Monologuing Like There Is No Tomorrow — Reviewing ‘Deadpool/Wolverine’ #6

Every step of a journey is meant to take you closer to the eventual destination. Sometimes steps are actually crawling. At a speed that would make a turtle seem like a cheetah.

Another month means another issue of Deadpool/Wolverine which very much embodies that slow sentiment above. This sixth chapter of the series comes from Benjamin Percy, Robert Gill, Guru-eFX, and Joe Sabino.

Exposition, the comic book. That’s how I’m going to refer to this book within my mind. It sure does a darn good job of just pouring a giant bucket of monologuing exposition all over the place every month.

Joshua Cassara takes a break after carrying the first five issues, letting Gill step in artistically. I had to go back and double check the credits because the styles felt very similar. It bodes well for the book since art has been the high mark the whole time.

There is a good amount of the right rougher textures to be found in the work. It’s a bit more whimsical in a few spots than the previous issues, but it works for what is going down. There is a lot of dynamic energy to be found here, as the few action scenes flow smoothly — even the more static characters just traveling in a straight line or standing around feel fine.

Emotive, well defined, and bringing in the creepy energy since this is partially now a zombie book. Kind of.

Colors match the dynamic as Guru-eFX keeps the same palette going here. An overall midtone to somewhat toned down in most areas. Setting up the overall aesthetic for the surroundings before pumping it up vibrancy wise with the more outlandish elements.

As noted above, there is a spewing of dialogue to be found everywhere. Especially as Stryfpocalypse goes into full unhindered villain monologue mode. Sabino makes sure it all logically flows across the page and doesn’t become jumbled or overwhelming, adding some inflections and elements to keep the voices straight. Even as the overall stuff from Stryfpocalypse gives me old school comic overflow or overexplain in a bad way.

This series knows what it is.

Which is both a good and bad thing. Having the two title characters that it does means the book is likely not in danger of cancellation anytime soon. Therefore, it has room to really drag its feet the way that it has been, except it might not. A story that is moving at this speed is really not telling the audience much and that can often be frustrating.

Percy is a good writer and handles the characters well. I’m just not sure what the endgame is here since after six issues, we still know very little about the overwhelming number of things being thrown on the page. Sure, we get an explanation about Stryfpocalypse, but it’s just him regurgitating old comic book stuff at us for pages … which feels tiring.

This very well could have been a book with numerous fun or serious adventures with the duo. Instead, they are mostly separated and underutilized because of mind control and there being too many characters and things to deal with each issue. Deadpool is in like two pages of this issue, just showing up to save Maverick and crack one joke. Maverick has gotten more page time than Deadpool for a couple issues, and technically more than Logan since actual Logan isn’t at home right now (mind control!).

Deadpool/Wolverine #6 is now available from Marvel Comics.