Sorry for the delay on this one. Been distracted by Linkara videos, "Kingdom Hearts 3D", and "TableTop". Also I took a long time processing my feelings regarding "Green Lantern #0". I'll hopefully be getting back into the swing of things soon and will hopefully be able to get this week's pull list up tomorrow. Anyway, last week's comics! Here we go!
- Animal Man #0
- Batwing #0
- Deadpool #60
- Earth 2 #0
- Green Lantern #0
- Swamp Thing #0
SPOILERS as always beyond this point.
Showing posts with label daniel way. Show all posts
Showing posts with label daniel way. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Thursday, August 16, 2012
My Pull List - Comic Reviews for 8/15/2012
- Avengers Vs. X-Men #10
- Captain Marvel #2
- Deadpool #59
- Deadpool Kills The Marvel Universe #3
- Green Lantern #12
SPOILERS beyond this point.
- Captain Marvel #2
- Deadpool #59
- Deadpool Kills The Marvel Universe #3
- Green Lantern #12
SPOILERS beyond this point.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Posehn for Deadpool
It was revealed a few months back that Daniel Way's "Deadpool" series would be ending. Most Deadpool fans consider this a good thing, but I personally have enjoyed the majority of his run. Even so, it's clear that he's winding down and new blood is always welcome.
Then this week, it was revealed that Deadpool would be getting a new series during the "Marvel NOW!" marketing push and that it would be written by Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan (Posehn's frequent collaborator).
In case you don't know who Posehn is, you might recognize his face:
He's a fairly prominent comedic actor/stand-up comedian/voice actor/writer/nerd. My personal favorite role of his was Octus from the tragically short-lived show "Sym-Bionic Titan" (still waiting on that DVD release, Cartoon Network).
While he's by no means an inexperienced writer, he and Duggan have only done one other published comic book title, "The Last Christmas", which I haven't read, but it's supposedly about a post-apocalyptic Santa Claus. I might have to check that out.
Regardless, I'm reasonably certain that the hiring of Posehn and Duggan was what prompted Liefeld's comments from last week. He probably sees this as Marvel hiring a couple of no-names because they don't care about Deadpool.
Personally, I think Marvel hired them because they figured that comedians would be the best choice for a character like Deadpool, who is supposed to be very funny.
As for how I feel about it... well, since I haven't read "The Last Christmas", I can't say whether or not Posehn and Duggan have a good sense of comic book writing. It is a very different animal from writing for stand-up, TV, or film. The last time I saw a comic book written by a nerdy comedian was the Serenity tie-in "Float Out" written by Patton Oswalt and it was... pretty dull.
Even so, I'm a little optimistic about this choice primarily because if anyone can get Deadpool, it's probably a stand-up comic.
The thing a lot of writers miss about Deadpool's humor is that he's not funny for the sake of being funny or because he's immature or because he's crazy. Humor is, more often than not, a defense mechanism. The funniest person you know is probably surprisingly insecure. They feel like they have a lot of personal shortcomings so they try to overcompensate through humor. Deadpool is the same way.
Deadpool's life SUCKS. No one likes to work with him, he's hideous, he has a lot of physical and psychological trauma, he can't die, and nothing ever really works out for him. Humor is about all he has left. Humor is his greatest weapon, causing his opponents to underestimate him or get annoyed with him. Humor is his greatest defense, allowing him to play off like nothing matters to him so that he can avoid making any moral commitments. Humor helps him maintain his grip on reality, giving him a way to justify all of the horrible things that have happened to him.
Humor is Deadpool's mask.
If you've ever seen biographies on stand-up comedians, you'll find that a great deal of them are dealing with some kind of depression or anxiety. In a way, a lot of them use their stand-up as a way of handling their personal issues.
Then we have Posehn. Not only is he a stand-up comedian, he's an overweight, middle-aged nerd. You can bet your ass he understands the use of humor as a defense mechanism.
So I'm going to give Posehn and Duggan a little bit of faith here. They may not have the most experience in the world, but I'm reasonably confident that they'll be able to at least understand the character better than most writers do.
Also, I'm pretty inclined to support any writers that Liefeld probably isn't happy with.
Friday, July 27, 2012
The Marvel Universe Kills Deadpool
In my last post about Deadpool, I talked about how after the most recent series became successful, Marvel started saturating the market with Deadpool side-stories, mini-series, alternate universes, etc. and how most of it sucks simply because the majority of the writers don't understand Deadpool. They think he's just a funny, schizophrenic Punisher.
One series I neglected to mention is one that is slated to come out later this year, "Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe".
This is a miniseries taking place in an alternate timeline where Deadpool goes crazy and kills everyone in the Marvel Universe. Heroes, villains, the works.
Marvel had done something identical with (you guessed it) the Punisher a few years back, so you can imagine I was more than a little skeptical.
Then I read this description:
• What if everthing you thought was funny about Deadpool…was actually just disturbing?
• What if he decided to kill everyone and everything that makes up the Marvel Universe?
• What if he actually pulled it off? Would that be FUN for you?
• The Merc with a Mouth takes a turn for the twisted in a weekly horror comic like no other...
Yeah. REALLY skeptical.
But a part of me wasn't ready to call bullshit on this yet. I thought there was a direction this could go in that could conceivably work. If the writer REALLY understood Deadpool and went in some very dark recesses of Deadpool's past, then yeah, it could work. Deadpool DOES have a disturbing and scary side to him. No one has captured this quite as well as Joe Kelly did back when he first introduced us to "The Box"...
One series I neglected to mention is one that is slated to come out later this year, "Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe".
This is a miniseries taking place in an alternate timeline where Deadpool goes crazy and kills everyone in the Marvel Universe. Heroes, villains, the works.
Marvel had done something identical with (you guessed it) the Punisher a few years back, so you can imagine I was more than a little skeptical.
Then I read this description:
• What if everthing you thought was funny about Deadpool…was actually just disturbing?
• What if he decided to kill everyone and everything that makes up the Marvel Universe?
• What if he actually pulled it off? Would that be FUN for you?
• The Merc with a Mouth takes a turn for the twisted in a weekly horror comic like no other...
Yeah. REALLY skeptical.
But a part of me wasn't ready to call bullshit on this yet. I thought there was a direction this could go in that could conceivably work. If the writer REALLY understood Deadpool and went in some very dark recesses of Deadpool's past, then yeah, it could work. Deadpool DOES have a disturbing and scary side to him. No one has captured this quite as well as Joe Kelly did back when he first introduced us to "The Box"...
Monday, July 16, 2012
Deadpool (The Video Game)
High Moon Studios just recently released a teaser trailer for an upcoming game based on my favorite comic book character, Deadpool.
My gut instinct is to be excited about this, but I can't help but be a bit reserved and skeptical. Let me explain why.
Believe it or not, there was a time when Deadpool was not really all that popular. It's a rather long and uninteresting story, but basically he had a number of comic series starting in 1997 and in 2004, he started sharing a title with another Liefeld character, Cable. "Cable & Deadpool" is still fondly remembered by many fans, primarily because Deadpool works best with a straight-man to play off of and Cable was a great straight-man. However, it became more and more obvious that Deadpool was a little too shut off from the rest of the Marvel Universe. Cable's story arcs were always the ones that actually had any weight regarding the rest of Earth-616 and Deadpool was basically just the character that bounced around and messed things up or had wacky adventures that were entirely divorced from Cable's plots. It was unsurprising that when Cable left due to X-Men time-travel shenanigans and whatnot, Deadpool didn't have much else to do.
Deadpool had always had a dedicated following, but he never went mainstream, primarily because he almost never got involved with the mainstream universe's goings-on.
Then in 2008, about half a year after "Cable & Deadpool" got canceled, Deadpool got his own solo title back, this time written by Daniel Way.
A lot of people have different feelings regarding this run, but personally, while I do think that Daniel Way isn't the FUNNIEST writer for Deadpool, he certainly GETS Deadpool in a way that no one really has since Joe Kelly.
You see, people who often write Deadpool understand only a few key elements of him. They know he's murderous, insane, hilarious, ugly, and that he breaks the fourth wall. So that's usually the extent of what they do with him.
What Joe Kelly did (and what Daniel Way does) is he understood WHY Deadpool behaved the way he did. He showed us that Deadpool was very conflicted and perhaps isn't as crazy as he lets on. He sometimes made us wonder if Deadpool was the only sane person in the entire universe. His fourth-wall breaking isn't just there to be silly, it's there either because of his tenuous grip on the nature of his reality or because it's the only way he can mentally digest the absurdity of his life.
My point is, I like Daniel Way's run because he gets Deadpool in a way that most writers don't.
The other thing about Daniel Way's run is that it ushered in a bit of a Deadpool craze.
You see, another thing that marked Daniel Way's run was that he started getting Deadpool more involved in the over-arching plots of the Marvel Universe. In fact, the first year or so of Deadpool's new comic was almost entirely centered around something he does during the "Secret Invasion" story line. It also tied him in with the Thunderbolts series during the "Dark Reign" story line. I personally think that this momentary spotlight gave Deadpool a sudden boost in visibility and new readers flocked to him. Deadpool became more popular than ever before.
As a long-time fan, I was happy to see the character finally getting the attention I believed he deserved.
However, as any Marvel fan knows, once Marvel has a popular character on their hands, they milk it for all that it's worth.
Since Daniel Way's run became popular, we've had "Deadpool: Suicide Kings", "Deadpool: Merc With a Mouth", "Deadpool Corps", "Deadpool Team-Up", "Deadpool MAX", "Deadpool Pulp", "Deadpool: Wade Wilson's War"... the list of spin-offs and miniseries goes on. And the worst part is that with rare exception, almost none of them actually understand the character.
Deadpool is often misused as a character designed to let comedic writers do whatever silly funny things they want without needing to be serious. Deadpool's crazy so he doesn't need a good reason to do any of the things he does, right? So let's just throw him into whatever plot we come up with and throw in a ton of jokes and action scenes and that'll do it.
This is why I can't tolerate most of these other series. It's not enough to be funny and violent. There's a certain amount of subtle intellectualism behind Deadpool that far too many people miss. They basically treat him like a funny Punisher.
And to be quite frank, when I look at this trailer, I definitely get the feeling that High Moon Studios only gets the funny and violent part.
Now, that can work to a certain extent. I mean, Deadpool's inclusion in team-up video games and "Marvel Vs. Capcom 3" didn't need to reach past his surface-level antics because those games aren't about individual character development.
However, an entire game centered around him with a real narrative and everything absolutely MUST understand him.
I will say this, Nolan North has always done a good Deadpool. He first voiced the character in a short animated feature called "Hulk Vs. Wolverine", portraying a version of the character that was still with Weapon X and had clearly not yet grown a conscience. He was funny but still sounded a bit threatening and vindictive. Then he reprised the character in the aforementioned "Marvel Vs. Capcom 3", where he sounded more like he does in this trailer. A bit goofier, a bit more playful, and less vindictive and threatening. To me, this shows that North understands how layered the character is. I also gained a ton of respect for the actor's talent in his recent performances as Superboy in "Young Justice". I think he can pull this off if he's given a good script.
That's the part that worries me.
If the entire game is just about Deadpool bouncing around and having silly adventures and never ever gets serious, I will absolutely hate it, no matter how good Nolan North is.
It's hard to judge a game based on a trailer like this, but let's just say that given the volumes of bad Deadpool interpretations that have come out over the past few years, I won't be surprised if this game will just be a "Devil May Cry" game with lots of bad jokes and wasted opportunities.
My gut instinct is to be excited about this, but I can't help but be a bit reserved and skeptical. Let me explain why.
Believe it or not, there was a time when Deadpool was not really all that popular. It's a rather long and uninteresting story, but basically he had a number of comic series starting in 1997 and in 2004, he started sharing a title with another Liefeld character, Cable. "Cable & Deadpool" is still fondly remembered by many fans, primarily because Deadpool works best with a straight-man to play off of and Cable was a great straight-man. However, it became more and more obvious that Deadpool was a little too shut off from the rest of the Marvel Universe. Cable's story arcs were always the ones that actually had any weight regarding the rest of Earth-616 and Deadpool was basically just the character that bounced around and messed things up or had wacky adventures that were entirely divorced from Cable's plots. It was unsurprising that when Cable left due to X-Men time-travel shenanigans and whatnot, Deadpool didn't have much else to do.
Deadpool had always had a dedicated following, but he never went mainstream, primarily because he almost never got involved with the mainstream universe's goings-on.
Then in 2008, about half a year after "Cable & Deadpool" got canceled, Deadpool got his own solo title back, this time written by Daniel Way.
A lot of people have different feelings regarding this run, but personally, while I do think that Daniel Way isn't the FUNNIEST writer for Deadpool, he certainly GETS Deadpool in a way that no one really has since Joe Kelly.
You see, people who often write Deadpool understand only a few key elements of him. They know he's murderous, insane, hilarious, ugly, and that he breaks the fourth wall. So that's usually the extent of what they do with him.
What Joe Kelly did (and what Daniel Way does) is he understood WHY Deadpool behaved the way he did. He showed us that Deadpool was very conflicted and perhaps isn't as crazy as he lets on. He sometimes made us wonder if Deadpool was the only sane person in the entire universe. His fourth-wall breaking isn't just there to be silly, it's there either because of his tenuous grip on the nature of his reality or because it's the only way he can mentally digest the absurdity of his life.
My point is, I like Daniel Way's run because he gets Deadpool in a way that most writers don't.
The other thing about Daniel Way's run is that it ushered in a bit of a Deadpool craze.
You see, another thing that marked Daniel Way's run was that he started getting Deadpool more involved in the over-arching plots of the Marvel Universe. In fact, the first year or so of Deadpool's new comic was almost entirely centered around something he does during the "Secret Invasion" story line. It also tied him in with the Thunderbolts series during the "Dark Reign" story line. I personally think that this momentary spotlight gave Deadpool a sudden boost in visibility and new readers flocked to him. Deadpool became more popular than ever before.
As a long-time fan, I was happy to see the character finally getting the attention I believed he deserved.
However, as any Marvel fan knows, once Marvel has a popular character on their hands, they milk it for all that it's worth.
Since Daniel Way's run became popular, we've had "Deadpool: Suicide Kings", "Deadpool: Merc With a Mouth", "Deadpool Corps", "Deadpool Team-Up", "Deadpool MAX", "Deadpool Pulp", "Deadpool: Wade Wilson's War"... the list of spin-offs and miniseries goes on. And the worst part is that with rare exception, almost none of them actually understand the character.
Deadpool is often misused as a character designed to let comedic writers do whatever silly funny things they want without needing to be serious. Deadpool's crazy so he doesn't need a good reason to do any of the things he does, right? So let's just throw him into whatever plot we come up with and throw in a ton of jokes and action scenes and that'll do it.
This is why I can't tolerate most of these other series. It's not enough to be funny and violent. There's a certain amount of subtle intellectualism behind Deadpool that far too many people miss. They basically treat him like a funny Punisher.
And to be quite frank, when I look at this trailer, I definitely get the feeling that High Moon Studios only gets the funny and violent part.
Now, that can work to a certain extent. I mean, Deadpool's inclusion in team-up video games and "Marvel Vs. Capcom 3" didn't need to reach past his surface-level antics because those games aren't about individual character development.
However, an entire game centered around him with a real narrative and everything absolutely MUST understand him.
I will say this, Nolan North has always done a good Deadpool. He first voiced the character in a short animated feature called "Hulk Vs. Wolverine", portraying a version of the character that was still with Weapon X and had clearly not yet grown a conscience. He was funny but still sounded a bit threatening and vindictive. Then he reprised the character in the aforementioned "Marvel Vs. Capcom 3", where he sounded more like he does in this trailer. A bit goofier, a bit more playful, and less vindictive and threatening. To me, this shows that North understands how layered the character is. I also gained a ton of respect for the actor's talent in his recent performances as Superboy in "Young Justice". I think he can pull this off if he's given a good script.
That's the part that worries me.
If the entire game is just about Deadpool bouncing around and having silly adventures and never ever gets serious, I will absolutely hate it, no matter how good Nolan North is.
It's hard to judge a game based on a trailer like this, but let's just say that given the volumes of bad Deadpool interpretations that have come out over the past few years, I won't be surprised if this game will just be a "Devil May Cry" game with lots of bad jokes and wasted opportunities.
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