2016 Comics in Review - Part 2

This is not the most Deadpool comics I've bought in a year. That was 2009, when I bought 23 or so (depending on whether I count that Master of Kung-Fu one-shot that had one story featuring Deadpool). This is, however, the highest percentage of my comics Deadpool has constituted, at 17.5%.

Deadman: Dark Mansion of the Forbidden Love #1, 2: Sarah Vaughn, Lan Medina (with an assist from Phil Hester on the second issue), Jose Villarubia, and Janice Chang. Boston Brand trapped in a strange castle with two ghosts (or one ghost with two sides), and Bernice, who is alive but can see ghosts. It seems Adelia met a violent end, but it's unclear how or if Deadman can help her, or protect anyone else from her.

Deadpool #5-20, 22, 23: Gerry Duggan writing, with Mike Hawthorne (with Terry Pallot's inks) and Matteo Lolli doing most of the pencil work, Scott Koblish handling the issues set in 2099. Nick Filardi colors Koblish's work, Guru eFX, Jordie Bellaire, and Ruth Redmond doing most of the other issues. Wade failed to stop Madcap once, then was preoccupied with trying to kill Sabretooth over mistakenly thinking he killed Wade's parents. Then there was a Civil War II tie-in arc where Wade's company, marriage, Avengers team, and basically everything else fell apart. Now he's trying to deal with Madcap. There were 3 issues set in 2099, which have annoyed, intrigued, and kind of bored me, in that order.

High Point: Once I realized all the fights in the CW2 story arc could have been easily avoided and resolved nothing, they were pretty funny. My favorite scene was actually the fight between Wade and the Black Panther. Hawthorne really drew the hell out of it, and I got to see Wade hit T'Challa upside the head with a toilet. Oh, and Solo's attempt to imitate Deadpool was hilarious, although the best line was still Wade's: 'I don't know where everyone got the idea I like Mexican food to the point of Tourette's.'

Low Point: The current Madcap arc hasn't felt very well paced, and the Sabretooth arc felt pointless and padded out itself. Plus you knew they weren't going to let Deadpool actually kill Sabretooth. Also, the Mercs for Money were never fleshed out in any way to play up how they reflected Wade. And these $10 issues have been a letdown. The extra stories don't do enough with the limited pages they have, which is why I skipped the last one. I certainly don't give enough of a shit about Shakespeare to pay that much for an issue of Wade riffing on the Bard.

Deadpool/Cable: Split-Second #2, 3: Fabian Nicieza and Reilly Brown wrapped up their story, which mostly involved resetting Cable to something approaching his default factory settings. It was sweet to watch Deadpool, when he's tasked with killing all these alternate Cables to preserve the timeline, instead keeps saving them, because Cable is important to him. But the time travel stuff reached headache-inducing nonsense partway through.

Deadpool: Last Days of Magic: Duggan and Koblish brought us this tie-in to the Dr. Strange event, as the Empirikul attack Shiklah's kingdom, and are only driven back by the sacrifice of Wade's friend, Michael. Which was an extremely touching scene, and one more step on the steady disintegration of Wade's life.

Descender #9-11: I forget sometimes I was still buying this book early in 2016. Lemire and Nguyen brought the cast to the machine's secret home, and TIM met his "brother", who rapidly grew jealous and the last I saw, was trying to kill him. But the book was moving too slowly, and focusing on things I didn't care about, so I dropped it.

Great Lakes Avengers #1-3: Zac Gorman and Will Robson started up the GLA again, in Detroit, where there's a super-villain who is also a politician, using other villains to drive out residents and lower property values, so he can make a killing there with economic development stuff. I think that's what he's up to. It's not a bad book, but I'm still trying to figure out what it's going to be. Probably will depend on how they deal with this councilman villain.

Henchgirl #4-11: Kristen Gudsnuk had Mary given an evil serum, which made her into an fairly effective villain, even when she was trying to be good. This ultimately wrecked her life, and she stole a device to go back in time and improve her life with her knowledge of the future. That didn't work either. And the effort by her friends to develop an antidote inadvertently led to a sentient carrot army conquering the city.

High Point: Mary as evil was entertaining. She's mad dog killer type evil all the time, but she's indifferent enough to the suffering of others to be reckless and awful even when trying to be good. The addition of her sister and parents added some angles to the whole thing. Coco being continuously stymied in trying to relate her really long and boring tragic backstory.

Low Point: The sudden emergence of a carrot army was, well, not out of left field. Gudsnuk had been teasing the carrots for a while, but it still felt like an odd development with everything else.

Tomorrow a little of everything. A one-shot, an ongoing I didn't stick with, a couple of other things.