Marvel Round-Up: Comics Released 5/31/17

We try to stay up on what’s going on at Marvel, but we can’t always dig deep into every issue. The solution? Our weekly round-up of titles coming out of Marvel Comics. Today, we’re discussing Deadpool 31Hulk 6Moon Knight 14, and The Unbelievable Gwenpool 16. Also, we discussed Secret Empire 3 on Thursday and will be discussing Doctor Strange 21 on Monday, and Captain America: Sam Wilson 22 on Tuesday, so come back for those! As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

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Marvel Round-Up: Comics Released 2/15/17

marvel-roundup70We try to stay up on what’s going on at Marvel, but we can’t always dig deep into every issue. The solution? Our weekly round-up of titles coming out of Marvel Comics. Today, we’re discussing Captain America: Sam Wilson 19, Captain America: Steve Rogers 11, Clone Conspiracy 5, Deadpool 27, Doctor Strange 17, Invincible Iron Man 4, Old Man Logan 18, Patsy Walker A.K.A. Hellcat 15, Silk 17, and Uncanny Inhumans 19. Also, we discussed The Ultimates 2 4 on Thursday, and will be discussing The Mighty Thor 16 on Tuesday and Daredevil 17 on Wednesday, so come back for those! As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

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Marvel Round-Up: Comics Released 2/1/17

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We try to stay up on what’s going on at Marvel, but we can’t always dig deep into every issue. The solution? Our weekly round-up of titles coming out of Marvel Comics. Today, we’re discussing All-New X-Men 18, Deadpool 26, Moon Knight 11, Old Man Logan 17, Unbelievable Gwenpool 1 and Unstoppable Wasp 2. We discussed Hawkeye 3 on Thursday, so check that out. Also, we will be discussing Nova 3 on Tuesday and Karnak 6 Wednesdayso come back for those! As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

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Deadpool 25

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Today, Patrick and Taylor are discussing Deadpool 25, originally released January 25, 2017. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

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Patrick: Do you ever worry about what kind of legacy you’re going to leave behind? If you have kids, will they carry on values? Or maybe just your faults? If you don’t have kids — as I do not — how do you hope to leave a lasting impact on the generations to follow? Is that even a priority for you? Or can the opposite be true, and we wish to slide into and out of your time on Earth without effecting anything? It’s all impossible to control, each human being a tributary fed by thousands of influential rivers. In Deadpool 25, Gerry Duggan and Scott Koblish plumb the depths of Deadpool’s legacy through a dueling pair of inheritors – his daughters. It’s a hard look downstream, hoping for the best, but ultimately resigned to the fact that betterment is slow, painful and costly.

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Deadpool 24

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Today, Spencer and Patrick are discussing Deadpool 24, originally released January 11th, 2017. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

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Spencer: What lengths would you go to to save your family? What sacrifices and compromises would you be willing to make? That’s a question we quite often ask of our heroes (comic book or otherwise), but that question usually implies that a character has some sort of ethics, values, or morals they’d have to struggle about breaking or abandoning in the first place. Deadpool doesn’t really have any of those things, though; what he has to give up to save his family is something far different, but just as important to him. Continue reading

Best of 2016: Best Issues

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Episodic storytelling is the name of the game in monthly comics. Month- or even multi-year-long arcs are fine, but a series lives and dies by its individual chapters. From self-contained one-offs to issues that recontextualize their respective series, this year had a ton of great issues. Whittling down those issues to a list was no easy task (and we look forward to hearing how your lists differ in the comments), but we would gladly recommend any (and all) of these issues without hesitation. These are our top 10 issues of 2016. Continue reading

Deadpool 21

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Today, Taylor and Patrick are discussing Deadpool 21, originally released October 26th, 2016. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

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Taylor: The Music Box Theater in Chicago has an ongoing series of film showings called “Is It Still Funny?” The premise of the event is that viewers go and watch an older comedy film and then listen to a discussion that begs the questions “is this film even funny anymore?” It’s an interesting idea and I think it works because unlike other genres, comedy tends to not age well. There’s a slew of reasons for that and here is not really the place to get into it, but the question is interesting when applied to a character like Deadpool. At what point do all of his antics fail to amuse and humor? More importantly, at what point do they begin to put innocent lives in danger?

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Deadpool Annual 1

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Today, Taylor and Drew are discussing Deadpool Annual 1, originally released September 28th, 2016. As always, this article contains SPOILERS.

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Taylor: As a kid, I was a cartoon addict. I would wake up at 6:00 am every day for the sole purpose of watching cartoons for an hour before school. Needless to say, Saturday morning cartoons were like manna from heaven for me. Being young, I watched these cartoon shows for hours on end indiscriminately. In retrospect, much of the shows I watched were truly awful, sporting low production values and shoddy writing at the best of times. Still, I fondly remember these cartoons, and I’m willing to bet most children of the ’80s look back on these cartoons through a rosy lens like myself. In the Deadpool Annual, writers Gerry Duggan and Brian Posehn take a look back at these shows and wonder what would happen if the Merc with the Mouth had gotten his own crack at Saturday morning.

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Deadpool 13

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Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing Deadpool 13, originally released June 1, 2016 

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Patrick: Hey, do you think we’re too comfortable with Deadpool? We know he’s a bastard that plays fast and loose with the value of human life, but there’s a jeu de vivre to the character that makes him immanently lovable. But what do readers and fans stand to gain from looking past Wade’s uglier qualities? He’s supposed to be chaotic, he’s supposed to be subversive — those are the Deadpool qualities that we celebrate. But readers sorta need to employ their own fan-canon in order to reconcile that chaos, with the often-adorable, infinitely accepting, ultimately heroic Deadpool we have in our minds. It’s that second version of Deadpool that writer Gerry Duggan has tapped for the better part of the last three years to build up Deadpool’s cast of friends, employees and even family. Recent issues have seen those relationships strained, or even destroyed, leaving Wade Wilson to be reflected upon and defined by people outside his inner circle in issue 13. Cleverly, issue 13 is also kind of an issue of Daredevil and kind of an issue of Power Man & Iron Fist, meaning the opinions we’re getting aren’t just from characters outside of Deadpool, but creators outside of Deadpool. The consensus? Wade Wilson kinda sucks.

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Deadpool 8

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Today, Patrick and Taylor are discussing Deadpool 8, originally released March 2, 2016 

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Patrick: Every couple years, Drew and I end up having a conversation about the “death of irony” or the “death of sincerity” and every time we have it, we’re basically blowing smoke out our asses. Concepts like “irony” and “sincerity” need not be mutually exclusive – in fact that’s where most genre fiction rest: comfortably in both camps. A superhero comic in 2016 wears the trappings of a superhero comic because its creators and its audience simultaneously love and are bored by those trappings. That puts a character like Deadpool in a tricky spot, when it seems like his mission statement is to subvert what is gradually becoming the insubvertible. Deadpool’s popularity almost works against him in this regard – how can you continue to classify him as a misfit underdog if everyone loves him? And then there’s the wildly successful Deadpool film, catapulting audiences acceptance of the Merc with the Mouth to meteoric heights. Writer Gerry Duggan and editor Jordan D. White act as Deadpool’s tonal shepherds in this series, keeping the character’s aims purely subversive, the key difference is that the subject they’re subverting is no longer as broad as “comics” or “superheroes” or “the 90s” – the subject is Deadpool.

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