"Spider-Man/Deadpool: Road Trip"

 

                The following is a review of the graphic novel “Spider-Man/Deadpool: Road Trip” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format.

                Years ago, scientists Richard and Mary Parker discovered Master Matrix, an android, and it led to the creation of Project Doppelganger for the government agency S.H.I.E.L.D., superpowered Life Model Decoys. In the future, the world was overrun by LMDs, particularly those of Deadpool. Wade Wilson/Deadpool in the future swapped bodies with his past self to prevent this dark future from coming to be. In the present, Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Bobbi Moorse/Mockingbird, Cindy Moon/Silk, Paige Guthrie/Husk, Clay Quartermain, and psychic advanced sharks Bruce and Deborah had been overwhelmed by the Project Doppelganger LMDs, who had used the supervillain Dmitri Smerdyakov/Chameleon to lead them to Master Matrix. Master Matrix, who had been kept dormant for years by S.H.I.E.L.D. was revived. Master Matrix transformed all the LMDs into Deadpool, and Spider-Man, Old Man Deadpool, and their allies fought the LMDs, but Master Matrix and the LMDs teleported away. Spider-Man discovered a file on Project Doppelganger revealing that his parents were behind Master Matrix and Project Doppelganger. In the future, Old Man Parker, Deadpool, and the Fantastic Four (Valeria Richards, Reed Grimm, Vision and H.E.R.B.I.E.) fought the Deadpool LMDs and Master Matrix and lost, so Valeria sent Old Man Parker and Deadpool back in time to the present. In the present, Hellcow, a member of Deadpool’s crew, had secretly been reporting to the Chameleon. Chameleon stole a Galactus robot, intent on destroying Master Matrix. Spider-Man, Old Man Deadpool, Old Man Parker, and Deadpool teamed up to find Master Matrix, and Chameleon discovered them at the gravestones of Richard and Mary Parker. Master Matrix fused the Project Doppelganger LMDs into one giant robot to fight Chameleon’s Galactus robot. Both robots were destroyed by Deadpool’s commandeered S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier the USS Deadpool, and Old Man Parker and Old Man Deadpool disappeared, their future now erased. Spider-Man and Deadpool appealed to Master Matrix and agreed to take responsibility for him and show him he could be something besides a weapon.

                Spider-Man and Deadpool attempted to train Master Matrix, but their parenting styles were vastly different. Mockingbird insisted to Spider-Man that Master Matrix had to stay in their S.H.I.EL.D. safe house and gave Spider-Man a tool that would permanently shut down Master Matrix. Spider-Man and Deadpool teamed up to fight the Wrecking Crew, who were using stolen magical artifacts. Master Matrix disobeyed Spider-Man’s instructions and joined the fight, and as the Wrecking Crew escaped, Spider-Man, Deadpool and Master Matrix were teleported to the Savage Land. Spider-Man gave Master Matrix the tool that could disable Master Matrix. Spider-Man, Deadpool and Master Matrix discovered the Wrecking Crew were in the Savage Land to steal a special alloy called Vibranium-B. Spider-Man and Deadpool left Master Matrix behind while they went to fight the Wrecking Crew, and Master Matrix destroyed the tool that could destroy him. Spider-Man and Deadpool were joined in their fight by the Warriors Three (Hildegard, Fandral and Hogun), who were after the Asgardian artifact the Wrecking Crew had stolen and were using to teleport. Master Matrix decided to return to his “home” in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Area 14 and suggested for Spider-Man and Deadpool to take a road trip to strengthen their bond.

                While on their road trip, Deadpool explained to Spider-Man that they were in a comic book, and that Deadpool enjoyed talking to the readers. Spider-Man accepted this as one of Deadpool’s eccentricities. They woke up one morning and were attacked by an army of giant bugs from the Negative Zone called the Ghlteyks. They were joined in their fight by Bug, a Kaliklak adventurer. They followed the Ghlteyks into a tunnel, and Bug decided to try to learn more about them, leaving Spider-Man and Deadpool to travel further into the tunnel. Spider-Man and Deadpool were attacked and teleported into the Negative Zone. They came across an Eternal named Ransak, who was on a rampage, and Ransak attacked Spider-Man and Deadpool. Spider-Man and Deadpool were defeated and retreated. They ran into Jannor and Koly, two members of Negative Force, the police of the Negative Zone. Spider-Man, Deadpool, Jannor and Koly fought Ransak, and Jannor electrocuted Ransak, which temporarily brought him back to his senses. Before he was overwhelmed by his rage again, Ransak gave Spider-Man a device with a button, telling Spider-Man it was the only thing that could stop Ransak. The fight was joined by Blastaar, Lord of the Negative Zone, who had been using the Ghlteyks to stabilize a portal between the Negative Zone and Earth so Blastaar and his army could invade and conquer Earth. Karkas, another Eternal, also joined the fight, summoned by the device, to save his friend Ransak. Blastaar used a rage inciting machine to sway Ransak, Deadpool, and Koly to his side, and they fought Spider-Man, Karkas, and Jannor. During their fight, Spider-Man electrocuted Deadpool, breaking Blastaar’s sway over Deadpool, but Blastaar had then also converter Jannor and Karkas. After their fight, Spider-Man and Deadpool were returned to Earth, only to discover Earth was in ruins. Deadpool also discovered he was no longer able to break the fourth wall and communicate with the readers. Spider-Man and Deadpool were reunited with Silk and Deborah and fought a giant mutated Mole Man and his army the Moloids. Silk told Spider-Man and Deadpool about the Manipulator, who had killed many heroes and had been harvesting others. Spider-Man revealed to Deadpool that he was really Peter Parker. Silk brought Spider-Man and Deadpool to her Underground, James Howlett/Wolverine, Eugene Judd/Puck, and Crystar/Spirit of Vengeance, and they planned to be harvested so they could free the other heroes. During their fight with the Manipulator, Puck and Deadpool were destroyed, and Spider-Man, Silk and Deborah were harvested. Deadpool found himself transported to Gutter Space, the place between the panels, with Gwenpool, another hero who frequently breaks the fourth wall. Gwenpool drew Deadpool into the Harvesting Zone, where he freed Spider-Man and an army of other superheroes. Deadpool deduced that the reason he could no longer break the fourth wall was because the Manipulator himself was the fourth wall. The heroes teamed up to fight the Manipulator to once again break the fourth wall and discover the truth about the Manipulator and their entire existence.

                Okay, now that we’ve got the synopsis out of the way, let’s get to the Tim Cubbin part of this review. We’re going to start where we always start, and that is with my own personal opinions on the book. Let me begin by saying that I didn’t find this book to be extremely enjoyable. My main problems with this book were that some of the storylines were slightly confusing. The first storyline in the book involved time travel, and it did get a little wonky, particularly that originally Deadpool and Old Man Deadpool switched places, then later were both existing in the same place at the same time. And “Road Trip” and “The Manipulator” centered around “Infinite House of Civil Yet Secret Crisis War Invasion,” an “event” that actually really didn’t exist and was just made up as a joke, full of references that were never explained because these issues don’t actually exist. This joke just didn’t really work in my opinion. I found that the character development of Master Matrix just didn’t make sense, how he went from just being pure evil to being completely rational and then compliant to Spider-Man and Deadpool, and I felt like the ending of “My Two Dads” with Master Matrix just deciding to shut himself away seemed uncharacteristic from where he was at the start of the book. And the series finale was contained in this volume, and I found myself underwhelmed and dissatisfied with the conclusion and really didn’t feel it was resolved properly. I also didn’t find the humor to be all that funny, I didn’t really have any “laugh out loud” moments while reading this, maybe a few smiles and scoffs, but no significant sound escaped my lips. I will say, though, that I thought that the artwork in this graphic novel was actually extremely high quality. That was, actually, one of the things I actually liked about this collection. But if we’re looking at the story here, I just didn’t find it very appealing. As far as the title goes, I feel like “Road Trip” was actually a perfect title for this book. This was a seven-issue story arc, the longest in this volume, and also fits with the rest of the content of this book as well, so this was actually an adequate and appropriate title for this book.

                Next up on our schedule is to discuss accessibility. I’ve done the explanation of this over six dozen times at this point, but I’m compelled to do it again every time I do a new post because I always have new readers every time I do a post and they’ve never been to this blog before or read one of my reviews before and have no idea what I mean when I say “we’re going to discuss accessibility,” so, yeah, I’m doing it again, so if you already know the drill, just deal with it again so I can explain this to the newbs. Anyway, when I say if this book is accessible, what I’m actually saying is if this is a book that anyone, even a person who has never heard of Spider-Man or Deadpool before, can find this book on a shelf and be intrigued enough by the title that they decide to by this book and read this book and understand everything they’ve read without outside context. I will tell you that this book has an exceptionally low accessibility factor. Right off the bat, this is Vol. 3, and I will tell you that Vol. 2 (which has already been released) ended with “To Be Continued…” on the bottom of the last panel, and this book picks up exactly where that book left off, so if you haven’t read “Spider-Man/Deadpool: ‘Til Death Do Us…” you will have no idea what is going on at the start of this book. Also, this book ties in to an “event” that doesn’t even actually exist, so the referenced storylines cannot be found anywhere you look. If you’ve never read a Marvel Comic book before, this is definitely not the right place for you to start.

                Next up on our tour is the numeric score, one of the most crucial parts of one of my reviews. I can’t say as it’s the most important part of my review, everything in my review can be considered important to any of my readers, so who’s to say what the most important part of one of my reviews is, but the numeric score is still really important. Anyway, my system is very simple. I score on a scale of one through ten. One is the lowest score I can give, which means that every copy of this book should be taken, destroyed, and this book should never be republished. Ten means that this book is solid gold and sheer perfection and that every copy should be bought off the shelves because it deserves to be in every Spider-Man or Deadpool fan’s collection and it should need to be republished multiple times so new copies can make their way into readers’ homes. I will tell you that I’m not leaning exactly towards the flaming hot pile of trash score of a one, it did have some factors about it that saves it from total annihilation, but it definitely is nowhere near getting a ten either. My regular readers know this already, but I have a special blender in my head made specifically for making scores for these reviews. So, I take all the contents of the book when I write these reviews, the story, the art, the title, and all my own personal likes and dislikes, and I dump them into my metaphorical blender. In this case, we have an unsatisfying and confusing story, excellent art, and an appropriate title, as well as a lot of dislikes. Then I press the mix button on my blender. I leave it on until this book is completely mixed. Then I take my review cup and pour the mix in, look at my score, and what do I see? I see… a three! This was an unsatisfactory effort and not very enjoyable to consume, so I had to give a low score, but I still do feel like there were a few good things about it. The biggest thing that saved this book was the art. If this book had terrible art, I would likely have given it a two. I didn’t feel like it was so abysmal as to deserve a one, but I still feel like this was just not at all a well-written graphic novel.

                Next up on the agenda is the recommendation segment. This segment comes in two parts. The first part is if I myself personally recommend this book to you, my reader, or if I talk to any friends about this book, will I tell them to read it? The second part of the recommendation section is regardless of if I give this book the personal Tim Cubbin recommendation or not, who do I think would be the best audience for reading this book. Now, you can probably guess at this point my response to the first question, but I do have to confirm it for you in exact words because sometimes my opinions can be a little misleading. As to the question of if I recommend this book to anyone reading this or listening to my words, the answer is no, I do not recommend this book to you at all. However, if you are a diehard fan of both Spider-Man and Deadpool and still want to read this book anyway, I will say that as long as you’ve read “Spider-Man/Deadpool: ‘Til Death Do Us…” in Modern Era Epic Collection format, this book is something you should consider. If you like team-up comics, this book is a team-up of great characters, you might somehow find enjoyment in this book. And if you like comics with humor, you might enjoy this book as there are a lot of attempts at comedy contained within these pages.

            Well, I think we’re at the point where I’m about ready to wrap everything up. So first off, if you’re still reading this at this point, thank you, you are THE BEST! I post on this blog on a very frequent basis. I collect every Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection and Ultimate Epic Collection that is released as soon as I can following its release and post up a review if possible. I’ve done over six dozen other reviews, if you liked this one, feel free to check out “Spider-Man/Deadpool: Isn’t it Bromantic?” or “Spider-Man/Deadpool: ‘Til Death Do Us…” and any of the other over 170 posts on timcubbin.blogspot.com. I’m done over six dozen other reviews like this one, as well as other types of reviews, and short stories, poetry, essays, articles, and editorials, so there’s plenty of other content here to check out as well. Feel free to keep checking back for more, you can expect my next review of “The Amazing Spider-Man: Big Time” within the next eight weeks. I’ve been doing this blog for five years now and will keep doing this until I can no longer see, my hands no longer work, or I’m dead, so expect me to keep this up for quite a while. That’s all for now, but until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!

"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!

"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!