Time to experience the unbearable darkness of Deadpool…  Your Major Spoilers review of Deadpool #6 awaits!

DEADPOOL #6

Writer: Skottie Young
Artist: Scott Hepburn
Colorist: Ian Herring
Letterer: Jeff Eckleberry
Editor: Jake Thomas
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: November 7, 2018

Previously in Deadpool: The Merc with the Mouth is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.  Despite plenty of naturally occurring double entendres, crazy violence and adult situations, Deadpool just cannot get his mojo back.  Is Deadpool just having a bad day or is it something…  more?

THE HEALING POWER OF LAUGHTER

A new day dawns for the Merc blah blah blah, and he’s just… not feelin’ it.  Wade Wilson is having what John Cleese would call “this ennui”, and nothing can bring him out of it.  Not a clown trying to kill him, not a chimichanga, not Doctor Strange suffering an amusingly gross injury.  Heck, not even a cameo by the Fantastic Four can bring him out of his funk enough to break a third wall, much less the fourth.  He sleepwalks through his day, doing his laundry and just missing alien abductions, while an unnamed man tries to kill him repeatedly.  He finally winds up in a seedy bar, ready to drown his sorrows in the demon alcohol when his would-be assassin arrives and finally gets him squarely in his sights.  “The world was telling me there’s not enough room for the two of us,” he monologues triumphantly.  “And now, the world will know Deadpool was permanently shut up by…

KILLPUDDLE, THE LAUGHIN’ ASSASSIN!”

NEGASONIC’S TEXTING MAKES THE BOOK

That big punchline reveal is well-shadowed throughout the issue, from the texts from Negasonic Teenage Warhead that open the issue, and it actually works pretty well.  Comedy is always in the eye of the beholder, but the subtle build of not revealing his nom de guerre until his big announcement is skillful, and the ridiculousness of the moment finally breaks Wade out of his funk, leading to a cathartic laugh, followed by a little cathartic murderizing.  Hepburn’s art is a bit on the scratchy side, but never so much as to be distracting, and it adds a layer to Wade’s sadness, making it all seem a little more grimy and sordid.  The moment in the laundromat where Wade is challenged by a jerk to say something and prepares to launch a salvo of foul-mouth witticisms, only to draw a blank is full of expression and subtlety.  The look on Wade’s ruined face when he realizes he’s lost his mojo is both sad and kind of funny.

BOTTOM LINE: AMUSING

It’s a done-in-one issue with an open-and-shut plot, but Deadpool #6 succeeds in landing it’s one joke and even sells the point that it’s hilarious enough to fix Wade’s existential quandary, with art that occasionally really dazzles, earning 3.5 out of 5 stars overall.  It’s nice to be reminded that Wade Wilson is a human being with a full range of emotions in the pages of the comics, though, and I like the design work on Killpuddle enough that it’s kind of a shame he won’t appear again.