"Deadpool: Magnum Opus"

 

                The following is a review of the graphic novel “Deadpool: Magnum Opus” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format.

                Wade Wilson/Deadpool was hired to hunt down and take out James Howlett/Logan/Wolverine. Their encounter began when Deadpool attacked Wolverine in a restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown. After a prolonged fight that caused havoc and destruction through a department store, a coffee shop, and the streets of San Francisco, Deadpool was able to render Wolverine unconscious and abduct him. While Deadpool threatened to end Wolverine, Wolverine’s son Daken arrived, and Daken tried to kill Wolverine. Deadpool and Daken got into a fight. The fight was ended when Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier came to Wolverine’s rescue.

                The shape-shifting alien Skrulls began their invasion of Earth through infiltration, assuming positions in government, the military, and even the superhero community. They possessed highly advanced technology, a massive armada of warships, enough soldiers to occupy the planet and Super-Skrulls, which could imitate the powers of multiple superheroes. Deadpool fought a battalion at a baseball stadium, but when he was unable to defeat the Skrulls, he offered to join them. The Skrull scientists, impressed with his regenerative healing factor, decided his genetics would be perfect to implement in their next generation of Super-Skrulls. Deadpool offered the Skrull head scientist to train the Deadpool Super-Skrulls, which the scientist begrudgingly accepted. In their first training session, the Deadpool Super-Skrulls took out an entire squadron of previous Super-Skrulls. Deadpool’s training caused erratic, unstable, and insane behavior in the Deadpool Super-Skrulls. Deadpool called the man who hired him to infiltrate the Skrulls, former Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Nick Fury, but he was caught by a Super-Skrull while making the call and exposed as a traitor. Deadpool managed to defeat the Super-Skrull but was caught by the Skrull head scientist and the Deadpool Super-Skrulls. However, Deadpool had thought of a contingency plan to defeat the Deadpool Super-Skrulls. Deadpool stole Skrull bio data, specifically how to kill a queen, which he tried to send to Fury, but the data he sent was intercepted by Norman Osborn.

                Having spent all his money and used up all his munitions, Deadpool was desperate for a job. He called his old contact Zeke. Zeke’s wife had been into a zombie by a plastic surgeon named Doctor Druek Lovosno, who had created other zombies as well. Zeke hired Deadpool to kill Lovosno. Deadpool was to contact Zeke with the location of Zeke’s wife so Zeke’s men could rescue her, and Zeke could hopefully find someone to reverse the procedure. Zeke flew Deadpool to Grodke in Eastern Europe. Deadpool was believed to be a zombie and was shot and detained by the local police. After escaping with the help of one of Zeke’s men, Deadpool made it to Lovosno’s castle. Lovosno’s servant took Deadpool in, then poisoned Deadpool. When Deadpool came to, Zeke’s wife told Deadpool that Zeke was broke. Lovosno had made an arrangement with Zeke’s wife to pay for the procedure. Lovosno was then going to feed Deadpool to Lovosno’s patients. However, the patients did not want to eat Deadpool. Deadpool talked Lovosno into letting Deadpool go, promising Lovosno food for Lovosno’s patients, then called Zeke. Zeke and his men arrived, and Deadpool blew up Lovosno’s castle, betraying everyone.

                Tiger Shark was hired to kill Deadpool. Deadpool survived their first encounter and was found washed up on a beach near San Diego. He woke up at a homeless shelter, but as he tried to leave, Tiger Shark arrived. Tiger Shark attacked Deadpool at the homeless shelter, and the police came and shot Deadpool. Deadpool was found by his friend Bob, who helped Deadpool fight Tiger Shark. Bob and Deadpool went to hide out in a motel, where Deadpool figured out the Bob had also been hired to kill Deadpool. Bob revealed to Deadpool that Bob and Tiger Shark had both been hired by Norman Osborn, who had used the data Osborn intercepted from Deadpool to kill the Skrull Queen and assume leadership over S.H.I.E.L.D., now renamed H.A.M.M.E.R., and the Avengers. Deadpool ended Bob and faxed Osborn, demanding $100,000,000 in the following twelve hours or else Deadpool would expose Osborn for his theft.

                Deadpool infiltrated Avengers Tower, looking for Osborn. Osborn was at the Oscorp Building when Deadpool came looking, but Osborn’s Thunderbolts (Yelena Belova/Black Widow, Ghost, Ant-Man, Headsman, and Paladin) were at Avengers Tower. Deadpool and the Thunderbolts fought, and Deadpool escaped with a teleportation device he stole from an Avengers laboratory. The Thunderbolts were able to track Deadpool down, but Deadpool defeated them all except for Black Widow, who he flirted with. Paladin revived, and Deadpool escaped again. Deadpool retreated to a hideout with his associate Taskmaster, who agreed to be a decoy Deadpool. Deadpool took on the Thunderbolts while Taskmaster, disguised as Deadpool, went after Black Widow. Black Widow turned the tables on Taskmaster and abducted Taskmaster. The Thunderbolts were going to kill Taskmaster, who they thought was Deadpool, but Deadpool came to Taskmaster’s rescue and Deadpool and Taskmaster battled the Thunderbolts, but the fight only ended when the Thunderbolts thought they had killed Deadpool.

                When Norman Osborn found out Deadpool was still alive, he sent Bullseye, now posing as Hawkeye, to remedy the situation. After the two got into a fight, Deadpool took an arrow to the head. Deadpool survived and the two resumed fighting, and Deadpool beat Bullseye. The two once again resumed their fight until Bullseye talked Deadpool into disappearing from Osborn’s life.

                Okay, we’ve got our synopsis out of the way, it’s time to move on to my input for the rest of this review. We’re going to start, as always, with my own personal opinions about the book. I found this book to be, for the most part, enjoyable. My biggest complaint with this graphic novel is the balance between story and action. There was a huge focus on action that highly overshadowed the amount of space on the pages for story. That said, I did like what was readable. There was a good amount of comedy in this book, including some laugh out loud moments. I always liked Deadpool’s clever ways of outsmarting all of his opponents at the end of each story. “The Deep End” storyline with Wolverine had an interesting plot twist at the end with Daken I didn’t see coming. “One of Us” was the “Secret Invasion” storyline, and it actually turned out to secretly be one of the most important tie-in stories to how the heroes managed to beat the Skrulls as it was how Norman Osborn learned the information on how to kill the Skrull Queen. “Horror Business” also had a bunch of plot twists of everyone double-crossing everyone else. “How Low Can You Go?” also had double-crossing, and Bob and Tiger Shark both vying to take down Deadpool was amusing as obviously Bob was outclassed by Tiger Shark but still tried to succeed anyway. “Magnum Opus” was my favorite storyline, I enjoyed the Thunderbolts crossover, and seeing Norman Osborn fighting Deadpool was great. “Bullseye” was entertaining as well as both Deadpool and Bullseye wanted to kill each other and yet at the same time they really didn’t want to kill each other, so seeing the conflict was amusing. As far as the artwork is concerned, I did enjoy most of it, with the exception of Steve Dillon’s work on Wolverine: Origins #21-25. There’s just something about the way Dillon draws faces that doesn’t appeal to me. However, I greatly enjoyed the work of Paco Medina. I thought it was fantastic to look at, I really loved the style. I also appreciate the artwork from Carlo Barberi and Bong Dazo, I thought they produced excellent visuals as well. When thinking about the choice of a title, I feel like “Magnum Opus” was a good pick. There were six storylines in the book, giving the editors six already given choices, or they could have made a new one up, but I think they went with the best option that would work for this particular volume. However, I will say that I don’t feel like the editors picked the best cover for the front of this volume. They chose a cover from Deadpool #1, the “One of Us” storyline, depicting Deadpool and the Skrull invasion superimposed around him. I do feel like there were other covers from the issues contained in this graphic novel that would represent this volume better as a choice for the front cover as this storyline only spanned for three of the nineteen issues contained in this volume and is only a small part of the book as a whole when there were storylines in this book that ran longer. That said, ultimately, I was generally pleased with this book.

                Next up on our agenda of topics to cover, we’re going to discuss accessibility. I’ve been over this over six dozen times before, I know, but for every review I write, I know I always have my new readers, so I do feel obligated to explain myself again every time I write a new review. If you’re familiar with how this works, please be patient for a couple of sentences while I explain for the newbs what I mean when I throw out the word accessibility like this. So when I use the word accessibility, what I mean is, can someone who, in this case, has never heard of Deadpool or knows nothing about him obtain this book, read it, and understand everything they’ve just read with absolutely no prior knowledge on the subject? I will say that this is definitely not an easy book to get into if you are unfamiliar with Marvel Comics. This graphic novel has a tie-in story to “Secret Invasion” which, honestly, you don’t need to know everything about to follow this particular graphic novel, but it would help to have some knowledge about the basic concept of the Skrulls to understand this book. It also has a tie-in “Dark Reign” crossover with Thunderbolts, and these are some relatively obscure characters, but not knowing about them isn’t too damaging to understanding this graphic novel, just as long as you understand that they’re working for Norman Osborn. This book really doesn’t explain the purpose of the Thunderbolts very well, but they’re actually “reformed” villains working for Osborn in exchange for a governmental pardon, but this fact is never stated in this volume. The “Dark Reign” storyline itself also isn’t well explained in this collection, and knowledge about Osborn’s ascendance with H.A.M.M.E.R. and the Dark Avengers is required to understand this volume, particularly Bullseye being rebranded as Hawkeye. There are a lot of factors that make this book inaccessible to anyone but people who have experience with Marvel from the late 2000s. Even I wasn’t a regular reader at the time of “Dark Reign” and I honestly really didn’t know much about these Thunderbolts going into reading this book. Though this book is marketed as Vol. 1, it’s not an easy book for people with no prior Marvel Comics experience to get into.

                Next up, we’re going to move on to my numeric score. This is one of the most essential components to a Tim Cubbin review. Now I know some people come here because they want to know about the story, but it is very important to express just exactly how high of a quality standard the book left an impression of on me. First off, I’m going to explain my scoring system. It’s actually extremely simple: I score on a scale of exact integers ranging from one to ten. One is the lowest score I can give, and if I give it a one, then this book deserves to have every copy pulled off the shelves and collectively incinerated, then the prints should be destroyed by Marvel so this horrible pile of trash shall be wiped out of existence forever. If I give this book a ten, then this book is sheer perfection and if every Marvel and Deadpool fan doesn’t buy this book, I will seriously think there is something horribly wrong with them. Now, my longtime readers know that I don’t like to give tens very often. I have to actually be able to find no flaws with the book at all to give it a ten, and that includes story, art, title, and cover. That said, I’m not an ogre either and I don’t like giving low scores unless the book actually really deserves that. I honestly have not given a lot of ones over the five plus years I’ve been doing this blog. So, taking all the components of this book and mixing them all together: the story I enjoyed with lots of plot twists but a little too much focus on action and not enough on dialogue; the mostly good art with the exception of one artist; the title which I feel worked well for this book; and the cover that I don’t feel represented this book adequately, we’re looking at a score of… a seven. I found this book to be, for the most part, a pleasurable reading experience, and I enjoyed taking the journey through it., but I wish there had been a little more dialogue, and we already established how I felt about Steve Dillon, but overall, this was an enjoyable read.

                Next up on our list of things to cover is my recommendation segment. The point of this segment is to answer two questions. The first question is, do I, Tim Cubbin, personally recommend this book to you, who have just spent the past few minutes reading my words, or to anyone unfortunate enough to get caught up in a conversation with me about this book? The second question I answer is, regardless of if I would actually tell you I’d recommend this book personally, who is the best audience for this graphic novel, besides fans of Marvel and Deadpool and the creative team? The answer to my first question is yes. If you’re reading this review and now, based solely on what you’ve just read me post, you want to read this graphic novel, I will tell you to go read this book now. Check your local bookstore, or your favorite comic book store, or your preferred online retailer, or if you’re lucky, your nearby library to find this book and read it as soon as you can. I think if you’re intrigued by what I’ve described, you’ll enjoy reading the entire story. As for the target audiences, I think readers who like stories full of plot twists and double crossings would find this book will check off that list many times over. Readers who enjoy stories about mercenaries would probably like this book. Readers who enjoy stories about alien invasions could find something to like in this book. And if you like comic books with humor, this book might tickle your funny bone.

                Okay, I’ve been going on for long enough now, I think we’re at the point where we’re all about ready to move on with our lives. I do have a few end of term notices to hand out before I sign off, though. First off, like I said before, I have been doing this blog for over five years now. I have done over 180 posts now. In addition to over six dozen Epic Collection reviews just like this one, I’ve done other kinds of reviews as well, such as prose novelizations, manga, and comic book events. I have also written short stories, poetry, essays, articles, and editorials, so if you want a variety of content, feel free to keep checking timcubbin.blogspot.com for more posts, you might find something else to like. If you want more content like this, I’ll recommend specific posts for you: feel free to check out “Deadpool: In Wade We Trust” “Deadpool & Cable: Ballistic Bromance” “Spider-Man/Deadpool: Isn’t it Bromantic?” “Spider-Man/Deadpool: ‘Til Death Do Us…” and “Spider-Man/Deadpool: Road Trip” for more reviews about our favorite Merc with the Mouth. My next new post will be “Hulk: Code Red” you can expect to see that coming up within the next month from my posting of this review. I purchase every Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection and Ultimate Epic Collection as soon as I can after it is released and if possible, put up a review right after I am done reading it. I’m going to keep doing this blog for as long as I can, and you won’t expect an end to it anytime soon, as my eyesight and handiness seem to currently be in good order. I wish you goodbye for now, but I shall be back, but I say to you until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!