Deadpool #40

Cover by Dave Johnson

Deadpool #40 (July 13, 2011)

Writer: Daniel Way

Penciller: Carlo Barberi

Colorist: Tim Bradstreet

Inker: Walden Wong

Letterer: Joe Sabino

There are two things I really have to stop doing:

1)       Reading contemporary Deadpool comics

2)       Promising people that I’m not going to read contemporary Deadpool comics until I read some of the classics

I’ve been having trouble with these two items. I had sworn that I was going to forgo any more Deadpool but then I was able to get a hold of Deadpool #40 and I suddenly remembered how interested I was in the continuing story arc after finishing Deadpool #39. They sucked me in, damn it.

And of course, I was disappointed. Deadpool and I seem to have a very unhealthy relationship. I expect too much from him.

Immediately following Deadpool’s incarceration after detonating nuclear weapons in the Hulk’s face and nearly killing a school full of children, Deadpool #40 focuses on our anti-hero’s experience in Crossmore Prison, a British, Marvel answer to Arkham Asylum. I was originally very excited to see how Marvel would tackle a prison for the criminally insane and I had high hopes for entertaining moments with Deadpool’s smartass and dissociative identity persona(s). Sadly, I was not given anything more than an annoying main character, annoying secondary characters and an utter lack of conflict.

Way really attempted to make this issue much more than simply Deadpool’s-in-an-insane-asylum-let’s-see-what-happens but in doing so, he bombarded the reader with flimsy plot devices and uninteresting secondary characters with equally uninteresting problems. If anything, Deadpool was not even a crucial character in this issue: his presence was necessary only for the explanation of the Crossmore Prison’s doctors’ problems. He was a catalyst and nothing more. This frustrated me.

I also found Way’s presentation of the women in this comic pretty questionable, if not downright insulting. There were two main women, one an extremely sexualized lawyer with ridiculous cleavage (granted, this was more Barberi’s fault than Way’s) and the other, a shrill, shrewish doctor that all the male characters refer to as incredibly ugly. It was so unnecessary. There are plenty of ways to present a character as dislikable without depending on so many feminine stereotypes. It was pretty exhausting.

Okay, I know PROMISE up and down that I will not read any more Deadpool until I am given direct recommendations. I have to stop doing this to myself.