Deadpool: The Circle Chase #1

Cover by
Joe Madureira

Deadpool: The Circle Chase #1 (August 1993)

Writer: Fabian Nicieza, Joe Madureira

Penciller: Joe Madureira

Inker: Mark Farmer

Letterer: Chris Eliopoulos

Colorist: Glynis Oliver

Once again, I have no idea what’s going on.

Deadpool is being hunted by mercenaries in Sarajevo, his whiny friend Weasel (who for some reason has straight-up blue hair… not just black with blue highlights ala Clark Kent, but blue hair) is trying to make sense of the situation as they discuss the up-for-grabs estate of Tolliver (some mutant I am not familiar with) and then suddenly a fight breaks out with Weapon X. Also, the Juggernaut is in it looking for someone named Black Tom. Meanwhile, some other guy, Nyko, wants Deadpool killed. And apparently Deadpool wants to kill his ex-girlfriend, Vanessa. I don’t know. There was too much going on here.

I once made the assessment that a comic succeeds the most when it has the simplest plot. I stand by that. I really feel that single issue comics are a medium where less is more and if the plot of this comic had simply been Deadpool escaping mercenaries as he attempts to find Tolliver’s money, I probably would have enjoyed it a great deal more. Instead, Nicieza (who, as we reluctantly know, wrote my absolutely least favorite and jaw-droppingly sexist comic I’ve read thus far) shoved as many characters and subplots as humanly possible into this hot mess of a comic.

The fight scenes were long and unimaginative, the characters rather hulking and insipid, and Deadpool was incredibly annoying with his extremely tired jokes. He’s like that kid in class who thinks he’s super funny but is just irritating and doesn’t seem to understand it when the rest of his classmates repeatedly tell him to shut up. I want to like Deadpool, I really do and I know Nicieza helped create him so this should be an awesome rendition of this character. I think, however, I just created an understanding of this guy that cannot be met in comics. Damn it.

Madureira’s art was so typical and dated, it looked like something out of the Prince Valiant strip in the Sunday comics. That’s partly his fault but also partly the comic trends of the times. By the mid-1990s, comic book artists started to get a little wild, which is what I’m more used to as a contemporary and new reader. So, whatever. I also disliked the coloring but again, it’s printed on newspaper paper so what can you do with that?

There was, however, was incredibly awesome and redeeming aspect of this comic: an advertisement for the Batman Returns video game for Super Nintendo. The paragraphs that comprised this ad were more entertaining that the rest of the comic and I placed it here, for your own amusement. Click and enjoy. It’ll make you wish Batman ads were still like this.