Tag Archives: Cable

Nov 1 2018

Extermination 4: Discussion

by Drew Baumgartner and Spencer Irwin

Extermination 4

This article containers SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

There’s no time to explain!

Evasive Characters, Traditional

Drew: There comes a point in any mystery where the effort of maintaining the secret is obviously more trouble for the characters than simply admitting the truth. Writers may delay the inevitable by interrupting much-needed explanations, or adding some urgency that makes such explanations impossible, but inevitably, just taking a moment to put everyone on the same page is better for everyone. That is, “There’s no time to explain,” almost invariably causes more confusion and delays, taking more time than actually explaining what’s going on, and any character who is truly concerned about time would recognize that. Case in point: young Cable’s cause, when he finally gets around to explaining it in Extermination 4, is so compelling that virtually everyone who hears it is immediately on board with his plan. It would have saved him a ton of time sneaking around and fighting if he had any confidence in the necessity and righteousness of his mission. Fortunately, writer Ed Brisson has written in a remarkably effective explanation for young Cable’s illogical behavior: he’s a teenager. Continue reading →

Sep 27 2018

Feature Panels Orient the Action in Extermination 3

by Drew Baumgartner

Extermination 3

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Tony Zhou’s Every Frame A Painting channel might just be my favorite outlet for analysis of visual media. Zhou tends to frame his videos very narrowly — such as the “How to do Visual Comedy” video excerpted above — but the lessons can be applied much more broadly. Which is my half-explanation for why I chose that particular video to kick off my analysis of Extermination 3 — not because this issue has anything to do with visual comedy, but because artist Pepe Larraz does such a brilliant job inventively eschewing lazy visual conventions. Continue reading →

Jun 13 2018

Good vs. Evil in Astonishing X-Men 12

by Patrick Ehlers

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

“Good vs Evil” implies that there are two sides — two warring factions — battling for the fate of the world. It’s a compelling image: a battlefield with good guys on one side and bad guys on the other. Good and evil are separate forces, and in our imaginations, represented by two different groups of people. While Charles Soule and Gerardo Sandoval’s Astonishing X-Men 12 still gives the reader avatars of light and darkness in the forms of X and The Night King, the armies fighting for each side are made up of all the same players. Old Man Logan is both a reformed ally-murderer and an irredeemable death machine; good and evil waging war within one mind. Continue reading →

Jan 4 2018

Phoenix Resurrection: The Return of Jean Grey 2

by Drew Baumgartner

Phoenix Resurrection 2

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Does anyone remember the “flash sideways” device from LOST‘s final season? The show mined a lot of fun out of the mystery of just what the heck that other world was — a parallel universe? a new timeline? purgatory? — but I never really found the guessing all that fun, as the magical/metaphysical nature of that particular mystery meant that any and all of those things could be equally right. I tend to feel that way about most mysteries that delight in building up red herrings to look as likely as the ultimate answer (perfectly demonstrated in Clue‘s multiple endings; the culprit can only be found by the movie telling us whodunnit, not through any deductive work on our own), but it’s particularly pronounced in stories with a fantasy or sci-fi element that might defy our own experience of the world. That is, if we’re operating in a world with a magical island, is it possible to rule out even the most absurd theory? These are the thoughts running through my head as I read Phoenix Resurrection 2. Continue reading →

Dec 29 2017

Spoofy Action in Despicable Deadpool 291

by Taylor Anderson

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

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If you haven’t seen Edgar Wright’s supremely funny Hot Fuzz, I heartily recommend renting it and making tonight a viewing party. The movie is predictably funny because Simon Pegg is a comic genius, true, but what always makes me laugh is the way Wright directs action scenes. He clearly has an ironic fondness for silly action movies (think Michael Bey) and that is made clear in the way he so cleverly spoofs typical action movie tropes. My favorite of these is when Simon Pegg and Nick Frost leap into a room guns-blazing and seem to be falling and shooting for an endless amount of time. This scene so well captures and lovingly makes fun of action movies in a clever way that is also present in Despicable Deadpool 291.  Continue reading →

Dec 14 2017

An Odd but Lovable Couple in Despicable Deadpool 290

by Taylor Anderson

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

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Odd couples are almost always a great recipe for entertainment, if done right. For example, Independence Day‘s odd couple of Captain Steven Hiller and David Levinson (played by Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum respectively) is so dynamic that it can carry a movie that is otherwise too dumb to succeed (or is that the point?). The same point can be made about the recent arc in Despicable Deadpool, which features the unlikely partnership between Deadpool and Cable. While it was fun to see these two beat the shit out of each other for a couple issues, it’s even more fun to see them work together as an odd couple in issue 290. Continue reading →

Nov 9 2017

Time Travel Mulligans in Despicable Deadpool 288

by Taylor Anderson

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

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Everyone knows there are paradoxes when it comes to time travel, but the very idea of time travel in a story comes with its own set of paradoxes as well. Chief among these paradoxes is the fact that any story being told is somewhat meaningless. Why? Well, if characters have the ability to time travel then they probably have the ability to go back in time and alter the story line they just took part in. This is the case in Despicable Deadpool 288 where all sorts of crazy shit happens, but none of it may matter at all. Continue reading →

Oct 31 2017

Violence Can be Funny in Despicable Deadpool 288

by Taylor Anderson

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

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Deadpool has always had an interesting relationship with violence. Its titular hero is one of the more bloody characters in the Marvel pantheon, yet he’s also one of the funniest. This means that at the same he’s committing atrocities, Wade Wilson is also cracking jokes. This relationship is easier to write than it is to draw. After all, how are you supposed to draw someone being killed and have it be funny? Scott Koblish seems to have figured that out, turning a bloody issue into one that somehow retains its humor in spite of (if not because) of its violence. Continue reading →

Oct 20 2017

Deadpool vs. Old Man Logan 1: Discussion

by Michael DeLaney and Spencer Irwin

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

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Michael: A common criticism of a piece of fiction is “nothing really happened.” The meaning of that blanket statement can vary depending on who the critic is and more specifically what they’re expecting. A great example of this is the Season 3 Breaking Bad episode “The Fly.” Critics praised the bottle episode as a brilliant character study while it left many audiences unimpressed with the fact that “nothing really happened.” While I try to appreciate the deeper meaning of a piece of work, I must say that in Deadpool vs. Old Man Logan 1…nothing really happens. Continue reading →

Oct 13 2017

Despicable Deadpool 287: Discussion

by Patrick Ehlers & Taylor Anderson

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

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Patrick: There’s a principle in screenwriting called “save the cat.” That phrase refers to the act of unambiguous good a character needs to perform in order to win the audience’s sympathy. To use the idiom’s namesake as an example, as long as our hero has rescued a cat from a tree branch, any other morally dubious behavior can be forgiven. One shred of evidence that he’s a good guy is enough to trick our brains into believing that he must actually be good. This may sound like kind of a hack technique, but writers use it all the time, particularly since the rise of antiheroes. Our boy Wade Wilson gets them all the time — the audience can recoil at 95% of his actions, just so long as he protects a kid, helps and old lady, or saves a cat. Despicable Deadpool 287 throws that convention out the fucking window. This isn’t the hero Deadpool, this is the cut-throat, single-minded, merciless merc with the mouth. Continue reading →