Deadpool is like Deadpool
How to describe Deadpool character? He’s an experimented guy, suffering from serious disorders, hearing voices, ugly appearance, making fun of everyone and everything, being frivolous … loves katanas, guns and cute unicorns. He dreamed of joining one of the superhero teams, such as the Avengers. His real name is Wade Wilson. He was a mercenary, aspired to be a hero, but returned to his “learned” profession.
The colorful world of the Mercenary
As we learn in a few sentences describing the plot preceding Mercenary, death is not tickingDeadpool wanted to be a hero, but… it didn’t work out, to put it mildly. “Superhero” erases his memory and becomes a mercenary again on request. The problem is that, as he says himself, the tasks are not profitable, and he needs something bigger, publicity. After all, his skills should not go to waste. And so he faces a new challenge that even the Avengers, X-Men, etc. could not cope with. In turn, in another story, the anti-hero tries to re-describe his genesis, parodying various threads from both Marvel and DC comics. In the next Deadpool he fights with aliens, zombies, goes to a fantastic world, struggles with existential problems, and does a vlog. Meanwhile, Wade is launching teddy panties … This and much more can be found in The Mercenary, Death Doesn’t Touch .
A flood of humor
From the beginning, you could expect the comic to be specific. After all, we are dealing with an extraordinary hero, actually an anti-hero, and now a contract killer. Deadpool sprinkles jokes that are repeatedly indecent at every turn. There is no sanctity for him, except maybe 90s Hugh Grant movies. Personally, I like the character of Wade Wilson / Deadpool from the latest movies, starring Ryan Reynolds. Every time I come across a comic book about the adventures of this character, I am looking for that “lightness” from the film. Unfortunately, death does not tickle in Mercenarymost of the jokes were low-level or badly played. Sometimes one gets the impression that the creators want to parody as many phenomena as possible. They mainly focus on superhero stereotypes. At one point it gets boring and Deadpool himself loses his own story in spasms of laughter! Finally he has one, right !? Having previously dealt with the series in which he was the main character, I felt a greater coherence of the plot. It was an event, for example, a story was built around it. In the case of the Mercenary, death is not ticking, I had the impression that this element holding the story together was a diluted glue. Theoretically, it will be Deadpool himself, a thread with erasing memory, searching for new orders … although it is difficult to sense.
I want a hero, how much can you laugh
The problem is that it’s hard to focus on the heroes here. In fact, apart from Deadpool, only his assistant is remembered. It was supposed to be fun, it was supposed to be action. But on my part there is a question – what is all this for? You can’t laugh all the time. And if there is a reason, it should be good, poor quality jokes are not able to fuel the entire plot and dialogue. In part, it is quite interesting to mock the supers’ lack of realism, their ideality, and this is where Brad Bird did so well in The Incredibles . However, something more is needed, some own creative element.
Graphic dissonance
It is difficult to refer to the graphic layer as a whole and express one consistent opinion. There are times when the panels are much weaker. On the one hand, they are drawn extremely expressively, on the other hand, they seem to be done in excessive haste. They are underdeveloped, as if someone is running a race against time to meet the deadline. Some of them are really well-polished, every fragment of the frame is planned and thought out. Some of the frames are “typical” comic scenes, sharp features, expressive colors, while on a few pages we see a real battle scene, modeled on an artist’s painting. We also see panels that resemble old Star Wars posters – from episode IV to VI. Maybe I will have the opportunity to read the next volumes, if not, I will not despair too much.
Indecision
I hope that the next volumes will be better, both in terms of graphics and story. The comic has potential but needs to be fine-tuned. Because we love Deadpool for it, he is different, he breaks the fourth wall, it is not known whether he is bad or good and he has terrible, but very strange adventures and a sense of humor. At the end, a small digression to the title – “Death Doesn’t Tick” – used in an interesting way, considering that in a certain story our antihero was the lover of Death itself. On the wave of my criticism, I must admit that I liked the stories included in the album in terms of plot, basically each of them had something interesting about it. They also contained the irony and critique of social norms typical of the “Deadpool universe”. I liked the comic at the same time, but on the other hand it seemed to be too embarrassing at times. I like the references to pop culture and ridicule the illogicality and stupidity of the events described in the comics. This also applied to character creation. Of course, the character of Deadpool himself and his assistant – Negasonic Teenage Warhead are also a plus. The heroes known from Marvel are brilliantly presented – Rocket, Star Lord, Captain America.
