It has been three months or so since War of the Realms wrapped up, which means it’s prime time for the trade paperback collections to catch up! The main series has already been collected, but how about the tie-in series? This week Deadpool’s latest trade drops in comic shops featuring a two-part War of the Realms tie-in. How on Earth does he contribute to fighting Malaketh and his Frost Giant army? Protecting Australia of course!
This is not only Skottie Young’s final few issues of the series but also some clever storytelling and good wink-and-nod comics. Deadpool heads to Australia where he meets three vigilante heroes each of which is hilarious and fun in their own right. One is basically a knock off of Superman, but not that strong, another can blow things up, and the other is the Tasmanian Devil, but they have to scratch out his name to avoid lawsuits. Young is quite good at giving Deadpool funny bits of dialogue and has him speak to Young himself here and there to remind us of the meta nature of our hero. How Young wraps up this two-part story is hilarious and should have any fan of Lord of the Rings rolling on the floor laughing.
Deadpool goes full Lord of the Rings in hilarious ways
Props to artists Nic Klein and Scott Hepburn, and colorist Ian Herring, who give the violence weight and bloody realism. At one point a character points out after meeting Deadpool he appears to only be good at moving his “one eye from big and round to squinty” and Klein sure does do a good job with that. In the final 15th issue Klein and Young wrap things up for their run with great callbacks to characters who popped up in prior issues. Mephisto plays a big part as well as the Batman pastiche named Good Night. I’m always shocked at how red this book is and yet it suits the tone and feels more like a Deadpool book than most.
Speaking of the final issue, Young nails it and then some. He manages to touch on the open wound that is Deadpool erasing his daughter from his memory while reminding Mephisto why you can’t mess with Deadpool. Ever. It has a nice callback to previous stories while adding a bit of closure to the series too.
Wrapping this collection up is the Deadpool Annual written by Dana Schwartz with art by Reilly Brown. It’s a damn good story with clever ideas at work and a meaningful conclusion. I wrote all about it in my single issue review, but Deadpool’s voice is captured perfectly and the issue has plenty of great dialogue and it is cleverly plotted too. The art by Brown and inkers Nelson DeCastro (with Craig Yeung) and color artists Matt Herms (with GURU-eFX) is solid stuff with cel-shaded-style inking that keeps the humor in a cartoony place. I love the work they’ve done on Nightmare’s realm and the use of green is great.
Deadpool is a series I kept meaning to read as it was being released, and now I wish I had. The War of the Realms tie-in issues are hilarious and each page is packed with humor, great ideas, and art that suits the story so very well.
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