Daniel Way

I've never read Deadpool before, though I'm familiar with the character just by being a Marvel fan. He hasn't crossed over into any of the main events I've read, until now. When I decided to read all the Dark Reign trades, he finally popped up on my radar. And it was a wild ride, to say the least!

After getting over the initial shock, because this character is unlike any other I have ever read, I found Deadpool to be hysterically funny, unbelievably violent and overall a nice change of pace. show more Some of the dialog was lost on me until I figured out Deadpool was talking to himself. Or more accurately, he and his brain were having full-on conversations throughout. And sometimes he imagines how encounters go before readers see how they actually unfolded. It's pretty cool, and very funny, but requires you to pay careful attention.

His role in Dark Reign is not essential to the continuity; readers could skip both books and not miss anything. But they would miss out on a brilliant story. Hired by Nick Fury to steal info on the Skrull Queen during Secret Invasion, that info was in turn stolen by Norman Osborn who used it to ascend to power as a National hero. Deadpool missed out on a big payday, which he thinks Osborn owes him, and has been a pain in Osborn's ass ever since. This trade covers Tiger Shark and Bullseye's attempts to kill Deadpool. Only, a man who can sew his head back on after decapitation isn't so easy to kill.

One minor quibble I had is that mid-way through this trade there's a paragraph relating how Deadpool hired Taskmasker to help him defeat the Thunderbolts and get a big payday. That storyline is told in full in the trade Dark Reign: Deadpool / Thunderbolts. The two trades should have been combined into one collection & I don't get why Marvel didn't do so. However, I highly recommend readers pick that one up also, as it was even more entertaining than this collection.

Overall, I think I'm hooked on Deadpool and will definitely be reading more. I wouldn't recommend this for young readers because it is extremely violent, even gory at times, and Deadpool is not strictly a hero. He can and will commit murder. But for adults, Deadpool is an experience every comic reader should try! show less

The actual main Wolverine story was pretty incoherent, and with the whole plot being an elaborate misfooting and no actually Nick Fury at all, it just reminded you how none of this stuff actually happened or mattered in Marvel continuity - thus encapsulating the whole problem with "House of M": a million great ideas and character moments that never came together into anything because the exigencies of the megacrossover meant that they were just treated too perfunctorily for you to care. It's show more an unusual reason for failure - they didn't FAIL to sell it as real and alive and fraught with human drama, they succeeded and then went "but who cares?" Created something interesting and then totally didn't respect it. The other stories in this book are the same, really. show less

This graphic novel collects the first four issues of Daniel Way's 2009 reboot of Roy Thomas's 1970 Conan knockoff Starr the Slayer. The 21st-century version is an "adult" fantasy title from Marvel Comics' "Max" imprint. Richard Corben furnishes the art in his inimitable style. The story is very suited to Corben's work; it is a profanity-riddled barbarian-boy-makes-good adventure, with the narration provided in rhyming doggerel throughout by a ludicrous minstrel. Complication is provided by a show more hack pulp writer "Len Carson" (Thomas' creation), who is supposed to have invented the barbarian and his world, becoming enslaved by a fictional villain he created; thus the evil sorcerer Trull effectively has the demiurge as his thrall. This metaficitonal opus is sort of what you might get if a drunken 19-year-old D&D player tried to write James Branch Cabell's The Cream of the Jest.

This slender volume is a fast read, full of disgusting violence, nudity, and general hilarity. show less

Compared to the last volume, this is pure gold. But that's not saying much as the last one was cringe-worthy and almost unreadable. Evil Deadpool gives us an interesting look at how Deadpool is perceived and how he perceives himself. Left me interested to see how the story pans out in the final 14 issues of Way's run.