Wade Wilson: Deadpool #1 // Review
Rural Northern Wisconsin. There’s a shipment of Holsteins bound for Canada. Evdiently they’re being smuggled-in. (they’ve got a ways to go before they get there unlesss there’s some kind of aquatic cows native to lak superior.) In any case...the farmers in question are doing a hell of a lot more than just black market cattle. One of those coaws is harboring the Merc With A Mouth inside its body. He’s about to clean-up a drug operation in Norther n Wisconsin in Wade Wilson: Deadpool #1. Writer Benjamin Percy opens a whole new ongoing series with artist Geoff Shaw and colorist Alex Sinclair.
The smugglers they are pretty surprised when they see gunfire coming out of a cow. From there are things get pretty ugly. It's not like they're not heavily armed. (This is, rural northern Wisconsin after all.) of course, against someone with a nearly infinite healing factor, they don't really stand much of a chance. And once the operation is complete, Deadpool's employer is going to ask him the most obvious question imaginable: “Wht the %#$% is wrong with you?” That's actually a pretty long story, but Deadpool's employer doesn't really care to hear the answer. Thankfully, he's more than happy to explain it to the readers.
Percy's opening sequence lacks the kind of surreal charm that would really serve to launch a series with this particular character. So it's kind of a slow start. Given the fact that it involves a lot of gun play and weirdness on a dairy farm and at least one reference to Norht By Northwest, is worth noting here. Deadpool just has a really high bar for weirdness given all that he's been through. That being said, Percy manages to really nail, a very clever and brilliant sense of drama. Deadpool is a guy who really wants to die in and he knows he can't. And so he's completely directionless. And completely apathetic about his own well-being. The mystery that sets-in at the end of the first issue really sets up a very compelling and fascinating adventure for a gentleman in his position.
Shaw and Sinclair our call the pond to do a few different major scenes in a few different locations that are all very down to earth. What's going on in the foreground is very strange. But it needs to be firmly grounded in a very earthbound sense of rural northern Wisconsin and Manhattan and tiny little diner somewhere in between. The team does a really good job of firmly establishing the earthbound reality of the story so that the action going on in the foreground can be as weird as it is. That action explodes across the page with every bit as much punch as one would expect for this particular character.
One could put just about any character in the situation that Deadpool's in and make it interesting. At least with respect to the basic premise that gets it set up at the end of the issue. The fact that Deadpool is completely directionless, and he now has a very solid and concrete direction in which to travel makes everything that much more interesting. He's had a direction pointed out to him and now he's going to follow it. Because there's nothing else for him to do. It's kind of an interesting dynamic for a heroic series.
