What I Bought 8/4/2015 - Part 3

There are five comics coming out this week I plan to buy. They announced a mini-series this week for Deadpool and Cable, by Nicieza and Reilly Brown. It's going to be released digitally first, but I'm sure it'll be in print eventually! Woo! But while I wait for that, let's look at the end of his last series.

Deadpool #45/250, by Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan (writers), Mike Hawthorne (artist), Scott Koblish (artist), Terry Pallot (inker for Hawthorne), Jordie Bellaire (colorist for Hawthorne), Val Staples (colorist for Koblish), Joe Sabino (letterer for everybody!) - I'm strongly debating with myself whether to list all the creators from the six 5-page stories in the middle of this comic. I wasn't planning to discuss those anyway, they're fluff, but I may throw them in at the end of the review.

There are essentially two stories in this issue I am going to discuss. The first one, the one drawn by Hawthorne, follows the current storyline. Wade is returning from that Roxxon job that didn't go well, but not feeling too bad about himself, when ULTIMATUM attacks all his friends. Fortunately, between Wade's paranoia, Preston's SHIELD training, and having a necromancer and the ghost of Ben Franklin living with you, the terrorists' attempt to kill anyone fail miserably. Adsit did get gut-shot, but survived it. Wade plays against type, and sets about a careful plan, rather than pulling a Wolverine and just blinding charging towards the nearest idiot in a white jumpsuit and beret. He eventually lures everything ULTIMATUM has to a deserted, ruined farm in Kansas (which he purchased from its previous owner), and proceeds to kill everyone. He even keeps to his promise that he would kill Flag-Smasher last, even if this is a different one. Then he dumps his costume and weapons, and decides he and his friends will live out their lives on a yacht he stole (I guess he spent the last of his cash buying the farm and paying the guy who hacked the drones for him). This is interrupted by that other Earth crashing into 616-Earth and killing everyone, but, at least Wade didn't die lonely.

It's kind of an odd ending, even allowing for the necessary accommodation of Secret Wars ruining everything. Wade tried to show mercy previously, let ULTIMATUM go on about its business, so long as it do so well away from him. That ends up not being the correct course, so he kills everyone. Which is interesting in light of his decision to show mercy to Omega Red last issue, but it is consist with a theme of this run. Wade has generally been more merciful towards people he sees as victims, like himself. Omega Red, Butler's sister, that kid he saved during his fight with that demon. It predates this series, but there's his interactions with Evan (the kid that's supposed to become Apocalypse, and is understandably worried about that). With people he regards as having made their own poor decisions, he's considerably less forgiving. He killed Michael and sent him to Hell with no difficulties whatsoever, because heck, Michael sold his soul to a demon knowing what it meant. He was already going to Hell, might as well do something useful. Butler made his choices, Crossbones made his when he went after Wade, ditto former Agent Gorman who stiffed Wade on his "Re-kill undead Presidents" pay. ULTIMATUM would certainly fall in that latter category. Nobody made them become stupidly dressed terrorists, and certainly nobody made them reject Wade's generosity, so they die. What that means in a larger sense, I'm not sure. Give people a second chance, but only one? Some people don't know when to quit, and for them the only option is a bullet to the head?

It was kind of tragic watching Wade get a happy ending of sorts, only for it to be ruined by the end of the world. On the other hand, whenever things go well for Deadpool, he inevitably screws it up. I don't know if it's some subconscious defense mechanism, or just because he's crazy, but that's how it goes. He gets his life in a good place (usually near the end of a series), and by the start of the next one, he's lost everything somehow (see the change in his circumstances between Cable/Deadpool #50, and the first issue of Daniel Way's run). This time, he didn't have the chance, because the Avengers fouled everything up. Which makes the finale oddly touching. Everyone is dying, but Wade is happy, because they're together, and he didn't mess up. Hooray!

Hawthorne did a good job on the big battle. The initial shot from a distance, letting us see the big open space everything will be happening, but also giving us an idea of the forces aligned against Deadpool. Then the zoom in to Wade, leaning nonchalantly on the car, discussing his thought process on all this. Then he pulls back again as the drones start their attack, and it's all explosions and carnage, Wade hardly even present in the panels for the next couple of pages. Then once he gets more directly involved, on a given pages, Wade pretty much occupies the same place on the page as you move down. It conveys the sense they're all converging on him from every direction, and half the time, he's killing someone without even looking at them. He's looking at the next guy he's going to kill, because it isn't some revenge thing at this stage. He's just taking out garbage, essentially. It fits nicely with the mostly detached internal narration Posehn and Duggan give him (though he is at least a little pissed when he kills Flag-Smasher, but he doesn't know this isn't the same guy he magnanimously allowed to live back during Original Sin.).

The other story, the one drawn by Koblish, is another of the "lost issues", this one purportedly an Infinity Gauntlet tie-in Marvel of the '90s refused to publish because it made no sense. Wade steals the Cosmic Cube for Thanos (waiting to pick Wade up in the Thanos-Copter), except Wade saw the future when he grabbed the Cube, and uses it to pull a switcheroo on Thanos and steal the Gauntlet. Then he uses that so he can force everyone to show up for a roast of him. Which is about as unfunny as most of the roasts I've watched on TV. Howard's crack about taking a beating like the Hulk on an airline toilet wasn't bad, and Koblish drew Wolverine (making a special appearance from Hell) in Maddy Pryor's outfit from Inferno. That wacky Mephisto! I don't know if the low hit rate on the jokes was intentional or not, because at the end Wade tells the audience (meaning us) how much it sucks that his life, which is largely an endless stream of misery, is just entertainment to us.

Which kind of plays into my point about Wade always screwing up whatever good things he manages to put together. That's just me rationalizing the resetting of the status quo as we switch creative teams, but for the character himself, it's a string of misfortune being heaped upon him. He gains love and respect, then somehow loses it and winds up reviled again, so he can start all over, while people say he's just about dumb jokes and breaking the 4th wall. If that was my life, I'd find it pretty maddening. So that was interesting, even if the Howard the Duck appearance felt kind of useless. I sort of get Howard when Gerber writes him, but other than that, he doesn't do much for me. Maybe because I already have Deadpool to commentate on the absurdity of the world he exists in, and myself to commentate on the absurdity of the world I live in.

Beyond putting Logan in an entirely inappropriate outfit, Koblish draws the story well.There isn't much to do, admittedly, everyone is standing or sitting and either laughing hysterically or looking severely disgruntled. He made that kiss between Shiklah and Wade pretty hot, though. He used Reed Richards' stretching arms as panel borders on one page, that was a smooth maneuver. I assume the two guys standing in the shadows as Wade resets everything at the end were Posehn and Duggan. They're only in outline, but one's wearing a probably stupid hat, and the shape of the other's head -and his height - suggests Zippy the Pinhead, and I have no idea what either of those guys look like, so who knows.

So that's it for this volume of Deadpool. It's probably about the best send-off he could get, under the circumstances. He's supposed to get a new series sometime before the end of the year, from Duggan and Hawthorne I think, and I'm curious to see where they go with it. Will wade's happy family have returned along with him? If so, is he going to be struggling with his desire to take extreme steps to protect them? That would be a fairly Deadpool thing to do, try to do the right thing, but take it too far.