I know it’s a little past due, considering this series ended, what? A month ago? Two? I don’t know… honestly I never quite knew. Spider-Man/Deadpool was always that title I let stack up in my pull, and usually on a quiet Saturday morning every other season I would binge the five to ten issues that I had in stock, which is what I’ll probably miss the most about this series, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself here.
#spoilers
Spider-Man/Deadpool began as a fun, logical team-up book that was helmed by comic masters Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness. We saw an extended arc that produced Spider-Man and Deadpool’s ravenous … offspring? It was bizarre, but fitting. We also got to enjoy interlude issues by guest creators that granted us fun tales involving a roided out Santa Claus slaughtering the masses and even Penn and Teller (as writers, too! Seriously, check it out).
Cue MARVEL LEGACY, and the book got a slight, though brief, re-branding as Spider-Man VS Deadpool, with Robbie Thompson pulling the strings. The book follows a similar rhythm, though not quite the same. We get a lot more breaking of the fourth wall, more and more so until literally the final arc is a parody of comic book events and the actual breaking of said fourth wall.
This book goes the distance. Honestly, it could’ve kept going for all I care. Did it get a little too zany in the end? Maybe, but it was always for fun, and that’s why it never really lost steam. I don’t know why it got cancelled, but for what it’s worth this is a solid run of comics that pairs two fan favorites and it’s everything you might expect it to be. Still, there’s a lot of untapped potential that another fifty issues could have given us, but at least they ended it on a nice round number.
I still think the first chunk of the run before Legacy was the forte of the series, so for anyone who hasn’t dipped into it I’d suggest reading the first handful of trades, but if you have the time or the interest the entire run is worth consuming, even all the buffer stories. Oldies is probably the longest of the side stories, but it’s still entertaining. It only got a little frustrating bouncing back and forth from one arc to the other, but as collected editions it probably reads just fine.
If there’s a favorite portion I’d say the Road Trip story was my personal choice. They took advantage of the fourth wall in hilarious ways that never felt too forced, plus it was mostly just Spidey and Deadpool volleying off of one another, and it never lost flavor.
Seriously, does anybody know why this book got axed? I know comic book sales are all over the place these days, but I never heard anything bad about this book… unless I’m in the minority of people who love it. Oh well, either way it was fun while it lasted, and now I have to look for another book to let pile up for months on end…
TL;DR Score: …. waiiiit a minute… is it because I let it pile up that it got cancelled?
TL;DR Comics 