Fabian Nicieza, Rob Liefeld, Mark Waid & others
Deadpool Classic volume one (1997)
Having decided Deadpool wasn't for me, I quickly expunged this first volume from my Amazon wish list, but apparently not quick enough given the temporal proximity of my birthday. Oh well, I thought, I'll give it to the kid - no doubt he'll think it's amazing, although I dutifully had a quick look, seeing as how it was a birthday present and all.
This one reprints Deadpool's first appearance in an impressively fucking awful issue of New Mutants, then a couple of four-issue limited series, and then the debut issue of the animé balloon animal version with which I am already unfortunately familiar.
I quite enjoyed Fabian Nicieza's Psi-Force at the time, and would say he scored above average as a writer of caped stuff providing you don't object to a certain reliance upon generically embittered mercenaries as narrative pivot; and most of this collection is rooted firmly in the nineties, so it's mostly wisecracking assassination and grimacing men with too many scratchy lines on their faces. Yet somehow I found I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, and certainly more than the more recent, arguably more imaginative version. I suspect this is because Deadpool simply works better as an unreconstructed Judas Priest album with jokes. Tarting up as violent, ironic Archie only serves to accentuate the flaws of both the character and the genre Deadpool inhabits. It feels thoroughly self-conscious, and at least as grave a mistake as going the other way and doing a Watchmen.
You were better when you were crap, to borrow the chorus of an old song by the Dovers.
Having decided Deadpool wasn't for me, I quickly expunged this first volume from my Amazon wish list, but apparently not quick enough given the temporal proximity of my birthday. Oh well, I thought, I'll give it to the kid - no doubt he'll think it's amazing, although I dutifully had a quick look, seeing as how it was a birthday present and all.
This one reprints Deadpool's first appearance in an impressively fucking awful issue of New Mutants, then a couple of four-issue limited series, and then the debut issue of the animé balloon animal version with which I am already unfortunately familiar.
I quite enjoyed Fabian Nicieza's Psi-Force at the time, and would say he scored above average as a writer of caped stuff providing you don't object to a certain reliance upon generically embittered mercenaries as narrative pivot; and most of this collection is rooted firmly in the nineties, so it's mostly wisecracking assassination and grimacing men with too many scratchy lines on their faces. Yet somehow I found I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, and certainly more than the more recent, arguably more imaginative version. I suspect this is because Deadpool simply works better as an unreconstructed Judas Priest album with jokes. Tarting up as violent, ironic Archie only serves to accentuate the flaws of both the character and the genre Deadpool inhabits. It feels thoroughly self-conscious, and at least as grave a mistake as going the other way and doing a Watchmen.
You were better when you were crap, to borrow the chorus of an old song by the Dovers.
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