"Spider-Man/Deadpool: Isn't it Bromantic?"

            The following is a review of the graphic novel “Spider-Man/ Deadpool: Isn’t it Bromantic?” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format.

            Peter Parker has the proportionate speed, strength and agility of a spider, adhesive fingertips and toes, and a precognitive awareness of danger. He is the CEO of Parker Industries and the superhero the Amazing Spider-Man.

            Wade Wilson has a healing factor that allows him to recover from almost any wound. He has a succubus wife and is the wisecracking merc with a mouth Deadpool.
            Spider-Man and Deadpool first met when Deadpool supervillain Quentin Beck/Mysterio were hired to discredit politician Jack McPherson. This first meeting led to Deadpool turning on his clients and teaming up with Spider-Man, but it did not exactly make them friends.

Deadpool had just become a member of the superhero team the Avengers, a team Spider-Man was on, but due to his principles, he was unable to accept Deadpool’s appointment to the team and decided to leave the Avengers. Deadpool wanted to learn to be a true superhero, and he thought the best example to learn these skills from was Spider-Man. Deadpool orchestrated a team-up, hoping to win Spider-Man’s trust, but failed, but refused to give up. Of course, Deadpool had to make money on the side somehow, so he continued his mercenary business. His next target was Peter Parker. Deadpool had been given the false impression that Peter Parker was a top-shelf scum bag. Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Miles Morales/Spider-Man and Deadpool inadvertently teamed up to fight the supervillain Mysterio, but the fight left the villain severely injured and in a coma, but Deadpool’s efforts to save the villain’s life made Peter Parker see the merc in a new light and decided to give him a chance. Deadpool showed Spider-Man a day in his life, and a friendship began. And then, after a bro’s night out, Deadpool offed Peter Parker. Deadpool hoped to view Parker’s torture in the underworld, but Parker never arrived. Fearing a mistake was made, Deadpool had his demoness wife Shiklah restore Parker to life, just so Deadpool could unalive him again, but once again Parker never arrived in the underworld, leading Deadpool to realized he had been played and that Peter Parker really wasn’t a bad guy. Parker was, however, trapped with Mysterio in the villain’s near-death state. Deadpool pulled strings with Shiklah to get into Mysterio’s head to rescue Parker, who had been approached by the demon Mephisto. Meanwhile, Patient Zero, the man behind the target on Peter Parker, had impersonated Parker to steal data from Parker Industries. Spider-Man and Deadpool teamed up to fight Patient Zero, but the villain managed to escape. After the fight, Deadpool discovered that his disfigurement that came from the treatment that gave him his powers had been cured and that he was no longer unpleasant to look at. After his escape, Patient Zero performed an experiment on a young woman using the data he stole from Parker Industries, and blood samples from both Spider-Man and Deadpool.

            Deadpool’s lack of disfigurement caused disinterest from his demoness wife. Spider-Man and Deadpool continued their team-ups, fighting the Hateful Hexad following Spider-Man’s “no kill rule,” but the woman Patient Zero experimented on, now displaying the powers of both heroes, violently took out the villain team, left the crime scene, and made Spider-Man and Deadpool look like the culprits. Spider-Man dubbed this villainess “Itsy-Bitsy.” After another encounter with Patient Zero and Itsy-Bitsy, Spider-Man and Deadpool retreated to Weirdworld to lick their wounds, where they hate to save the pocket dimension from a creature called Sl’ur’boroth. Spider-Man then decided that the only way to stop Itsy-Bitsy for the last time was to end her life, a line Deadpool refused to let his newfound friend cross. Deadpool brought Spider-Man to X-Man Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler, hoping the mutant priest could talk Spider-Man out of this drastic decision, but this talk did not accomplish what Deadpool desired, but did lead to Deadpool discovering Patient Zero’s true identity, his reason for hating Spider-Man and Deadpool, and why he had to stop Spider-Man from ending the life of Itsy-Bitsy. The two heroes and the monster created from their DNA fought, and the threat of Itsy-Bitsy was ended for the time being.

            The Salmon Stunt Man arrived in New York City to tell Deadpool that Hollywood was making a movie about him, and even wanted him to be in it. He got Spider-Man to join in on the movie by making him an associate producer. However, the fight scenes between the Salmon Stunt Man and Deadpool were attempts to end Deadpool’s life.

            Deadpool took part in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, playing against world-famous magician Penn Jillette. The two made a bet that if Deadpool lost the Penn, then Deadpool would have to switch places with Teller, Penn’s partner in his magic act, for a week. Deadpool lost this bet and had to be Teller in the act for a week, while the real Teller secretly teamed up with Spider-Man to fight a villainess calling herself Tarot, whose powers came from a magical deck of tarot cards.

            On Christmas Eve, Roman God Saturn came to Earth, disgusted with how Christmas had ruined his holiday of Saturnalia. Deadpool held an Avengers Christmas party, but did not invite Spider-Man, a party that Deadpool ended up getting himself kicked out of. Spider-Man and Deadpool decided to spend the rest of Christmas Eve together, when they ran across Saturn, who had gone on a rampage. To end the carnage, Deadpool decided to show Saturn an enjoyable time and prove that Christmas is just like Saturnalia and that his holiday really hadn’t been ruined.

            A coven of prospective young witches kidnapped Deadpool in an attempt to summon Shiklah, Deadpool’s heartmate, but instead summoned Spider-Man to their school, just in time to fight a monster that arrived to wreak havoc on Toronto.

            Okay, so we’ve got the plot out of the way, time for my own personal thoughts. First off, I have to say, I loved this book. I thought the writing was brilliant. And the humor was great. Honestly, I originally would not have thought of putting the two of them together teaming up in one book. On the one hand, we have Spider-Man, the purest superhero in the Marvel Universe, a through and through goody-two-shoes. Then we have Deadpool, who literally kills people for a living, completely remorselessly. The two are complete opposites. Their principles are different. They have nothing in common, other than the fact that while they do their thing, they crack jokes. They’re literally oil and water, they shouldn’t mix. And yet they got put together in this book and the writers made it work. I never thought that would happen. And I never thought this could work as an ongoing series. As a six issue limited series, maybe. A little onetime team up, fight the bad guys, win, go their separate ways. But this series lasted for several years. I just couldn’t believe it. Personally, I loved the ‘Itsy-Bitsy” story arc, I just enjoyed seeing the conflict in Spider-Man, how he was willing to violate everything he believed in and how the immoral Deadpool actually did all he could to keep his new friend from crossing a line and doing something he could never take back. I just thought that was so brilliant. I thought the retro issue was clever, a fantastic addition to the book, I like how they jokingly said they had written it back in the 1960s but never published it. It’s obvious that’s not true, but it was still a great joke all the same. And the Penn and Teller issue was hilarious, I loved how they actually got Penn Jillette to write a comic book, I just thought that was genius. And I’m always partial to a good holiday special, and I thought that “The Spider-Man/Deadpool Ho-Ho-Holiday Special!” was fantastic. And the artwork in this book was excellent throughout the whole book, it was just consistently outstanding, which is extremely rare in a Modern Era Epic Collection, I usually find at least one artist to complain about. I won’t even complain about the retro issue. All-in-all, I just thought this book was stellar. Well done.

            Next, we’re going to talk about accessibility. I know that I have people who know what I mean, but I know some of you may never have read one of my reviews before and don’t know what I mean, so therefore I will explain myself. When I say accessibility, I mean just how easy it is to pick up and read this book, particularly to people who are not regular readers of the Marvel Comics. So, I will say that there is difficulty with accessibility. This comes from a specific period where Peter Parker had his own tech company, which did not last for a super long time, so that does cause a conflict on being able to just accept the content of this book. Also, this is from a time where Deadpool was a member of the Avengers and had a demoness wife, which also wasn’t a long-term storyline. So, some of the character development moments are a little difficult to grasp for people who have never read the comics, as nothing like this has ever happened in the movies or cartoons or video games (as far as I know), so the context from other forms of media just isn’t there. Also, there is an issue from a crossover event called “Monsters Unleashed,” and this graphic novel only contains the Spider-Man/Deadpool issue, so it’s taken out of context, and the is little foreground to it and no true closure to the story either. So, despite this book being Vol. 1, despite this starting with issue #1, there is a lot of background knowledge required from the time period to truly understand the full story, like just why exactly Patient Zero was able to convince Deadpool that Peter Parker was a scumbag, because that directly pertained to Parker Industries, and that’s just one example, there are many in this book. I really don’t feel that this is an entry level graphic novel for people who have never read a Marvel Comic book before, or even that it’s a good graphic novel for people who have read Marvel comics before but didn’t read them in the early- to mid-2010s. I just feel like this book is highly inaccessible for new readers who are just walking into a bookstore and seeing this book on the shelf and thinking to themselves “Oh, ‘Spider-Man/Deadpool?’ Cool! I’m buying this!” I just feel it’s not the right fit.

            Okay, now that I’ve officially warned off about 97% of my readers, let’s get down to the practical details, my numeric score. Some of you already know the drill, but I have to say it again anyway because I do have people reading right now who have never read one of my reviews before, so it just must be done. I score on a simple scale. I go through one to ten. One means this is utter trash and should not be read at all; ten means this book is pure gold and if you meet the requirements needed to read this book then by all means you should read it. Now, of course, this is a graphic novel, so when I score, I must take both story and art into consideration when I render my judgement. Now, my regular readers know that I’m not in the business of handing out tens for no reason. So, could this book actually be getting a ten? I mean, the story was great! The art was great! Is it a ten…? No. I must score this book as a nine. There’s just some little thing holding me back. I can’t quite tell you what it is, but this book just doesn’t get a ten, sorry to say. Still, a nine is really darn good. It’s just not quite perfection. I can’t put this on the internet and say it’s a ten, then look back after Vol. 3 comes out and say “Why the heck did I give this book a ten? It wasn’t perfect!” (Vol. 2 just came out two days prior to my writing this review, I got this book almost a year ago, I just didn’t review it previously because I didn’t have a laptop at the time I last read this book, just so you know, I just reread this book as a refresher, and you can expect a review of Vol. 2 sometime in the next three weeks.) I really, really wish I could give it a ten, I loved it so much, but it’s just got something that’s not quite ten material.

            Anyway, let’s move on to my recommendation. As much as I loved this book, it is extremely hard to recommend. As I stated before, the accessibility level is pretty low. However, if you are familiar with Spider-Man and Deadpool in the Marvel Comics circa the early- to mid-2010s, I highly recommend this book. It was fun, funny, well written, beautifully illustrated and all around enjoyable, and I feel like any Spider-Man or Deadpool fans would find it worth the read. I mean, even if you haven’t read comics before and read this review and want to read it now, I’m not telling you not to read it, that’s all up to you, I know some people are intuitive, I mean, people start reading comics at any point every day, I just don’t recommend this as a first Marvel graphic novel, but hey, if you want, by all means, go for it, I’m not stopping you. Honestly, I can’t tell you what to do, you don’t have to listen to me, everything written on this website is all just my opinion, I’m not telling you what to think or feel, you can agree or disagree with me about anything you want, I really don’t mind, that’s the beauty of being a human being, we all have our own opinions on anything, you don’t have to listen to me, I’m just saying how I personally feel. So, I guess what I’m saying is I do recommend it, but I do give warning.

            Anyway, I’ve been blathering on for quite a while, so I think we’re getting to a point where we should start wrapping things up. So, I have written dozens of reviews just like this one, and you can keep on expecting more. Like I said, you can expect another review sometime within the next three weeks of Vol. 2 of “Spider-Man/Deadpool” and there will be plenty more after that, so just keep coming back for more Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection reviews. I’ve also written short stories, poems, essays, articles, editorials, and all other kinds of content on this website, so if you’re into that kind of thing, be sure to keep browsing, I’m sure you’ll find plenty of other things to like on timcubbin.blogspot.com and there’s not an end in sight. So, I’ll say farewell for now, and until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!