By Daniel Way (writer), Tan Eng Huat (art), Marte Gracia (colors), and VC’s Joe Sabino (letters)
The Story: A one-and-done issue in which Deadpool find himself mixed up with the dastardly doings of a small town Georgia Sheriff station. Can our favorite Merc stop the wave of corruption infecting the office? Who can he trust? Has he finally found the woman of his dreams? Only the voices in his head know for sure.
What’s Good: Daniel Way’s Deadpool book has always been the best of an overstocked lot, and that doesn’t change in this issue. What really sets this apart, though, is the fact that Way gives us not only the best-written Deadpool of the bunch, but the best-written supporting/guest cast as well. ‘Pool has some absolutely fantastic lines (especially in the rather…surprising opening sequence, which I won’t spoil here except to say that it put me on the floor laughing), but all of the other characters have their own distinctive voices as well. Many writers—even the good ones—sometimes fail to do this, giving the small fry characters dialogue that sounds either so vanilla its completely unmemorable, or (worse) too much in the style of one of their main characters. None of the Way-Pool books I’ve ever read have fallen into this trap, and it’s amazing what a difference a detail like this makes both in terms of enjoyment and in ease of following the plot.
Tan Eng Huat has art duty, and does a bang-up job. None of these panels are going to be framed anytime soon, but the whole book has a rough and exaggerated feel to it that fits the mood of the story very well. There are a couple of weird angles and a few instances of strange character proportions, but nothing big or consistent enough to be a bother or distraction. Overall, very solid work. Marte Gracia does a great job backing him up with the colors as well; everything has a dark, brooding—almost horror-movie-esque—look that contrasts brilliantly with the absurdity of the dialogue and a lot of the drawings. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but either way it works out nicely.
What’s Not So Good: If there was anything to pick on in this issue, it would probably be the story as a whole. It’s not bad mind you, but it is a little…pedestrian in terms of its predictability. The twists that are there, while entertaining, are not shocking or surprising in the least. I suppose an argument could be made that that was Way’s intention—that he was deliberately satirizing the sort of story that would take place in a setting like this—but really all the humor to be found here is in the characters and their interactions, not in the plot. I could also point out that the art gets just a little too rough and slipshod in some places, but really these are minor issues, and ones that only came to mind after thinking about it for the purpose of this review.
Conclusion: This is a fun issue. Nothing groundbreaking, but if you’re in the mood for some classic Deadpool as written by the best Pool-writer working today, give it a look. It’s refreshing to read a quick, fun one-shot that I didn’t have to buy separate from the main book, too.
Grade: B
-SoldierHawk
Grade
Conclusion