkind, but there were reasons, you see, so we should get a pass. Wade may very well believe he should get a pass - during the fallout from HYDRA Cap, he's been constantly trying to "I was only following orders" line of defense - but I don't know that he really believes it. And I'm positive he knew he wasn't gonna get it.

How aware Wade is of the fact he's a comic book character varies from time-to-time. He's as aware as the writer needs him to be to make a joke. But again, you can flip that to make it terrifying and sad, like when he addresses the audience about their complicity in the hell his life regularly becomes, as his suffering is our entertainment. In those moments, he's also aware of how writers love to give him friends or family, only to pull them away. If not by that writer, like Gerry Duggan did with everyone he gave Deadpool, then the next writer, like when Daniel Way threw out everything Nicieza had established. That has to be exhausting, to know, even just some of the time, that he's stuck on a treadmill of gaining friends only to lose them, and it's ultimately going to be played as his fault. He'll be written to do something shitty and awful that turns these people away - help HYDRA, beat up his friend for crossing a line the friend didn't know existed, neglect his wife - so he can be alone and terrible again. Wade ends up being very good at regrets after the fact, but not so good at avoiding the actions he'll end up regretting in the first place.

Given that, it's not much of a surprise he tries to kill himself sometimes, even though he knows his healing factor (or Marvel) won't let it take. He's stuck in his own Groundhog Day, but he's not ever going to get the happy end where he finds true love and becomes a better person. Every time he does, it's pulled out from under him, and he wakes up back in the hotel bed with the alarm playing the same damn song. Maybe all his bizarre adventures are just a way for him to keep occupied. If he's stuck existing, there's no reason he has to be bored. After all, if he's bored, he might start thinking, maybe about how he's going to live for a really long time, and suffer setback after setback, loss after loss. Misfortune, isolation, hatred, scorn, there's truckload after truckload of that waiting ahead for him. Better just not to think about it. Find something to do today, kick the can down the road. He can always try killing himself tomorrow.

It's this push-pull where Deadpool can be hilarious, or sad, where he can frustrate by tearing his life down around his ears one money, and then do something stupid and ridiculous that almost makes it funny. Where I want to yell at him about his bad decisions, but defend him against any character in-story that tries to give him a hard time or look down on him. I know Wade shoots himself in the foot a lot, literally and figuratively, but I also know that he's done the right thing a lot when no one would have expected it and no one was willing to help. I root for him to get to have friends and good times, even knowing it's all eventually going to fall apart. He's an interesting character in his good and bad times.

Credits! Wade didn't make a great first impression in X-Force #2, by Fabian Nicieza (writer), Rob Liefeld (artist), Brad Vancata (colorist), and Chris Eliopoulos (letterer). Cable appreciates that Wade had himself shipped air mail for overnight delivery in Cable/Deadpool #41, by Nicieza (writer), Reilly Brown (penciler), Jeremy Freeman (inker), Gotham (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer). Deadpool unveils his new DLC alternate costume in Deadpool (volume 3) #13, by Gerry Duggan and Brian Posehn (writers), Scott Koblish (artist), Val Staples (colorist), and Joe Sabino (letterer). Deadpool's career as a physiotherapist was brief, in Deadpool (vol. 3) #19, by Duggan and Posehn (writers), Declan Shalvey (artist), Jordie Bellaire (color artist), and Joe Sabino (letterer). Everybody wants someone else to solve their problems, then they complain how you do it in Deadpool (vol. 3) #10, by Duggan and Posehn (writers), Mike Hawthorne (artist), Val Staples (colorist), and Joe Sabino (letterer). Wade does a nice thing for his friend, he tells him to get away in Deadpool (vol. 1) #69, by Gail Simone (writer), Arnold Tsang, Andrew Hou, Eric Vedder, Omar Dogan, and TheRealT! (artists), Dave Sharpe (letterer). Deadpool makes sure you can always tell where he's been in Deadpool (volume 3) #17, by Duggan and Posehn (writers), Shalvey (artist), Bellaire (colorist), and Sabino (letterer).

What I Bought 3/14/2018

Two books this week, both from Marvel, both wrapping up storylines. And for one of them, it's the end of the line for me. At least for a couple of months. Gee whiz, I wonder which one that is?

Deadpool #296, by Gerry Duggan (writer), Matteo Lolli (artist), Ruth Redmond (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - I would say Wade should be careful what he asks for, making the "bring it" gesture, but even if Cap pummels him into the ground, Wade would be OK with the pain.

Wade fights with Captain America, yelling at him and blaming him a lot. Cap grows increasingly frustrated, playing into Deadpool's hands. Most of this is Wade coming up with ways to make Cap look bad in front of the public, which I love. I laughed at least three times during this issue. They end up in Deadpool's subway hangout, where Wade makes a request/demand of Steve, escapes by threatening civilians, and vows to continue pissing off the entire world.

I know Deadpool needed Cap alive to make that request, but I also like to think he knew killing Captain America wasn't happening, so he might as well crap on his rehabilitation tour. Steve Rogers gets to play the "it was an evil doppelganger" card, and it's three cheers and second chances all around. Wade can't play that card, and combined with the crapstorm his life has become, that has to be maddening. I wonder if he also left Rogers alive to annoy Stevil Rogers, since the reverse is true.

It's an interesting fight, with Cap holding back (except maybe when Deadpool suggests the evil Cap is the one who really represents the U.S.), while Wade is using it as another chance to air grievances. Lolli tells it in a straightforward manner, the flow from one move to the next is easy to follow. Plus, he made sure people were looking in the right direction for Wade's first trick to work. Wade looks left while Steve looks down, and it's only when Cap finally looks to his left he realizes he's been played. That's basic stuff, but we've all seen miscommunication between the creative team ruin things like that. It was a good gag, so getting the set-up right was important.

I do wish Lolli wouldn't draw Cap's eyebrows as being visible in the eye holes of the mask. I suppose they would be, and he's hardly the only artist who does, but it's always bothered me. Ruins something about the mask somehow.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #30, by Ryan North (writer), Erica Henderson (artist), Rico Renzi (color artist), Travis Lanham (letterer) - What is everyone looking at? It must be something sorta cool, but not that cool, since Drax is ignoring it.

Our heroes avoid death from the missiles and then Doreen is able to figure out how to fix all the old beefs the various ripped off alien species had with each other. While all that is happening, Nancy and Tippy get the bit of Power Cosmic the aliens were using for their weapons to try and deal with the grifters. Tippy's attempt to make it so no one believes anything they say has too many loopholes, and the grifters' utter lack of remorse nearly gets them killed by a cosmic-powered Nancy, only for Doreen to give her a big speech about not being a bully by beating up these guys just because she can and wants to (and they deserve it).

Ehh, I don't know if I agree with that, but I'm a grudge-holder.

Until the book screeched to a halt for that discussion, I was enjoying it. Henderson and Renzi make a cosmic-powered squirrel look cool, and the panel of Tippy's impressive landing on the planet Chitt-crrt. I imagine it might have looked less impressive if we had seen the feet of the various characters standing there, but they were smart enough not to include that detail. And the blur lines on the "KRA-KOOM" sound effect were a nice touch.

Doreen and Nancy not letting the Surfer off the hook with his "it would be impossible to describe the Power Cosmic to those without it" was amusing, and Doreen trying to figure out how to solve all the aliens' conflicts with white boards and markers as well. Although my favorite moment was the excuse Nancy was forced to us as a distraction for Tippy. And that North had it work, but in a way that mortified Nancy even more. I hope she didn't touch anything in that restroom, though. Both for her benefit and the other species. You can't tell which way the War of the Worlds effect is going to run.

What I Bought 2/28/2018

Everybody out of the 'Pools! Or something to that effect. Gwenpool's coming to an end, and this Deadpool storyline is almost there, too. So let's check in.

Unbelievable Gwenpool #25, by Christopher Hastings (writer), Gurihiru (artists), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - So that's what happens to all the characters whose books get canceled: they get to hang out at the pool. I'd expect it to be more crowded, given the rate Marvel gives books the ax these days.

Gwen encounters an older, good version of herself that tells her the story isn't done just because the series is canceled. That people will be buying and reading the stories again for years after they were initially published. And there'll be fan art, cosplay, maybe someday another writer that loved Gwenpool when they were younger and gets to write her into their book. While this conversation is going on, Gwen is also hopping through a bunch of snippets of adventures that clean up (or at least nod in the direction of) various plot threads that hadn't been resolved yet.

It reminds me of the last issue of Bryan Q. Miller's Batgirl series, where the last few pages were dedicated to showing all the future adventures Stephanie might have had if the series had continued on. I'm still sad we never got to see her fight the Royal Flush Gang at her college graduation. Those weren't unresolved points, but it has that same feel. The creative team at least getting to hint at what might have been.

The back-and-forth nature of it feels a little jagged, and the long-winded explanation of why this isn't really the end drags things to a halt, but I appreciate the attempt. Of course, the back-and-forth at least serves to break up the long-winded exposition. The stories we only get hints of looked like they would have been pretty fun (team-up with Squirrel Girl to rescue Gwen's brother from Mephisto!), and it lets the Guruhiru team illustrate a whole mess of other Marvel characters (including Fin Fang Foom!) Can't complain about that. It ends on fairly upbeat note, which is better than the alternative.

I'm surprised the book lasted this long, but I'm glad it did.

Despicable Deadpool #295, by Gerry Duggan (writer), Matteo Lolli (artist), Ruth Redmond (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - The first page says Koblish is the artist, but that's definitely not the case, and the cover agrees.

Deadpool chases Evan and shoots him, despite some well-meaning bystanders. But he actually shot him with a bullet that suppresses his X-gene, so Stryfe just thinks Evan is gone. Unfortunately, the X-Men aren't impressed by this so Shadowcat and Colossus whoop the shit out of Deadpool, with Kitty criticizing Rogue for making out with Deadpool. You know, Kitty, you did it with Pete Wisdom and Peter Quill. A chain-smoking, cynical, antisocial asshole, and an idiot man-child. You combine the two and you basically have Deadpool. Basically, she slept with half of Deadpool, twice. So there. Also, Kitty telling Wade he's a wanted murder and can't just 'walk away from this,' rings hollow given all the times the X-Men looked the other way for their hairy Canadian murderer.

Hmm, I seem unusually hostile towards Shadowcat today. Just kick his ass and throw him in jail Kitty, spare us the cheap moralizing.

Wade escapes with the power of endangering innocents, and kills the last person Stryfe had on his list. But he's sad about it! Then Captain America shows up, day late and a dollar short, as usual.

Marietta Nelson took Deadpool appearing in her bedroom to murder her better than I would. I wouldn't expect her to believe him about his daughter, either, or else not care. Which would be fair, since she could assume (correctly) that Eleanor was in trouble because of Deadpool's fuck-ups, and why should she die to fix that? Maybe she was resigned from the moment she saw him, or maybe it was his demeanor. Lolli draws Wade with slumped shoulders and narrow, downcast eyes for most of the issue. The only time that drops is when the X-Men show up, and I assume Wade is playing at being a loon for their benefit. Just crazy old, amoral Deadpool! Killin' people for shits and grins! Tacos! Play down to their expectations.

Or maybe he's nostalgic for the old days when the heroes just beat him up for being a creep.

I have to think Deadpool is running out of explosives to use as cover for these narrow escapes, so I don't know how he's going to manage to elude Cap. Shooting at bystanders is only going to make Cap angry.

What I Bought 2/14/2018 - Part 1

It was 70 yesterday, and it's right around freezing today. I thought spring didn't start for another month? I actually found all the books I was looking for this week, so let's get to it.

Deadpool #294, by Gerry Duggan (writer), Scott Koblish (artist), Ruth Redmond (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - The pin with the wicked grin on Madcap's cloak is a nice touch.

Madcap has pulled himself together and come looking for revenge. But Wade's life is already burned to the ground, so by the time Wade finds him and they start to fight, Madcap's already a little bored. When Wade's master plan for taking Madcap off the board reveals itself, Madcap's actually grateful for the change in scenery. Which leaves Wade, once again, alone in the wreckage of his life, as Stryfe hounds him to hurry up and kill Evan.

Wade's solution was pretty clever, and even plays off his recent appearance in Rocket Raccoon's book, I assume. Maybe Deadpool made some other trip to outer space I don't know about. Koblish drew Madcap more simplified than Hawthorne had been. Big open blank eyes and a big empty mouth. It reminds me more of how Madcap typically looks, in the few older appearances of his I've seen. He's getting off his pointless obsession with destroying Deadpool, and back to. . . whatever the hell it was he did prior to that. Annoying everyone, I think.

There's not anything else I have to say. I appreciate Duggan providing some sort of resolution to the Madcap subplot, considering how pissed I was when he kicked the can down the road prior to Secret Empire. But, as he touches on here, everything has moved on. Wade has bigger problems, and there's not much weight to dealing with Madcap now. Nothing's at risk if he fails. Wade was desperate for the win, really needed to see someone he didn't like miserable for a change, and he can't even manage that. Next issue we get to see if Wade really does have a plan to trick Stryfe and save Evan. The way things are going, I wouldn't bet on it.

Ms. Marvel #27, by G. Willow Wilson (writer), Nico Leon (artist), Ian Herring (color artist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - A strange lightning bolt appears, and Kamala now has to contend with a bunch of miniature, alternate versions of herself. Just another Wednesday in the Marvel Universe.

Red Dagger and the Legion of Substitute Marvels track Zoe's phone to the Inventor's lair, where he's busy monologing about how he's going to use the elderly for an energy source because they contribute nothing. Zoe's not OK with that, and neither are her friends, but their opponent has created a giant turtle who nearly stomps on Nakia, only for Zoe to push her to safety (and nearly be squashed herself). The bad guy escapes, but our heroes realize they're out of their league. But there just so happens to be one other Ms. Marvel they could call.

So, Carol Danvers for the first time since Civil War II ended. Damn, now I remember that Civil War II is something that existed. Boooooo. It makes sense, at least. I know Danvers was portrayed in at least a couple of other titles after that event as not wanting to lose her friends over philosophical differences (Spider-Woman was one, probably whatever Danvers' book was called at the time, too). So she wouldn't take the approach of Kamala being dead to her, but she's been smart enough to let Kamala decide when she wants to see Carol again. It just so happens someone else is contacting her.

I'm expecting Gabe is going to get a chance to shine next issue. It feels like the others have all had the chance to do something at least a little cool. Mike with the inflatable fist, Zoe working with Harold to find his friends, Nakia being the one smart enough to track Zoe by her phone. Gabe was sort of cool jumping on the giant turtle - although that poor turtle looked like it was in agony when it first popped up, it doesn't know what the hell is going on - so maybe that qualifies. We'll see. Leon did give Gabe a funny reaction shot when Carol made her big entrance. And he gets to bag on Red Dagger's hero dialogue. Perhaps Gabe is the "Meat and Sarcasm" guy. Being a superteam's Sokka isn't the worst thing in the world.

My favorite panel in this issue is after Red Dagger and the Marvels make their big entrance, they all strike poses. I don't think they're deliberately mimicking the Ginyu Force, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was Leon's inspiration. Then the Inventor counters with the classic, "arms folded across chest while minions swarm the heroes" stance. He's kind of a goof, but he has at least some of the villain style down pat. Although it's hard for me to believe he was able to escape Red Dagger, a guy used to running across rooftops with ease.