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| Cover by Dave Johnson |
Writer: Daniel Way
Penciller: Ale Garza
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colorist: Dommo Sanchez Amara
Letterer: Joe Sabino
My God, where have I been? Can someone volunteer to finish up my graduate work so I can get back to reading comics and writing about them? I need my own intern, damn it.
Anyway, real life has been hectic so I have been neglecting my blog/personal happy place. Oh, how I’ve missed you. In order to get back into the swing of comic book reading, I decided to return to someone as all over the place mentally as I have been lately: Deadpool.
In case you haven’t been keeping up with Deadpool’s latest run, he wants to kill himself. That isn’t particularly new but he’s getting progressively closer to actually offing himself. There’s a serum out there that can negate his healing factor and make him susceptible to death’s cold embrace, which he craves.
For many of the issues leading up to Deadpool #52, the atmosphere was typical Wade Wilson: jokey, hungry for burritos, and inadvertently proving that he is actually a pretty good guy. But around Deadpool #50, things took a serious turn. Wade’s still cracking jokes but as he gets closer to his ultimate goal, everything starts to get darker. In this issue, Wade’s about to unleash his master plan of pitting various volatile characters against one another in a fake turf war, including his X-Force team, Kingpin, Tombstone and Daken. No one is quite sure of what Deadpool knows or what he’s planned but they all know he’s up to something. Furthermore, poor Hydra Bob keeps thinking he’s doing the right thing by Deadpool but he just ends up on the receiving end of a beating and some torture. Even Deadpool feels guilty over this.
Basically, this is another filler issue done in an attempt to draw out Deadpool’s apparent death for as long as possible. I will admit, however, that it is this issue that starts to illustrate the unraveling of Deadpool’s master plan. Nothing is going accordingly and he is slowly going in over his head, which is pretty interesting to witness, especially since Deadpool is a character who thrives in chaos. Furthermore, the last page was both a surprise and a gotcha! moment, designed solely to make you pick up the next issue. I can’t decide if it was gutsy on Way’s part, or merely gimmicky.
The art was typical of the other recent Deadpool comics, though the scenes in which Hydra Bob gets beaten were surprisingly brutal and bloody. They weren’t gory and over-the-top, just unpleasant since these issues have always maintained a cartoony air in the artwork.
Well, I have to pick up the next issue because I need to see what happens to Deadpool. I know the chances of him actually dying and staying dead are pretty slim, if only because comic book characters have a tendency to get resurrected. I’m most curious to see how this run plays out in context with the upcoming AvX series, if it even will at all. I mostly just want to see Deadpool make some sort of appearance in AvX, at least as a wisecracking voice of alarming reason.
You’ve improved a lot since you began doing this, and a review like this in particular is very telling of that as one tends to want to write off filler with an equally shallow summation, but you give a really good feel for this comic without summarizing the entirety of the plot which unfortunately is the norm for reviews on the web.
ReplyDeleteMost people, myself included, tend to let the quality of their projects slip due to the stress of so much of their time being in demand but you’ve been taking it all in stride. It’s impressive, just don’t push yourself too hard ya? Make some time to shoot some zombies.
Thanks for the compliments though I don't really notice much of an improvement. Also I feel like this blog needs a makeover of some sort.
DeleteAnyway, once May hits, I'll be good. And I did take a zombie-killing sabbatical to finish Arkham City but I have returned to my zombie-shooting stomping grounds. It's good to be back.