What I Bought 12/18/2020 - Part 2

I will never understand sports fans bemoaning their team winning because it hurts their draft position. In this case, Jets' fans being angry they actually won a game. If your team is so incompetent they can't win a single game, why would you have any hope a high draft pick is going to improve anything? The idiots that built the shitty team are still there, so either they'll pick the wrong player, or coach, or fail to put good players around him. I never root for my team to lose. Take any win you can get.

Deadpool #9, by Kelly Thompson (writer), Gerardo Sandoval (penciler), Victor Nava (inker), Chris Sotomayor (color artist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - Well, it's not Wade's first relationship with someone who sucks the life out of him.

Wade's fighting the Bone creatures with the added power of the Bloodstone. But the infection in it is killing him, and it lets the Queen read his mind. You'd think that would be enough to incapacitate her right there, but no. Elsa's getting the kids and Jeff (who loves getting to carry a knife in his mouth and stab things, apparently) to safety, but can't quite bring herself to abandon Wade, who has let the Queen eat him. Then he blows himself up from the inside. And because he's dead, the Queen's infection is somehow burned out of the Bloodstone? So Elsa can put it back in her hand and fry the Queen. 

Despite being just a head, Wade is not dead, and says he still wants an apology from her. When Elsa points out her forgave her already, Wade counters she was dying at that time, of course he said that. Now that she's not, and he blew himself up to save her, he wants another apology. Instead, Elsa threatens to leave him there, but ultimately carries him in a baby bjorn. Which means he gets to rest next to her chest. I'd say getting to second base is as good an apology as he's likely to get.

And unfortunately, we don't get to see monster softball next issue because they have to do King in Black tie-ins. Or as the preview of next issue's cover describes it, 'Venom Nonsense.' Boo, boooooooooo.

 

So, that happened. It was OK. It makes me wonder if Elsa couldn't simply have pried the Bloodstone out of her hand and let it sit for a while to get rid of the infection. If the infection was in the stone, and using it infects the person, but taking it away removes the infection, like it did with Elsa, then that would seem like the obvious answer. I guess you could argue Elsa is too attached to it to surrender it willingly, since it's part of her legacy, and I'm not sure what Elsa's got in her life if she isn't killing monsters with the power of an ancient rock.

I'm really more interested by Deadpool trying to run a nation. Hard to see when we're going to get much of that, unless we see him rallying his people to fight symbiotes. Not that I want a lot of minutiae on bureaucracy, but just watching him try to be a leader. He's probably bad at it, but he can care deeply about people, and he'll go to the wall for them, which aren't the worst qualities to have. Certainly better than most of the elected officials here in the United States. 

(Really, could Deadpool be any worse at diplomacy than Trump? I guess if you consider killing foreign dictators bad, then yes, possibly.)

Taskmaster #2, by Jed MacKay (writer), Alessandro Vitti (artist), Guru-eFX (colorist), Joe Sabino (letterer) - It's fine, I'm sure Taskmaster has copied how to do the superhero landing if Hyperion lets go.

Taskmaster goes to Coulson's favorite comic shop to copy his kinesics, but is uncovered by his love for Alpha Flight. He tries to bail, but Hyperion shows up, and Taskmaster trying to fight him goes about as well as you'd expect. Fortunately, Fury had himself some Krypto- sorry, Argonite, and Tasky attached it to a Boomerang arrow for the win. Kind of disappointed he didn't go ahead and slit Hyperion's throat. There's like 47 of them running around. Instead of the Captain Britain Corps, the Hyperion Corps. Anyway, that's one of the three down, but Black Widow found Fury's hidey-hole, so she knows who they're after. Oh no, that'd be really concerning if I wasn't still convinced this was all a trick to get Taskmaster to do their dirty work.

Fury and Taskmaster keep calling Coulson "Cheese". Like "Phil"ly Cheese slices? I don't know. Nobody explains it, and honestly, it doesn't matter, it was just weird. I was just grateful Taskmaster is apparently the one person who doesn't like Phil Coulson, and was happy to punch him in the face a couple of times. I knew there had to be someone. (Yeah, Deadpool killed Coulson, but that wasn't personal, he just figured Captain America had good reasons.)

 

I still think Vitti's artwork is a little too busy, too overdone. Too many little lines, everybody's way too muscular. Like, even Coulson looks kind of jacked, and Taskmaster's practically got Thor arms, which is a little much. I guess since this is supposed to be a sneaky spy thing, so people need to look squinty and weathered, but I feel like maybe don't apply that to Hyperion, who is probably supposed to act like your stereotypical superhero. If he wasn't, he'd had just punched Tasky's head off with the first swing, instead of holding back enough he still hadn't knocked him out after multiple punches. So let him look different.

So, did I like this enough to get issue 3? I don't know. I'm kind of debating skipping Deadpool's King in Black tie-ins at the moment, let alone whether I care enough to watch Taskmaster fight the White Fox. If either book had an artist I liked better, it would be an easier decision, but they don't.