Well by “official” I mean I’m declaring it. But how can I NOT declare it given all the evidence? A slow and steady tidal wave of Deadpool love has been churning in the collective underbelly ever since The Marvel Civil War.
As loyal readers know Deadpool has had books come and go since the 90′s and during the civil war thing they basically took him and a BUNCH of B-list characters and said “look if we can’t get these characters off the ground we’re throwing them out (or we’ll try again with the Skrull Invasion, or Dark Reign).” But low and behold Deadpool finally “took.” I mean even with they had Gail Simone trying to build her resume on the DP clone “Agent X” they couldn’t sell the comedy to the loyal fans. But in this age of angry politics, 2 wars, everybody broke-comedy works!
You may have noticed that Marvel and DC booth have been trying on this new Grimmer than Grim hat now for a couple of years. But Marvel has Also been trying to slip you the comedy in the form of Marvel Zombies (ripped off by DC and called Blackest Night) and the Pet Avengers. But the reigning clown prince has been Deadpool (who now has HIS own spin-off called Hit Monkey. Oh right I almost forget to mention who USED to be the clown prince; Spider-Man. But somebody had the bright idea to remove ALL the humor from his story line, re-boot it, give it multiple writers and artists and basically just see if anything stuck to the wall. It’s hell. I read it, but I kinda hate it. Y’know?
So what’s with all these word things!?? Let’s get to the digitally scanned proof! As you can see, by the sheer number of variant covers that came out in the last month that DP is a player. And by the way, this doesn’t include his THREE series currently running.
Man, Obama’s influence is being felt everywhere these days and seeing this artwork of Wolverine and Spider-Man do a classic fistbump is definitely something we wouldn’t have seen during the Bush years. So as they say, “previously in Spider-Man…” all hell has broken loose. Spidey managed to put fist to face on Norman Osborn. Norman has become the de facto ruler of America-yes even Obama-seemingly.
But this state of affairs is driving Spider-Man crazy because Norman isn’t satisfied with just running things, he also wants to run his son’s Harry’s life. Spidey is now on the fence about how far he should take things. Another beating or something more serious. So he has a heart to heart with Wolverine. Who recommends a permanent solution. And it actually seems like a viable option…
It’s been an interesting year over at Marvel. About 12 months ago they let writer Brubaker kill off Captain America, and the aftermath of that has been “Dark Reign.” Which immediately followed “Skrull Invasion” which came right on the heels of “Civil War.” Hahahahahah. If you don’t read Marvel comics that must all seem like a bunch of words that have ZERO meaning to you, but trust me all it means is “interesting story lines.” It’s really not that much different that TV shows these days. Marvel (and DC) picks a theme or premise and has basically all (or most of) their comics touch on the topic. And it’s only these last few years that this sort of loose format has become a solid working model. And I guess I like it, the only downfall is these sort of all encompassing themes can really mess up a comic series you like if the theme takes things in a direction you DON’T like. Then, as a reader, you’re screwed. So look for more weird artistic depictions. We may even see The Thing playing basketball…
