Deadpool

I stopped by my comic shop last week, and I decided it was time for a trimming of my pull list. Deadpool got the chop. So did Deadpool Team Up. And Deadpool Corps.

Honestly, I started rereading Deadpool just towards the end of the Deadpool/Cable run, and I sort of got hung up on it. It was quirky and light. I don't really remember how all of a sudden I had three books on my list. At the price current comics go for, I think that 12$ a month (144$ a year?) for Deadpool was too much. None of the comics were particularly spectacular, and worse, I found myself buying an uber-violent Rob Liefeld comic. It was high time I woke up from that scheme.

Dropping three books from the pull list does leave a bit of a hole in my visits to the shop, however. I don't really think there's that much out there that I'm missing out on, but I'll have to keep a sharp eye out for something new.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I went to see it last night.

I wish I had something awesome and insightful to offer that wasn't completely covered by the rest of the blogosphere already. The first 5 minutes of the movie really are the best five minutes of the movie, and the rest of the film really just lets you down from the high expectations it set.

The rest of the movie was a convoluted mess. It at times adhered to the continuity of the X-Trilogy, and other times it just chucked it out the window. It had a cool cast, but it watered everyone down so much, that no one got enough screen time to really be cool. This movie needed 4 characters to work: Wolverine, Stryker, Sabretooth and Silverfox. That's it. If this movie was recut, and done to really flush out the characters, then the drama of the action would have been fantastic.

Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson was cool, but "Deadpool" was 9 kinds of lame. Have him in one or two scenes, let him mouth off a little, and then leave the rest alone. He ended up being to this movie what Angel was to X3, just in the way of the real story.

Same goes for Gambit and Blob, who were both there for no good story telling reason. They just ate up screen time that should have been reserved for exposition.

Wolverine says, in the movie, he was the best there is at what he does, but at no point in the film before he says that is there any reason to believe it. He mostly has just moped around and got in his team's way. It would have been nice to see him actually do something that would make Stryker's gamble with the adamantium make sense.

All in all, it had a few bright spots, but I think Wolverine was an exercise in wasted potential, choosing to try and fill the movie with as much "cool stuff" as possible rather than trying to tell a simple story of love lost and revenge.

As far as hero movies go, this one ranks around Blade III, Spider-Man III, and Elektra.

Cable & Deadpool: Bob

I'll admit, I've been picking up the latest issues of Cable & Deadpool based mainly on the excellent cover art of Skottie Young (who also draws with a PC tablet on not on paper, which is cool), but there's more to this book that the cover.

Like Bob, Agent of Hydra, who is the most awesome character to emerge this year. He's right up there with Scott Pilgrim in terms of awesome-ness. Bob is an agent who is captured by Deadpool and is eventually named lackey and he haplessly follows Wade around on his missions. In the latest story arc, Bob tags along as Deadpool infiltrates the same Hydra base that Wolverine is attacking in order to save a friend Hydra had captured. Bob's constant apologies to his former coworkers as he follows in Deadpool's wake is solid gold. Solid. Gold.

A tip of the hat to you, Fabian Nicieza, for creating the breakout character of 2007.