Chattering Up A Real Storm — Reviewing ‘Deadpool/Wolverine’ #8

Wolverine and being under mind control are like two peas in a pod. They go back a long time together. ‘Antagonistic acquaintances’ would be a good way to put it.

At least this time, he’s not alone. Every title character, supporting character, and extra that has graced the pages is mind controlled now. As Deadpool/Wolverine #8 ups the brain dominance, the maniacal antagonists, and the monologuing. Another chapter in this slow paced pre-apocalyptic Apocalypse story comes from Benjamin Percy, Joshua Cassara, Guru-eFX, and Joe Sabino.

It’s almost hilarious that Wolverine opens this issue caption monologuing about how it doesn’t matter how much he gets mind controlled. Because, by golly, he’s gonna get free eventually and tear out of that cage. Logan, buddy, that’s all true but maybe stop getting controlled so much, rather than trying to find the silver lining of your every Monday mind robbery.

This series looks great.

It does, every time, whoever is on the art. Especially when Cassara comes back on to draw this glacier of a book. The art is so dynamic with the choices for placement, framing, the body language, emotions, action, and you name it. Whatever it is, Cassara makes it sing on the page.

This is helpful for this book in many ways. Any series featuring two big (cash cow) characters like this should be one where the art is cutting loose. Just going all out and making it feel bigger than it has any right to be. Easy A+ on that front with the artwork we see on display here.

There is a murky quality to everything playing into the darkness of the tone. Guru-eFX leans into that with the colors. They really let the colorful costumes feel vibrant enough to be outlandish to our sort of world experience, but still not too fantastic that it feels off, since the rest of the world is kept at a very bright but even or neutral sort of tonal range.

This gives that vibe of familiarity and tangibility.

<<<SPOILERS FOLLOW>>>

There are some good ideas in this soup that Percy has been cooking. Unfortunately, there are some ingredients that are also questionable and leave the simmering project feeling off. Did we need another government organization big wig that somehow shot to the top and can now unleash their full bigoted hatred? No, not really, those are a dime a dozen in the X-Line. Even it being a woman isn’t as shattering as it might have been before the 2000s, but it’s still more representation.

We’ll give them that, I guess.

And oh my gosh, Apocalypse stuffed into a Stryfe suit has got to stop villain monologuing. Every issue just blathering exposition at us about stuff that happened off screen. Telling rather than showing given human form in a comic book. Doing his best Mister Sinister impression with the genetic material and clones plan for the new world order. Gosh do I miss the Krakoa version of Apocalypse who was more than this overly chatty 2D villain.

At least it all looks good.

Good on Sabino for making the cascading cavalcade of captions not feel so oppressive. They at least flow well and fit the scale and scope of the pages they occupy. There is some emotion present but not a ton, mostly because the two people doing basically all the talking and caption thinking are Apocalypse and Director Talyn. Not the most dynamically emotional people, one working in snooze mode and the other letting their rage out while breaking every HR policy in the books.

At least it all looks good.

Deadpool/Wolverine #8 is now available from Marvel Comics.