What I Bought 1/9/2020

I tried to pick up last week's books while I was visiting Alex. But the first store didn't have Deadpool, and the only copy of Black Cat was the ugly variant cover version. Like I give that much of a crap about Earth X (although I'm curious to read it someday, just to see what it's like). Then the second store had Deadpool, but not Black Cat. And I wasn't going back to the first store, so here we are.

Deadpool #2, by Kelly Thompson (writer), Chris Bachalo (penciler), Wayne Faucher, Livesay, Al Vey, Jamie Mendoza, Victor Olazaba, and Tim Townsend (inkers), David Curiel (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - I have no idea why Elsa and the tentacle monster are panted gold.

Wade's trying to shoot a video promoting how great Monster Island is, except some of the monsters keep eating people. Elsa Bloodstone's zeroing in on him with special bullets. Steve Rogers shows up asking Wade to lead the monsters somewhere else so no people get hurt. Because he doesn't care about the monsters.

Didn't I see this argument during Avengers vs. X-Men? And since I've mentioned that, time for the Public Service Announcement: Cyclops was wrong. Thank you.

(Look, someone has to push back against the surprising amount of pro-Cyclops propaganda and misinformation out here on the Internet.)

Also, Kraven (or his son? I dunno, Wade says that, but it sure looks like Original Recipe Kraven) has killed a dozen of Wade's subjects trying to lure him into a fight, but that hasn't worked, so he just attacks him directly. Which, surprisingly, does not end with Kraven being hacked to pieces. No, it's not because Squirrel Girl shows up with an inspiring speech about friendship and second (third, twenty-seventh) chances.

The Captain America cameo felt a little perfunctory, the obligatory Disapproving Authority Figure - I don't even know what his status is these days. Doesn't Tai-Neshi Coates have him as a fugitive right now? - Wade can stand up to and look good. Always fun. It is nice to see that Wade is, to a certain extent, taking the idea of protecting his subjects seriously. He's not doing a good job of it, constantly insulting his knights, letting Kraven kill a dozen people-monsters. But the commercial touting all the good things they have going on isn't a bad idea. He's trying, he's just not succeeding. It's a step up from "trying, but just burns everything to the ground" he normally manages. It's early days, though.

I still really like Wade's crown that he wears at a jaunty angle. Now he's got a scepter, and cape he attaches with an "X" buckle. Man I hope the X-Men don't come by griping about that. They probably will, they're dicks that way. There are some panels where I wonder what Bachalo's going for. The first page has one of the Snowman guy getting ready to eat Jeff the Land Shark, and it took me a minute to realize it was drawn so we were seeing the inside of the snowman's mouth from the side as he drops Jeff in there. It was this moment of, "OK, that's the shark, that's a limb, what the hell is going on here?" Those are few and far between, and Wade looks appropriately messed up under his mask (not in the same way he is on the cover, though).

I do wonder about the amount of white space he leaves on the pages. Almost every page, there's a significant amount that Bachalo is not using at all. I assume he has a reason, but I can't figure out what. If he's wanting to focus in on something specific - and the smaller panels typically are zoomed in - he could still do that, but enlarge the panel, right? Maybe it's about guiding the eye around the page.