Gwenpool #1 // Review
A dead person is reanimated through exotic means and given crazy advanced tech that allows him to be the ultimate killing machine. It’s happened before. It’ll happen again. This time there are five of them. They all need to be terminated with extreme prejudice. There is one person who is sent out to do so. Seems like kind of a crazy idea. You don’t need one person to take down five superhuman killing machines. You need an army. Or maybe you need ONE person from another universe. Maybe she’ll be enough in Gwenpool #1. Writer Cavan Scott and artist Stefano Nesi
Fin Fang Foom is tearing-up Manhattan. The alien dragon from some distant star has taken down the Avengers, the X-Men AND the Fantastic Four. All that’s left to face him is Spider-Man, Kate Bishop and her pet land shark, Things look pretty grim The giant dragon is ready to crack the Earth open like an egg and consume the whole thing now that he’s taken care of his only significant opposition. Of course...it IS a big multiverse and it’s only a matter of time before a certain displaced hero finds her way through this particular Manhattan while hunting Deathloks.
Scott has a bit of fun with mixing the fourth wall with everything else that's going on in the issue. It's really hard to get a sense of scope with respect to the sense of danger that's going on in the issue. I mean, just casually showing single panel in which it's revealed that all of the major, heroes in the marvel universe are essentially dead in this particular place in this particular space. I mean, it's cool and everything. But the scope is all completely out of whack. And at the heart of it all there is this mystery of Gwen, Stacy, and what's going on with her. And stuff. But it's hard to really feel like there's anything coherent going on in the heart of all of the craziness that's rolling across the page. This would be fine if it was just a slapstick comedy. As it is, it is not. And so that your weight of the drama feels a little compromised by the strangeness of the story.
Nesi doesn't pretty good job of keeping everything looking. And it all feels like it's more or less where it needs to be. The action feels like it's hitting the page with the right amount of force. The intensity of the drama hits in interesting ways. And there's some rather creative use of the overall layout of the panels and everything. I mean, it's all very interesting. But it doesn't really have the kind of resonance that it needs to have. It's nice to see that the RV accusing comedy with the action and the drama and everything. It just doesn't quite feel like it's making the kind of connection. It needs to make an order for have firm footing and either comedy or drama.
The initial work is done on establishing what’s going on with this PARTICULAR Gwenpool series. With any luck, the overall action should start to pull together now that the basic premises established. Which the Central concrete revealed it should have a chance to gain some decent narrative momentum. It's just going to be a kind of a challenge getting there. And with the first issue that feels as scattered as this one does, it's going to be kind of difficult to make it really have any kind of a gravity to all of the craziness together.
