Deadpool: April Pool’s Day #1 // Review
The Spider-Man alarm clock goes off right next to the gun on the counter. There are a few stray bullets not far from it. It’s a good morning, though. Wade’s in good spirits as he makes his way through what will hopefully be a fun Wednesday, April First in Deadpool: April Pool’s Day #1. Writer Gail Simone is joined by the art team of C.F. Villa, Robert Gill and Ig Guara. Color comes to the page courtesy of Rachelle Rosenberg. It’s a weird mash-up of different spoofs that all collide together in an enjoyably twisted sequential fever dream.
Wade appears in full costume..with Elvis hair under a romance logo. He’s on an opening splash page and there’s a woman there confessing that she’s kissed another man. This news might be devastating if he knew who the hell she was. She seems to know him, though. She’s calling him Larry...telling him that she kissed Buzz Baxter...and can not go through with their marriage. Naturally, Deadpool is going to be more than a bit confused about the whole situation, but things are going to get a whole lot more confusing before he makes it to the final panel.
And then the army jeep rolls through with a WWII-era army squad led by Sgt. Storm. A romance spoof runs right in to a war spoof. Gail Simone has fun putting a kind of a Mad Magazine-style anthology spoof into the context of a single narrative that ties them all together. The fact that Wilson feels like he might have a serious concussion adds a layer of context to it that makes it feel all the more clever. It would have been easy to simply shoot Deadpool through a whole bunch of mini-spoofs and call it a day, but Simone’s decision to put it all in a dramatic and Earthbound context lends a greater gravity to the format. Simone manages to work a little magic with an update on the old Star Comics line from the 1980s that actually feels kind of novel even though it’s the sort of thing that’s been done before quite often over the years. Simone’s heart and humor sell it quite well.
The art team isn’t given an easy task. The weird slapstick spoofery has to land with the right comic impact while still delivering the drama that it needs to deliver in order to really sell the deeper parts of Simone’s script. Thankfully, the art team is up to the task...rather deftly threading the needle as it moves between silly comedy and something altoggether more dark and sinister. It’s not an easy balance to maintain, but they manage with the aid of atmosphere, depth and texture from the colors of Rachelle Rosenberg.
It’s a fun combination of different elements that all coalesce on the page for a weird fever dream of an adventure for the first day of April. Quite a lot going on between two covers the suggest a kind of insanity that just might get a bit deeper into Deadpool’s addled mind than a more traditionally-planted superhero drama story. The balance between horror and comedy in the world of Deadpool can be very, very difficult to manage. Simone and company have done a great job of managing that balance.
