Kidpool & Spider-Boy #1 – Love At First Fight

When I was a young reader first getting into comics, there was nothing more appealing to me than the characters of Spider-Man and Deadpool. One was the coolest, most relatable guy in the world, and the other was the absolute beacon for adult maturity that a nine-year-old raised in the age of memes could possibly have. Since my time, the character of Deadpool has not only grown a bit more tame from my days of getting into the character with Daniel Way’s run but has also become less endearing, his antics growing vanilla and annoying in the absence of his initial edginess as a sad clown figure.

Thus, enter this one-shot. Kidpool & Spider-Boy #1 is a return to form in both the appeal of a character archetype like Deadpool’s and the true appeal of an “all-ages” comic book. It doesn’t talk down to its audience or shy away from the genre’s goofier capabilities. Everything in this book is played completely straight without any real sense of self-deprecation, the humor spiraling out of the hijinks Spider-Boy has gotten himself caught up in naturally as a result of Kidpool’s presence.

Kidpool themselves is much more endearing with their incessant humor due to the fact that they are a kid. There’s a lot of genuinely laugh-out-loud humor that comes from them being an absolutely broken child who’s navigating a crazy world with an even crazier outlook, bouncing off Bailey’s straight-man mindset as though these two were always meant to torment each other in the exact same vein as Spider-Man and Deadpool have in the past. Their dynamic, and the way the two wear one another’s respective codes down, is a ton of fun.

The issue is always moving at a good pace that keeps certain bits from overstaying their welcome while leaving enough room to pepper in a good amount of more decompressed, character-building moments of dialogue. Everyone who appears in this book gets a great superhero moments as well, the issue reading quite well for a singular package.

The villains in this book are absolutely bonkers. Yost does a good job of tying them into the central conflict between the title characters without making them an all-consuming presence in the story. Their bit is too good to spoil, but know that it’s the kind of thing you’d only ever find in a comic like this that believes in its craziness so confidently.

The humor and character dynamics are at the forefront of this story and reaffirmed often, not just in the writing but in the art as well, which is shockingly consistent for a book with three different credited pencilers, two of whom inked their own work. It’s hard to really see when the art in this issue changes, the team working well together here to blend their respective styles into one complete vision, with a great amount of visual comedy beats from everyone on art duties.