Let’s Do The Time Warp Again — Reviewing ‘Deadpool/Wolverine’ #4

Comic book decompression is taking a plot that could be done in two issues and turning it into six or more. It requires really pulling the threads of the plot till it’s so thin it would make spaghettini jealous.

Popular in other formats, this trend really took off in the 2000s with United States’ based comic book publishers. Generally the idea is to let character development and visuals do more of the talking. In execution, it’s debatably been lacking in more cases than not.

Deadpool/Wolverine by Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara, Guru-eFX, and Joe Sabino is bringing it back with a vengeance. Four issues into the run, well, we’re not much further along than we were when the whole thing started.

At the same time, it sure is a damn good thing to look at.

Cassara is just such a solid artist for these characters and this story. His work is so dense, with the right touch of rough meets soft and smooth. It’s gritty, but with a more comic book whimsical edge in the mix. These are over the top characters who deal with a lot of ridiculous things, after all. What they do best just tends to be extremely bloody. I mean, this is an issue that has a bunch of undead Western tech-infested zombies coming at the slicing and dicing duo. That’s some cool stuff.

All that gratuitous violence is kept really dark but never gory just for gore’s sake. There aren’t a lot of emotions going on here. A lot of typical rage and silliness is at least treated well with the visual language. Cassara can handle a lot of range, but a book like this only taps into some of those ranges. That isn’t necessarily bad on paper, but in execution can feel a bit lesser in some respects. As far as heroic action though, Cassara nails this stuff among the best of them.

Those heavy dark tones are matched with the color palette employed by Guru-eFX. They keep the smoother feeling to many of colors, with some rougher textures sprinkled upon the darker colors. This gives space for all the lighter more vibrant ones to pop. All those dynamic reds, yellows, and blues dominate for these fantastical characters.

Sabino sure has a lot to do in this book. There’s plenty of dialogue and captions that need that spark of life. This tends to happen when you have the overly talkative Deadpool and the monologuing Stryfe about. Everyone is just so darn verbose, which feels somewhat off for some reason other than Wade.

Anyway, as noted above, the emotional beats aren’t as strong in the story, so there isn’t a ton to bring into the lettering. Sabino still makes it happen. He hits the right notes for each bit of dialogue to foster uniqueness and range.

Through flashbacks and telepathic exposition dumps, we finally have at least some semblance of explanation. Not that it really brings much to the table since there are still so many gaps to fill. Percy handles these characters very solidly, nailing their voices and being one of the better writers at writing a good Logan.

Unfortunately, there are parts of this that are not his best showing. Like his work on the previous volume of Wolverine, the decompression hurts. It takes away from what could be and just drags out stories that have no business being as long as they are. There is so little happening that somehow the aforementioned Western zombie fight feels kind of meh. Truly wild.

We’ve watched Stryfe flying around travelling for three issues now. Logan has wanted to know what the *$!# is going on for those same issues. Deadpool has cracked far too many jokes while doing very little for four issues. Maverick? Well, he’s just over there doing the same stuff he always does in Percy written Logan stuff.

There is potential for a series teaming these two characters up. This one leaves so much on the table, just to tell a dragged out story (with many more issues still to go) that lacks any interesting anchors outside of the art.

Sometimes all the right pieces are assembled but the final product is found to be wanting. This would be one of those cases.

Deadpool/Wolverine #4 is now available from Marvel Comics.