When a Celestial shows up to vomit on New York City, who are you going to call? The Avengers? Not bloody likely.
Deadpool #3
Writer: Skottie Young
Artist: Nick Klein
Cover Artist: Nick Klein
Colorist: Nick Klein
Publisher: Marvel
What You Need to Know:
Did you not see the bit about the vomit?
What You’ll Find Out:
The issue opens with Deadpool flying through the sky just before the failure of his doom-weapon. The Inhumans, X-Men, and the Avengers are all on the streets, fighting the monsters which have emerged from the Celestial’s vomit. We get a recap of the events of the last issue. Deadpool fires the gun, it fails, and he is blasted from the sky in a giant mass of green goo.
The vomit smashes through a couple of buildings before crashing into a crater from which Deadpool emerges (with an iron pipe embedded in his chest) and he is instantly surrounded by a group of vomit-monster-clones.
Luckily, Negasonic Teenage Warhead is around and can, apparently, be persuaded to stop texting long enough to do her thing and nuke the life out of all of them.
Deadpool pries the pipe from his bowels and happens to notice that one of the disembodied monster-arms has landed on his weapon and activated it, so he thrusts his arm into the bloody limb and wears it like a glove in the hopes of finally blasting this guy out of the sky.
The gun is glowing, now, but Deadpool’s flying surfboard has been totaled, so he calls Colossus over and asks him to ‘Do that Wolverine butt-touchy throw trick you do.’
One Fastball Special later, and Deadpool is hurtling towards the air towards the Celestial. His ridiculously tiny gun grows exponentially as he approaches his target, becoming a Liefeldesque monstrosity that blasts the terrified, fish-eyed vomit-monster out of the sky in a great white flash.
Back on the ground, the mini-monsters begin exploding (intestines flying like confetti) and we find Deadpool standing (naked again) in a pile of giant ribs.
The Avengers gather round to congratulate him on his victory and insist that they aren’t, in fact, going to pay him, and Deadpool informs Negasonic that she’d better not be thinking about skipping work tomorrow because they’re going to be busy.
And they are. Deadpool’s interview on the news has drummed up a lot of businesses (there’s a nice little joke about the recent, failed attempt to replace to Mutants with Inhumans) but Deadpool isn’t around.
He’s on a spaceship, traveling to the Celestial’s home planet where he’s kept King Lokk waiting. Deadpool presents the king with a lot of money in an alien denomination and the king tells him that it was easy to convince the council to sacrifice Groffon the Regurger as a means of drumming up customers for Deadpool. Deadpool tries to haggle for a discount since the king failed to tell him how to use his weapon, but the king is tired of Wade’s nonsense and he teleports him back to his office.
Deadpool lands with a crash (he’s naked again, of course) and he arms himself with a couple of ridiculously huge guns before walking out to the waiting room and asking who wants to hire him first.
What Just Happened:
Well. There was a lot of vomit in this issue. There was so much vomit, in fact, that it could almost count as a character in and of itself. If this vomit were a person, it would be the kind of person who voluntarily hangs out with Deadpool: clinging, unpleasant, and of dubious personal hygiene.
It takes a lot of effort, both in terms of art and writing, to render vomit with such variety and depth.
In terms of characterization, Deadpool was who he is supposed to be: a morally-dubious two-dimensional, murderous madman absolutely lacking the desire or capacity for personal growth. This is a bit of a loss if you enjoyed his recent, misguided foray into marriage and attempted goodness, but it’s not a flaw. Comic books always seem to reset the story so that new readers can enjoy them.
As for the other characters, Negasonic got to save the day and be surly. She did a good job of exploding things. As always, it was interesting to see other characters through the lens of Wade’s reality. They act like themselves, as we know them from their own books, but they seem a little warped, their personalities blown up and lampooned for comedic effect. Tony Stark is, among other things, an impatient jerk. In Deadpool-land those become his only characteristics. Colossus came across as a well-meaning, muscle-bound doof. He isn’t of course, but that’s how Wade sees him and so, consequently, that’s how WE see him, too. It’s an interesting change, and it’s funny, but I don’t think that it would be quite so effective if the reader weren’t also familiar with the other books. In order for a warped reflection to work, you have to know what the true image is supposed to look like.
A lot of the jokes require a pretty wide grasp of the other events happening in the Marvel universe. If you (like me) are a shamelessly enormous nerd, then you’ll get a lot more joy from this series. If you’re a casual reader, well, there are a lot of jokes about puke and penises.
What more do you want when you’re reading a Deadpool book?
Rating: 8/10
Final Thought: A solid, slightly nauseating read. There are chunks in the vomit.