Deadpool’s Secret Secret Wars #1 Review
By Daniel Wood
I wasn’t reading comics when the first, original Secret Wars came out so I missed great things like Spider-Man getting his symbiote suit. I also missed realising that Secret Wars had criminally missed out one character, Deadpool! Luckily the creative team of Cullen Bunn, Matteo Lolli and Ruth Redmond have sought to rectify that immediately with a Deadpool-centric spin-off of the original Secret Wars.
From the offset we’re given a disjointed story that keeps moving backwards and forward’s throughout the narrative’s timeline. On the first page we see Captain America’s Shield and Thor’s Hammer in a ruinous battlefield and we see a battleworn Deadpool looking at a desecrated corpse. Then immediately after we go backwards in time to a half-double-page spread of all the original superheroes involved in Secret Wars introducing themselves, with Deadpool of course revealing that he was behind The Thing.
‘I’m just like Spider-Man but with guns and charm.’
Like I mentioned at the start I missed out on the original Secret Wars so I have no idea what clever references, what infamous callbacks or what smart homages Bunn, Lolli and Redmond have put into this comic. I imagine the two page shot of all of the heroes in their classic past outfits is lifted straight from the original series but anything like that will be sadly lost on me!
The next few pages of Deadpool trying to desperately make the heroes remember who he is, and trying to convince them that he’s a good guy are excellent, we get several panels of Deadpool briefly interacting with many different characters and his fast-paced frantic comedic dialogue is spot-on. Bunn seems to have a masterful sense of comic-(book)-timing that makes even an ‘anus’ joke ring home.
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Again, I’ve not really read a Deadpool comic before (I’m inexperienced when it comes to comics okay) but I really enjoyed the character and the zany antics and dialogue that he allows. When The Beyonder reveals what’s going on and Deadpool gets the length of a page to strike a triumphantly murderous pose, or when Deadpool is lamenting that he might have to slaughter some bad guys in self-defense are great moments in a comic packed full of them (for fans of Deadpool at least.)
The art is great and really helps to capture the retro vibe that a comic such as this needs to recreate. The two-page-spread of the battle between the good-guys and bad-guys with extra sprinkles of Deadpool is excellent. What’s particularly noticable and praise-worthy though is how the ‘Now’ narrative and ‘Days Earlier’ narrative are visually different, the ‘Days Earlier’ narrative showing Deadpool being a hero and defeating Kang The Conquerer is colourful, whilst the ‘Now’ narrative is shadowed, dark and bleak to match the fact that Deadpool doesn’t even tell jokes.
As for Spider-Man, he’s in the comic throughout pitching in with the odd line here and there, in the battle-scene he’s fighting not one, but two of his villains in Doctor Octopus and the Lizard. However my favourite Spider-Man related line was one of Deadpool’s where he says ‘I’m just like Spider-Man but with guns and charm.’ Perhaps that’s why I like him so much!
Next: Click here for all of our Spidey Secret Wars coverage so far