Tag Archives: Wade Wilson

May 28 2014

Deadpool Annual 2

Alternating Currents: Deadpool Annual 2, Drew and PatrickToday, Drew and Patrick are discussing Deadpool Annual 2, originally released May 21st, 2014

Drew: Humor — and especially jokes — are defined by our expectations. A set-up literally sets up a framework that the punchline carefully subverts. “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?” only makes sense if there was ever an expectation that the joke-teller was going to say “banana”. The point is, those expectations are absolutely crucial to the success of a joke, which makes a jokey comic book character like Deadpool a bit of an anomaly. He exists in a world filled with superpowered mutants, aliens, robots, and gods — it’s hard to have a concrete set of expectations when anything is possible, anyway. So, how do you keep Deadpool from disappearing up his own butt? With the Deadpool Annual 2, writer Christopher Hastings chooses to mine the expectations we have for Spider-Man, resulting in a substantive deconstruction of Spidey, but revealing little about Wade himself.

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May 20 2014

Deadpool 28

deadpool 28Today, Spencer and Scott are discussing Deadpool 28, originally released May 14th, 2014.

Spencer: Just the other day, Drew and a few of our readers took to the comments to discuss how difficult it can be to talk about our favorite titles, books that are so good that words sometimes just fail us. I felt that way in the days following my first reading of Brian Posehn, Gerry Duggan, and Scott Koblish’s Deadpool 28; this issue may not be as dark or emotional as some of the previous, but it succeeds at everything it sets out to do with such effortlessness that it practically leaves me speechless. Continue reading →

Apr 16 2014

Thunderbolts 24

thunderbolts 24Today, Spencer and Shelby are discussing Thunderbolts 24, originally released April 9th, 2014.

Spencer: It’s rough to start picking up a new comic in the middle of a storyline. If I can’t buy a book starting with issue one, I try to wait for a new storyline to begin, and I’m far from the only person with this strategy. Charles Soule wisely takes advantage of this in his and Paco Diaz’s Thunderbolts 24; while much of the issue is devoted to establishing the new storyline to come, there’s enough focus on the characters and team dynamic to make this the perfect first issue for any Thunderbolts-newbie. If you aren’t already picking this book up, now’s the time to give it a try! Continue reading →

Apr 10 2014

Deadpool 27

deadpool 27Today, Spencer and Patrick are discussing Deadpool 27, originally released April 9th, 2014.

Spencer: We all have that one friend whom we love dearly, but who’s clearly a huge jerk. What’s fascinating about having a friend like this is what happens when they fall in love and/or get married. It’s a strange thing to experience; there’s joy at seeing your friend happy, but there’s also a bizarre feeling of unease and dread. Can this last? Is it for the best? Should you warn their boyfriend/girlfriend about what they’re getting themselves into? (Pro-tip: Don’t do this). As sad as it is to say, there’s this odd feeling that maybe the whole thing is just a very bad idea. This is the situation Deadpool’s friends find themselves facing in Deadpool 27. Yes, Wade Wilson is getting married, and it’s exactly as strange as it sounds. Continue reading →

Apr 2 2014

Deadpool 26

Alternating Currents: Deadpool 26, Drew and Shelby

Today, Drew and Shelby are discussing Deadpool 26, originally released March 26th, 2014

Drew: Third-person omniscient perspective is perhaps the most common in all of storytelling, but it’s also the weirdest. That kind of birds-eye-view of a situation we’re otherwise not involved in is utterly unnatural, yet we almost never question it when we read it. Who is it that’s telling us this story? Why are they telling it? Sometimes these questions are addressed in-narrative, but more often than not, we’re meant to accept that our narrator is not a character at all, but some mysterious force that reveals this story to us just for the sake of it. This can get even more complicated in visual media, like comics and film, where the visual narrator can exist independent of the voiceover narration. Deadpool 26 takes gleeful advantage of that complexity, creating a comic that very explicitly feels like a comic, effectively challenging all of our notions as to what exactly that means.

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Mar 17 2014

Deadpool 25

deadpool 25

Today, Patrick and Greg are discussing Deadpool 25, originally released March 12th, 2014

Patrick: In high school, I did theatre. Like a lot. Acting, directing, writing, set building, lighting, sound, Vice President of the Drama Club — I was a damned theatre rat. It was great, I loved it and built my whole life and identity around it. But I was also kind of a jerk in high school. At the height of my jerkishness, the director of our theatre program told me that she used to think I was funny, until she realized I was just mean. Which is a harsh thing for a teacher to say to a child, but I’m sure I was asking for it. I was socially destructive, and alienated all of my friends in that world. It was the nuclear option: I had hurt too many people to stay in that circle. So I bailed — on my hometown, on theatre, on all of those people that used to be my friends. Was I acting out of self-preservation or was I protecting my friends from further exposure to my toxic attitude? Deadpool 25.NOW shows Wade’s world melting down around him in the most predictable way, as the Merc with the Mouth is unable to find peace in resolution. He too bails, and whether its a selfless or selfish act is heartbreakingly ambiguous. Continue reading →

Feb 13 2014

Deadpool 23

Alternating Currents: Deadpool 23, Drew and PatrickToday, Drew and Patrick are discussing Deadpool 23, originally released February 12th, 2014.

Drew: I like to think that I’m an open-minded guy when it comes to art, but I’m actually proud of the fact that I’ve never seen any of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer’s films. Frankly, the commercials alone embarrass me enough to scare me off. That’s not an embarrassment of prudishness — I can make dick jokes until the cows come home — but of intelligence: the grasping, desperately hackneyed pop culture references those movies are built on bring me closer to tears than laughter. Unfortunately, that brand of humor has dominated parody films over the past two decades, leaving only a few exceptions — like Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy — that even attempt to respect either the genre it’s sending up or the audience’s intelligence. Deadpool’s tendency to break the fourth wall has long made him the most likely source of parody in the Marvel universe, and that parody lived up the its potential for depth in the recent “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” arc. Unfortunately, this arc finds ‘pooly once again aiming for yuks in the cheapest ways possible. Continue reading →

Feb 4 2014

Thunderbolts 21

Alternating Currents: Thunderbolts 21, Drew and Shelby

Today, Drew and Shelby are discussing Thunderbolts 21, originally released January 29th, 2014.

Drew: Life is complicated. It’s an axiom that we’re all familiar with, but in a vacuum, our own lives are pretty simple: we have basic needs that must be met, and additional wants that we try to meet. It’s only when people, with their own conflicting needs and desires, start interacting that things get messy. That’s the stuff narratives are made of — a hero encounters some opposition to what he wants or needs — but what if the team itself is a source of opposition? What if your heroes can’t even decide what their wants and needs are? That’s when thing start to really resemble the complexities of life, and is exactly the kind of situation the team finds themselves in in Thunderbolts 21. Continue reading →

Jan 17 2014

Thunderbolts 20

thunderbolts 20

Today, Patrick and Ethan are discussing Thunderbolts 20, originally released January 15th, 2014.

Patrick: With issue 20, Thunderbolts enters All-New Marvel NOW! territory. Functionally, this means that this issue should serve as a good jumping-on point for new readers, and the cover broadcasts that in a variety of ways: note that the issue’s number is technically 20.NOW; there’s a second issue number in the upper right corner, declaring this “No Mercy #1”; the All-New Marvel Now logo is emblazoned along the bottom; and finally, the cover prominently features a character that’s not normally on the team. The contents of the issue follow suit, giving us another start to a delightfully self-contained adventure. With it’s one-job-for-you-one-job-for-me structure, Thunderbolts might be the series most perfectly suited for this periodic refreshing of the Marvel line. Continue reading →

Jan 13 2014

Deadpool 22

deadpool 22Today, Greg and Drew are discussing Deadpool 22, originally released January 8th, 2014.

Greg: I was first introduced to the Austin Powers franchise as a kid, and immediately gravitated towards the big, broad aspects of the comedy. The accent, the teeth, the catchphrases, the physical set pieces — this is the kind of stuff that absolutely slayed 9-year-old Greg (who am I kidding, this scene will always work for me). On a recent rewatch, however, I noticed one joke that whooshed right over my head. The name of Powers’ secret agent boss is Basil Exposition, and his purpose in the film is to, well, spout exposition, the bits of narrative business necessary to understand what is technically happening in a plot. It’s a fun bit of satirical lampshade hanging, yet it nevertheless serves its actual purpose — get all the boring stuff out of the way to leave plenty of room for fun. Deadpool 22 has the unfortunate task of dealing with this, yet executes it rather gracefully.
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