Deadpool #6

Writer: Daniel Way
Artist: Paco Medina
Inks: Juan Vlasco
Colors: Marte Gracia
Letters: VC's Cory Petit
Cover: Jason Pearson
Publisher: Marvel

A number of people have contacted me in the last few days to ask me what it is about this title that I find so appealing. Comments like "I just don't get it," "it's pointless," and "why is this comic even being made?" were common among the messages I received. One even told me that the current series of Deadpool comics might just be the most blatantly childish piece of comic fiction to hit the stands in years. I doubt that Deadpool #6 will do anything to assuage any of those opinions.

Then again, this is not a comic that appears to be aiming for the hallowed ranks of classic literature. Under Daniel Way, Deadpool is not so much a psychopath as he is an outright loon. A dangerous loon, mind you, but a loon nonetheless. The constant internal dialogue Deadpool engages in almost qualifies this as a team book. And not one of those team books where the characters get along. Deadpool's relationship with his inner voice provides some of the snappiest dialogue in the comic, particularly when that dialogue involves him arguing with himself. His inability to focus, and his unusual decision-making process (At one point, he quotes Robert De Niro's character from the 1976 classic Taxi Driver: "Listen, you screwheads, here is a man who would not take it anymore! A man who stood up against the ---" as part of an impromptu getaway plan) only add to Deadpool's already established status as one of the weirdest characters in the Marvel Universe. But that is what works about this series, at least for me. Deadpool is not Wuthering Heights. It is not Shakespeare. It isn't even Tom Sawyer. It's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It's A Clockwork Orange. It's every character study in psychosis that you've ever seen, stripped of the avant garde pretentiousness of such dramas, and devoid of the tortured introspection that this type of main character would usually be made to suffer.

After last issue's ending page, I expected this book to open with a battle between Deadpool and Tiger Shark. That is, after all, the established progression for superhero comics: if a villain makes his appearance in the last page or two of one issue, the next issue will begin with the villain engaged in a slugfest with the protagonist. Daniel Way takes a different approach in this issue. Rather than choosing the road more traveled, Way opens this issue with A Deadpool-imagined press conference. Welcome to the world as Deadpool sees it, otherwise known as pool-o-vision - a wonderful technique that allows the creative team to reinforce Deadpool's zaniness while at the same time offering free license to artists like Paco Medina to illustrate Tinkerbell, Mister Spock, and the Pillsbury Dough Boy within the pages of a Marvel comic book.

This opening sequence is indicative of what I like best about the series. Rather than showing us a battle between Deadpool and Tiger Shark, and showing the title character's defeat, Way skips all of that and jumps straight to the looniness. We don't find out what actually happened until we see Tiger Shark on the phone with his employer some time later. And since Deadpool and Tiger Shark were scheduled for round two of their battle later in this issue, it turns out that we didn't need to see round one anyway.

This is not a book that will appeal to the tastes of every reader. If you're looking for high-brow, epic storytelling that affects you on a deeper level ... go buy something else, because this is not that kind of book. But if you want to jump into a series that seeks only to entertain - and that will sink to any level to do so - Deadpool might just be your cup of tea.