Deadpool #16 - Is Cyke giving Deadpool the respect knuckles on that cover? Nah, the expression on his face is too sour for that.Deadpool asks to join the X-Men. Cyclops flatly rejects him, because Cyclops is a complete asshole. Dagger - Dagger! I knew she had more going for her than just being created by Bill Mantlo - points out the X-Men are being hypocrites, what with the probably dozens of criminals they've let join (and you are going to help me compile that list, because it'll be cathartic, for me anyway), and so he sends Domino to talk to Deadpool. OK, they've worked together, that might work. They've also tried to kill each other, so it might not. Fortunately, Deadpool is in a pancake kind of a mood, so they actually chat pleasantly, until Deadpool tells her he's going to solve a problem for the X-Men.
One of their junior members has a father going public with the fact he can't contact his daughter. Or so he says, what with Osborn having kept his company from falling into ruin. The X-Men plan to handle this in court, since Warren Worthington is rich, and has good lawyers. Deadpool has decided he'll prove himself to them by solving the problem more directly, meaning he will kill the complaining parent.
Well, it ought to at least earn him a spot on Cyclops' Stabbity Kill Team. Paco Medina's Deadpool looked different somehow this issue. less scabby, more wrinkled, like he's channeling a "Ma Gnucci as drawn by Steve Dillon". It's fine, just odd. The rest of the art is OK, though it's mostly talking heads. I think he draws Domino a little too endowed. Maybe it would help if she zipped her jacket up the rest of the way.
GrimJack: Manx Cat #3 - Gaunt gets the Cat back from Lil, and she's glad to see it go. Now Gaunt's not so sure he should return it, both because the Cat's working its magic on him, and because he doesn't know who wants it, and why. He meets with the Tourbot user from last issue, kicks their butt and goes looking for Goethe, who he finds at a strip bar for furry enthusiasts, and because this is Cynosure, the ladies are actual anthropomorphic animals. That sentence is going to attract all sorts of the wrong readers here. Goethe brings him to the people he serves as middleman for, the Sleepless Monks, who claim they watch over the Cat, to protect the world. To prove it, they send Gaunt's spirit back in time, to find St. John of Knives, and learn the truth.So the weirdness ratchets up a notch this issue, in both good ways (the Sleepless Monks), and bad (the aforementioned bar). Gaunt's still being abrasive, but there's something encouraging about the fact he won't simply hand over the Cat without understanding why they want it. he recognizes its power, and he's careful enough to keep it out of dangerous hands. Truman's work is mostly excellent, though there are a few pages I feel he leaves too much blank space, and others where his work looks uninked, mostly closeups of Gaunt's face.
Also, Ostrander introduces the idea of the "Kucinich Ring". It does not make things invisible, rather it makes them be viewed as inconsequential. Ouch, that's a cold burn, but it made me laugh.
The Phantom: Generations #5 - I was supposed to get X-Men vs. Agents of Atlas #1, but I guess Jack got the orders mixed and sent this instead. What the heck, it's here, let's read it. There's a nice recap page, that tells us this Phantom has married a former Pirate Queen, and they've sailed her ship to the Mediterranean to fight Barbary Slavers. One particular slaver manages to escape, and the Phantom chases him to England, and ends up having to hunt him through Sherwood Forest, with the added difficulty that some rich elderly fellow had a bunch of exotic animals with him, which the now insane ex-slaver pirate released. So there are leopards and stuff running around the woods. Phantom triumphs, learns shocking secret about the pirate, takes nonlethal steps to deal with him, he and his pirate lady love return home, the end.
I suppose this is a prose work, like that issue of Batman Morrison did. There's a page of text, and on the facing page, a single-full page illustration of some part of what the text describes. It works fine for me, no complaints whatsoever. Enrique Alcatena is the artist, and it reminds me of some of Russ Heath's work on issues of Immortal Iron Fist, but better. The colors are vivid, the linework is more solid, and the detail in the pictures is quite good. He does an especially good job of both drawing the Phantom as a stoic figure (though he's most shadowy and mysterious looking when not wearing his usual costume), and making Teratos Birch (the pirate) look progressively more nuts. His face grows redder, wilder, more lined as the story progresses. So the comic was a pleasant surprise. There's even a recap page which tells you everything you'd really need to know for this story.
Shang-Chi: Master of Kung-Fu #1 - I think everyone else on the Internet has already discussed this comic, but it's here, I'm here, let's proceed. We have Shang-Chi dueling Deadpool in a desert bike race of death, Shang-Chi battling the son of some schmuck he killed years ago in what I'm guessing is a homage to Hong Kong martial arts flicks, complete with subtitles beneath each panel, and a story where Shang battles and old friend (and foe) looking for who he is. Then there's a text piece where Shang describes the process of mastering martial arts.So a little bit of everything. Hickman and Chamberlain's bike race story seems more about crazy ideas than Shang-Chi in any real sense, which is fine, I suppose. I like Deadpool. I like crazy ideas, but Shang felt like a sidekick in the story. Maybe given more pages Hickman could have made it a "buddy" story, which could have been interesting. Benson and Coker's revenge story seemed to be about style, making it like a movie. I didn't mind having to read the translations below each panel, but I don't mind subtitles, and I'm a fast reader, so it doesn't disrupt the flow of the panels that much for me. Charlie Huston and Enrique Romero's story seemed like the one that would be most similar to what you'd have found in one of these comics back in the '70s, but that's coming from someone with no familiarity with that material.
I feel like the stories don't really give us too much insight into Shang-Chi. Benson's does to a certain extent, in that it shows us something about the life Shang has chosen to live given his past actions, and Huston's could have been about how Midnight sees Shang, except Midnight can't really remember how he sees Shang, so it's more about Midnight's frustration with his loss of memory. It wasn't a bad comic, but I was disappointed. Maybe there wasn't enough kicking.
And that's the last two weeks! Expect the next set of reviews in, oh, two or three weeks.
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