"Spider-Man/Deadpool: 'Til Death Do Us..."

 

            The following is a review of the graphic novel “Spider-Man/Deadpool: ’Til Death Do Us…” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format.

            Wade Wilson/Deadpool’s wife Shiklah is Queen of the Monster Metropolis located beneath the city of Manhattan in New York. One monster, Farcus, wandered into the subway tunnels and was killed by a group of humans. Shiklah, in her rage, claimed Manhattan as the new capital of the monsters on Earth and ordered the humans to vacate Manhattan. Blade the vampire slayer arrived in Manhattan to combat the monsters and teamed up with Deadpool. Blade told Deadpool they needed the help of Camper Van Helsing, the last of a line of vampire slayers. Camper had been working as an R&D engineer at Parker Industries, but Peter Parker/Spider-Man fired her for her continued absences from work. Camper had been obsessed with Versus, an MMORPG she was extremely gifted at and always played as Deadpool. When the monster invasion began, Peter donned his Spider-Man costume at Parker Industries. Shiklah deceived Spider-Man and gained access to Parker Industries’ R&D vault, where she learned of Camper’s sleep-inducing device, the Sandman, which Shiklah then used on Spider-Man and instructed Camper to make it’s effect radius wide enough to work on all of New York City, but Camper tricked Shiklah and decreased it’s effect to zero. Deadpool arrived at Parker Industries, where he, Spider-Man, and Camper made their escape to Camper’s apartment so she could use a stake that could track specific monsters, and in this case, the monster they needed was Dracula. The Mercs for Money (Domino, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Machine Man, Gorilla-Man, Hit-Monkey and Masacre) decided to sneak into Shiklah’s base dressed up in disguise as monsters. This plan went awry when Gorilla-Man fell under Shiklah’s sway, but the team was able to convince Gorilla-Man on his humanity. Meanwhile, Spider-Man, Deadpool and Camper found Dracula, and made a deal with him: if he lost to Camper at Versus, he had to come to New York to fight Shiklah. Dracula lost. Shiklah had Morbius the Living Vampire modify the Sandman and activated it, putting every human in New York City to sleep. Spider-Man, Deadpool, Camper and Dracula arrived in New York City, where Dracula united the vampires against the other monsters. Dracula and Shiklah came face to face, and Dracula proposed to Shiklah, and Shiklah accepted. The two were wedded by the Hell Lord Mephisto. Spider-Man and the Mercs for Money battled Dracula and the monster army, while Deadpool compromised Shiklah’s integrity to end the monster invasion of New York City.

            Valeria Colon, widow of Ferraro Colon, came to Peter Parker and asked him to find the negatives of photographs he took of Spider-Man’s first fight with the supervillain the Vulture, a fight that caused the death of her husband, hoping those photos would give her some closure. Peter knew the negatives, if they still existed, would be locked in the archives of the Daily Bugle in New Jersey, so he decided to go as Spider-Man. Spider-Man found Deadpool and told him they should be more serious and to stop cracking jokes all the time and that it was insensitive. To Spider-Man’s surprise, Ms. Colon had also hired Deadpool to get the negatives as well. When the two arrived at the warehouse, they were attacked by the supervillain Slapstick, who had been hired by the mobster known as El Tenor to steal the negatives as well. The three temporarily teamed up against the underlings, but Slapstick double-crossed Spider-Man and Deadpool, but El Tenor double-crossed Slapstick. Spider-Man and Deadpool then had to find El Tenor and recover the negatives while Slapstick had to bargain for his life.

            Spider-Man, Nathan Skreemie, Thornton Blackball, Prof. Seymour Crippen, and Dorothy woke up in Arcade’s Murderworld, designed like a board game, and forced to fight for their lives. Spider-Man’s companions, aside from Dorothy, were all unsavory people. Arcade had invited supervillain the Stinger to Murderworld, but Deadpool stole his invitation. Deadpool arrived in Murderworld, where Arcade told Deadpool he was dying and wanted to leave Murderworld to Deadpool, all Deadpool had to do was help Arcade kill Spider-Man. Deadpool refused, and Arcade revealed he had been lying and dropped Deadpool into the game. The group were forced to struggle through Murderworld to save their lives and had to face off with a leveled-up Arcade to escape Murderworld.

            Parker Industries collapsed, S.H.I.E.L.D. fell, and Deadpool killed Agent Phil Coulson and became a wanted man, even by Spider-Man. Deadpool was seen on television selling S.H.I.E.L.D. technology, and Peter turned to his friend Barbara “Bobbi” Moorse/Mockingbird, former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent for held finding Deadpool to bring him to justice. Deadpool was based on a stolen S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier with Kate Waynesboro, Hellcow, Screwball, Clay Quartermain and Branch, Manphibian, and super sharks Deborah and Bruce. Spider-Man found the Helicarrier, and he and Deadpool landed in Tabula Rasa where they ran into former X-Man Paige Guthrie/Husk. The three discovered a fake Deadpool and it was supervillain the Chameleon. Deadpool’s team came to the rescue, but Chameleon got his hands on a file about Project Doppelganger.

            Deadpool and his team decided to get their hands on more S.H.I.E.L.D. tech and broke into an old S.H.I.E.L.D. facility called Area 14. Spider-Man arrived and battled Deadpool, but Deadpool escaped with a haul of S.H.I.E.L.D. tech. The Chameleon snuck in and stole a piece of tech that would power up Project Doppelganger, a collection of Life Model Decoys of superheroes and villains. He commandeered a Life Model Decoy of Kraven the Hunter to battle Spider-Man, Deadpool and his team. Chameleon then began an auction on the Life Model Decoys he had stolen. Spider-Man and Cindy Moon/Silk battled a Life Model Decoy of the Hulk, then the two confronted Deadpool, Clay Quartermain and Branch, and Deborah and Bruce. Chameleon then attempted to blow them all up. The group survived. They joined up with Mockingbird, only to be assaulted by an army of Life Model Decoys.

            In the far future, Peter Parker was an old man. He had retired from being Spider-Man after he was nearly cut in half and stitched back together, and he and Wade Wilson were in the same retirement home. Wade had been keeping Peter alive with transfusions of his regenerative blood, a fact Peter was unaware of. After Wade orchestrated a string of robberies in the retirement home, Peter got the fire back in him and decided to be Spider-Man again. Spider-Man and Deadpool escaped from the retirement home and went after a Life Model Decoy of Deadpool. They defeated it, but accidentally activated an army of Deadpool Life Model Decoys. Spider-Man and Deadpool teamed up with the Fantastic Four to battle the Deadpool Life Model Decoys, and Wade decided to travel to the past to fix it.

            Okay, so now that we have the scenario out of the way, let’s get to my part of the review. First off, I will say that I thought that this was a relatively enjoyable book. There was a lot to like about it. The book was a lot of fun to read for me. I thought the titular story was great. I loved how Camper Van Helsing roped Dracula into helping the heroes by beating him at a video game. I thought that was just brilliant. I liked the twist of El Tenor’s identity in the “No Laughing Matter” storyline. I thought that was interesting. The Murderworld storyline was good. “Arms Race” was interesting, I loved the telepathic sharks Bruce and Deborah. “Area 14” was good. “Oldies” was well written, I liked Old Man Parker and Old Man Wilson and the future Fantastic Four, I thought they were engaging. Overall, I thought the writing was decent. As for the art, I thought it was exemplary. I found it to be pleasurable to look at and a visual treat. It made reading a lot more enjoyable to have such great artwork at the points when the story fell a little flat, which happened here and there, but on the plus side, that was not a consistency. I enjoyed having the Chameleon as a villain, having a big-name Spider-Man villain in this series made the stakes a little higher, and I thought that was a good thing. And the assortment of Monsters Underground were familiar faces, and I thought that was entertaining. But there were points where the story did fall a little flat, I hate to say. This volume wasn’t as good as I was hoping, and it was not as good as the first volume, but I guess it could be I had high expectations, and I just didn’t quite get what I wanted and that was a little disappointing and that did detract from my enjoyment factor. I also must complain about how they mixed in the “Oldies” and “Area 14” storylines together in a mishmash that made little sense and got a little confusing.

            Next, we’re going to discuss accessibility. I’ve explained this dozens of times, but I’ll do it again because I know some of you have never read one of my reviews before, so I must explain again. When I say accessibility, I mean how easy it is to pick up this book and read it, even if you know little or nothing about Spider-Man and Deadpool. I feel like the accessibility level for this book is a little low. One of the main reasons I say this is for the titular storyline being a crossover between three series, “Spider-Man/Deadpool,” “Deadpool,” and “Deadpool and the Mercs for Money.” The Mercs for Money are characters that are obscure, some of them even I know relatively little about. Also, there’s reference to other series here and there, like Deadpool killing Agent Coulson, which happened outside this series, and Parker Industries, which changes status in the Marvel Universe outside of this book from a big tech business to being completely shut down, and no explanation is given in this book for it other than a few lines which really don’t do much. Also, there are a few other obscure characters used in this book, like Clay Quartermain and Husk. However, I will say this doesn’t draw too much from the previous volume of the series. I think you could read this book without reading the first volume. So, I will tell you that if you know about Shiklah and the Mercs for Money, you could read this book without reading the first volume and probably not feel like you missed anything. Other than that, there were no events that directly tied-in around this time. But if you’ve never read a Marvel Comic book before, I don’t suggest this book as a starting point as backgrounds on the characters are not given, so if you don’t know they characters, you will probably not get what is going on with them.

            Okay, I’ve gone on long enough, you’re probably getting bored now and just want me to get to the point, so I think I’ll do that. The main point of all my reviews is my score. I give my reviews a numeric score on a scale of one to ten. One means this is a steaming pile of garbage and should be avoided at all costs, ten means this is pure gold and needs to be read. My regular readers know I’m not in the habit of handing out tens to graphic novels unless they’re sheer perfection, and I’m not sure if that’s ever actually happened with a graphic novel before. Now, of course, you can tell this book is not at the top or bottom of either spectrum based just on all of what I’ve said. This book is particularly hard for me to score. But, of course, I’m obligated to do so, so I’ll have to do it. So, of course, I must take everything into consideration when I score a graphic novel, story, and art. So, taking everything into account, and judging it all together and churning out a score, I give it… a seven. The story was okay, but the art was great, so that really boosted the score there.

            Next, we’re going to talk about if I give my recommendation or not. Now, that’s a definite yes. I’d recommend it to any fans of the Spider-Man or Deadpool comics from the 2010s in particular, but I’d recommend it to just any Spider-Man or Deadpool reader. If you’ve never read a Marvel Comic book before, I don’t recommend this as a starting point, however. Still, if you’ve read this review and want to read this book, I think you should go for it, there really should be little stopping you other than not knowing who the Mercs for Money are.

            Okay, I think I’ve said about all I really need to say at this point. So, I’ll wrap up in just a few more sentences. First off, timcubbin.blogspot.com has dozens of reviews of books, so you can check all those out. I post on a very frequent basis. I should have a new review in the next three days, so be sure to check that out. I also have written several short stories, some poetry, a bunch of editorials, some articles and essays, all kinds of content on this site, so if you liked this post, please feel free to keep browsing. Keep coming back for more because I will be posting more. And I say to you, until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!