Undeadpool #3: The Sirens of Saint Louis

Undeadpool’s third and final issue brings one of the wildest Deadpool stories in recent memory to an end, even in a year where he’s teamed up with Batman from DC. The characterization of Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool, over these three issues has been a delight for longtime DP fans. Tim Seeley even mixed in a little something for the Cable fans out there in last month’s issue and again in this month’s issue, as seen in the official cover art.

So far the story has been mostly a mentor-meets-student storyline with a few short detours involving accidental murder and the usual Deadpool hijinks. The storyline’s North Star, that is, its end goal and its throughline, has been the same from the end of the very first issue: to reach Saint Louis and deliver Fearless to the X-Men. Positioning Wade as a bad mentor and guardian because of his proclivity to lose control and consume other mutants is a significant upgrade to the usual “he’s just not a good fit” plot device that we have seen ad nauseam for years now.

But how does this story fit in the overarching Age of Revelation storyline? Well, as we saw in issue #2, where Tim Seeley showed us that even the land twists and writhes under Revelation’s tyrannical regime. No one, not even in a story where he is entirely absent, can escape Revelation in his age. Deadpool is characterized, like he has been many times in the past, by his failures. Now in Revelation’s totally-not-a-fake timeline, Deadpool’s failures revolve around the maddest mutant since the apocalypse. This creates and drives Deadpool’s emotional core, including his desire to protect and guide Fearless on the road to their destination.

The artwork by Carlos Magno is brutal and violent in the way that both Deadpool has always been and how the Age of Revelation has become under Revelation’s cruelty. The fight scenes are the real highlight here, Deadpool’s regenerating body as he continues to take hits to other parts of himself while at the same time dishing out damage is one of the best action styles I have seen all year. It deviates from the usual Marvel formula by using chaos as a device for surprise twists in the middle of combat  rather than as a way to end the fights to keep characters alive for future titles.

If I had one enduring critique of this series, it would be a lack of any reason to care for the character of Fearless. As an undoable future state, any character introduced in the Age of Revelation is a hard sell to fans since they know these characters are only temporary. This same issue plagues Undeadpool’s second main character. The reader is given reasons to have empathy for her across all three issues, but there’s no thread or element that justifies investing emotionally in her character when she has a lingering shelf life that begins with the first and ends with the last issue of Undeadpool.

All of that being said, Undeadpool issues #1-3 tell one of the best Age of Revelation stories that is accessible to readers even if they don’t want to collect the tremendous amount of stories in this event.