Marvel Pick Of The Week – July 6, 2016
By Matt Conner
Pick Of The Week goes to Deadpool’s newest Infinite comic, which sounds dubious until you realize this is Marvel’s homage to Clue.
Spoilers ahead!
Pick Of The Week: Deadpool: Too Soon? Infinite Comic #1, by Joshua Corin, Reilly Brown, and Todd Nauck
It may be time to stop telling myself I hate Deadpool comics. For the last few years, the attempts to combine comedy with gruesome murder has rubbed me the wrong way, and though I’ve bought the first issue whenever his book relaunches, I’ve never enjoyed the humor the creative teams have tried. But last month, I was wowed by the creativity and intelligence of the crossover issue with Daredevil and Power Man And Iron Fist. The next week, his tie-in to Civil War II charmed me. And this month, Deadpool has invited some of my favorite Marvel characters over to reenact one of my favorite movies of all time, and he’s winning me over again.
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In this Infinite Comic (a digital comic that uses the panels to create a sort of animation), Deadpool invites over the most popular humor characters in Marvel (plus The Punisher) to a creepy mansion. One by one, he reveals that Squirrel Girl, Spider-Ham, The Punisher, Rocket Raccoon, Groot, Ant-Man, Howard The Duck, and Forbush Man have been blackmailed. He and his wife Shiklah get a kick out of playing Wadsworth, and they finally promise to stop the extortion if everyone would just take a group photo for the annual Christmas card. Unfortunately, by the time the flash bulb goes off, one of the group has been decapitated, and the poor souls in the Study have a mystery afoot.
Just like with last month’s books, Deadpool works best when he’s part of a team. His lunacy is grating when that’s having to sustain a full issue, but when he’s next to more serious characters, his jokes have been landing at a Peter Parker rate, and he’s been able to pull depth out of his costars. The blackmail reveals were well done, like how Forbush Man has been caught embezzling replacement soup-pot helmets from his job at Bed, Bath & Beyonder or that Spider-Ham has been cyber-stalking Miss Piggy. The callbacks to Clue, one of my generation’s most quotable comedies, give much-needed structure to the story, keeping the readers engaged hunting for Easter Eggs while letting Deadpool flourish against his boundaries. Todd Nauck’s bright art style is a perfect match for the parody – even the gore of the climactic murder is swept into a cartoon, softening the clash of tone. An artist who can make a scene of Squirrel Girl hitting Punisher with a chair to keep him from waterboarding a talking raccoon into a sweet joke deserves more attention than he’s been getting lately.
Honorable Mentions:
Amazing Spider-Man #15, because if having Mary Jane briefly wearing the Iron Spider armor wasn’t great enough, Dan Slott gives us a great scene of two grownup exes who know how to work together with respect. Married or not, I love this couple.
Captain America: Sam Wilson #11, for… okay, Nick Spencer has brought back characters from the 1990s Captain America I didn’t know I missed, like Americop and Jack Flagg and Free Spirit and Rage and Cap-Wolf. And now he’s giving me the U.S.Agent, and Acuna’s splash page is just perfection. You have my loyalty, Nick Spencer.
Spider-Woman #9, for Javier Rodriguez’s amazing panel layout selling Dennis Hopeless’s joke of Spider-Woman pretending to be an aggressive Vegan activist to save people from a scheme to feed Canadians human meat to turn them all into Wendigos.
Moon Knight #4, for this amazing blend of art styles to sell the horror and humor of Marc Spector fighting with his patron God in a dirty men’s room. Lemire, Smallwood, and Bellaire are the perfect team for this character. This feels like some of the best Vertigo titles, but with a Marvel sensibility.
Scarlet Witch #8, for taking an awkward retcon of “Wanda was never a mutant, she’s been genetically manipulated by the High Evolutionary in order for her to appear in the Avengers movies but not the X-Men movies” and saving it with the spectacular spin that Agatha Harkness knew the whole time but was too much of a jerk to tell anyone. I am suddenly okay with Wanda not being a mutant anymore.
Silver Surfer #5, for first pointing out that saving the whole world and cashing in a favor is the only way anyone is going to get Hamilton tickets before the next Ice Age…
… and for giving Surfer’s board a sassy personality when it hits its limit for whiny monologues. This book plays the whining for humor very well, but this character is never going to lose that lugubrious reputation.
Catch up on previous Marvel Picks of the Week here!