Marvel’s Deadpool: Black, White and Blood #4 miniseries closes with a quip and a bang, but it still lags behind the series’ first outing.
Deadpool: Black, White And Blood #4
Laura Allred (Colors and Cover); Michael Allred (Writing, Art, and Cover); Ryan Brown (Cover); Martin Coccolo (Art); Mattia Iacono (Colors); Sanshiro Kasama (Writer); VC’s Joe Sabino (Letters); Hikaru Uesugi (Art); Christopher Yost (Writer)
November 10, 2021
Marvel Comics
It’s finally the end of the road for ol’ Deadpool — well, at least for this particular series. Deadpool: Black, White and Blood closes out its short run by sending Wade Wilson to alternate realities and having him meet fresh faces. And having him battle a giant, sentient glass pitcher shaped like a dinosaur and filled with cherry Kool-Aid. If you’re a Deadpool fan, you know what’s going to happen next: pure chaos and mayhem, followed by a chaser of unpredictability, printed in shades of white, black, and red. I enjoyed all three stories in this volume, but it’s still not my favorite Deadpool comic of 2021 (Black, White, and Blood #1 holds that slot).
This batch of ‘Pool-centered stories focuses on the surreal and the silly. Wade’s response to encountering the Devil Drink Dino In “Cherry” (Yost/Coccolo/Sabino/Iacono) is spot-on: “You guys are getting so sued.” Deadpool cleans up some dirty business at a science lab by A.I.M. He quickly finds out that some nasty DNA manipulation has brought about the existence of this hellish Kool-Aid Man-esque figure and tries to escape with his life. Iacono provides some amazingly textured colorwork here. Panels have a crisp sense of realistic depth, bright light, and deep shadow, and Cocolo’s art is elegant and attractive. A visual stand-out in a strong batch of stories.
Deadpool next introduces “Samurai Version” (Kasama/Sabino/Uesugi) by informing his readers that they are about to read a story from Deadpool Samurai, the “Most-read comic all over the world in 2020.” He promptly shoots an observer who says that it was available to read for free. This is a truism — the comic, now collected in TPG format, started as an online exclusive. The rest of the story provides a decently-drawn battle between Deadpool, Disposer, and Sakura-Spider that doesn’t lead anywhere but gives us some gore, blood, action and breaks the fourth wall. For anyone unfamiliar with the Deadpool Samurai universe the plot will likely be lost on them. But for those yearning for more Sakura-Spider, they’ll get a kick out of the adventure. For everyone else (including me) it felt like a disposable entry that weakens the book and needed a pinch of something extra.
In the final story, “Operation Payback!” (Allred/Allred/Sabino), Deadpool falls asleep at the movies and has a surrealistic dream in which he wakes up on an alien planet. Attempting to rescue a child from a gigantic red centipede, he soon learns that all is not what it seems. The Allreds provide a strong finish to the book, giving their audience pages of gory goodness. The imagery combines pop art with elements reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, Labyrinth, and The Descent. Its playfulness is touched with despair, but it never gives in to nihilism, and the ending is genuinely funny.
If the middle story were a little more lively I’d give this a wholehearted recommendation; the terrific bookending stories are what make Black, White, and Blood worth a look. But don’t prioritize it over your usual monthly pull titles.
