Wolverine and Deadpool go together like chocolate and peanut butter in Wolverine #20, written by Benjamin Percy, drawn by Adam Kubert, colored by Frank Martin and Dijjo Lima, and lettered by Cory Petit.
Tony Thornley: Cassie! Welcome! From this first issue, I think this is going to be a lot of fun!
Cassie Tongue: I feel energized, I feel playful, I feel ā surprisingly charmed? Letās go!
I Hate Deadpool
Tony: I donāt like Deadpool. Heās really come to rub me the wrong way. But I think Percy struck a great balance here. Itās kind of like putting Deadpool with Spider-Man; he needs a straight man. Well, as much as Spidey as a straight man worked for a three-year-long ongoing series, I think Wade and Logan works even better. We saw it in āThe Good, the Bad and the Ugly,ā and this issue is a great setup for it.
Cassie: Itās time for my confession: I actually have a bit of a soft spot for Deadpool. I love tragic figures of the romantic/operatic persuasion, and when Deadpool gets to be a walking broken heart wearing stupid jokes like armour, Iām into it. Does Deadpool wear me out constantly? Sure. Does he represent the worst of commercial comicsā character-flattening tendencies for the sake of a cash grab? Absolutely. Do deeply offensive and alienating words get put into his mouth that make me wonder how I, a woman and a lesbian, even read comics at all? Do they ever. But when heās deployed smartly and well, when the jokes are actually good jokes, we get some pathos baked into it ā and when heās paired with the right dance partner, as it were ā then I am, so help me, all in.
And Iām all in here.
The first pages layer Deadpoolās caption boxes over a wonderfully positioned opening action sequence starring Logan, his bike and a semi packed with explosive (playing just so with the gutters, and with us, to tease the threat of impact), and his commentary is a loving parody of Loganās loner shtick. It serves as a refresher and an awakening, a handy return to a new arc of the title and lets us take a deep breath after all those Lives and Deaths.
Tony: Iām surprised to find myself agreeing! I really liked the opening narration, even though it was immediately obvious that it was Wade narrating. I enjoyed the Wolverine-ness of the opening sequence ā thereās a bomb, only Wolverine could have smelled it, heās going to chase down the truck the bomb is on. ā¦ It feels like a classic setup to a Logan story, but we get Wadeās narration, and then he steps up and helps by quietly throwing out a spike strip before Logan could catch up to the tractor-trailer.
I didnāt totally love the next few pages as Wade goes full Deadpool at his worst (including blasting some graded Wolverine #1ās), but what did you think of it?
Cassie: You know how sometimes you have a friend whose personality can be super grating, but you wait out those spells because you know that underneath all the bluster and performance theyāre actually quite lovely? Thatās how I bear out the worst parts of Deadpool: with a gritted-teeth serenity and the determined belief that the good outweighs the bad.
Seriously, though, I found his Full Deadpool mode bearable because it was surrounded by thoughtful structure and smartly witty art; his antics were balanced out by background gags, tongue-in-cheek framing and a twinkle in the storyās eye.
Percy has really found his gruff dad-poet voice for Wolverine. Itās developed and settled nicely over the previous 19 issues, and here, in issue #20, itās established enough that he can poke fun at it.
And itās easier to watch Deadpool bemoan his lack of contemporary comics popularity (like āthat old lady in Sunset Boulevard,ā a perfect reference) and mutantkindās flat refusal to let him into Krakoa because of how itās scripted, and how Wade is drawn to look just ridiculous enough, and just pathetic enough, to ground his hysteria in something real. Wadeās sung this Iām-practically-an-X-Man, please-let-me-play-with-you song many times before, and it works especially well here because ā well, because Wade wants it so damn much. Sure, he tries plenty of schemes and gags to get the thing, but he canāt hide how much it matters, and that makes it all the richer.
Of course, Logan is having none of it.
Tony: Yeah, Deadpool seemed really earnest in a way that he isnāt often. I liked that, even if by the end of the sequence he was the sort of Deadpool I really donāt like.
Logan tearing through the page and breaking the fourth wall himself to end this sequence though? Genius. I loved it.
By the way, Adam Kubertās layouts in this opening sequence really popped for me. His character work is always sharp, but there was something about these layouts this time that I felt had a better effect for the story. Did you notice it, too?
Cassie: I was immediately taken with it. The gutters a lurid pink, the panel shape steady for three pages until Deadpool jumps out of a plane and out of the panel into something slightly less stylised; the page gives way for him and allows us to barrel ahead. It wakes you up.
X-Desk Shenanigans
Cassie: Apart from Deadpool, thereās another issue at hand (sorry). Delores Ramirez, who heads up the CIAās X-Desk, had a severed Wolverine hand in her possession, and has potentially sold it off by converting her discretionary funds into cryptocurrency. Logan, obviously, wants to retrieve his hand, and he wants to do it alone.
Also obviously, heās not going to get his wish with that last part: Of course Deadpool is there. Tony, what do you think about these cloak-and-dagger dealings and where they lead?
Tony: The only thing I didnāt like about the back half of the book is the lack of our favorite Jeff Bridges look-alike, Jeff Bannister. I think the X-Desk more or less starting to fall apart is a good starting point for this story. Percy made them feel desperate, as they start to make big moves against Krakoa.
Both Sage and Blind Al reveal enough information to let the readers know that whatever theyāre doing is big. I like that Alās intel is more in depth than Sageās though, revealing something big to Wade.
What is it? Outside of some Life Model Decoys of the X-Men, the only thing we know is that Wade thought it was serious enough to attack an entire convoy to protect Krakoa. And as they leave the scene of the crime, we readers get a glimpse of a surprise player.
Danger has returned! When was the last time we saw her? X-Men Blue? It was a twist I didnāt see coming!
Cassie: X-Men Blue indeed! Itās been a minute since Danger was around, and we see her monitoring the adventures of Wolverine and Deadpool. What is she doing? Where will this blast from the past take us? Could there ever be room for her on Krakoa? Iām genuinely invested in learning the answers!
Tony: Me too! Hope supply chain issues donāt make this an extra-long wait!
X-Traneous Thoughts
- Oh boy, Wolverine and Deadpool, literally my least favorite thing of the last two years. I really hope the entire arc is more like this issue than the Hellfire Gala issue.
- Alternatively: oh boy, Wolverine and Deadpool! Iām so sorry Iām like this (Cassie).
- Iām fine with Logan and Deadpool as long as Krakoa plans to devour Staten Island. Is Deadpool still the king of Staten Island or whatever? Did Pete Davidson succeed him?
- I think itās important to note that all bodies are Krakoa Beach Bodies, not just Loganās. Related: Love a background gag. Less related: Krakoa Swimsuit Issue, please?
- Bub Light being the official beer of Weapon X victims should be canon.
- Speaking of making things canon, Deadpool tries to make a wish list of canon updates in a hijacked data page. Some (that Captain America is secretly afraid of dentists) feel more achievable than others (that Deadpool becomes an Omega level mutant)…
Cassie is an arts and culture writer living on Gadigal land in Australia. For 10 years sheās been working as a professional theatre critic, and is delighted to finally be writing about her other love: comics, baby.
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. Heās also very humble.
