Review by Frank Plowright

Deadpool as the only surviving superhero in world of zombies is an idea to send shivers down the spine. Would anyone choose him as their last hope? Be that as it may, that’s the way things rolled out in Night of the Living Deadpool. It was disappointingly predictable, with the standout quality being Ramon Rosanas’ art. A sequel featuring as second helping of that would be no hardship.

Ah. This art is by Nik Virella, who’s also good, but not quite as. He sticks with the idea of Deadpool’s costume being the only colour on black and white pages, but Virella uses a grey wash and far more shadow, so while still distinctive, the art doesn’t stand out as much as red on plain white with black lines did last time. Virella is good with movement and detail, and chooses his viewpoints well, so nothing wrong with the art, just a different approach.

Cullen Bunn picks up sometime after the original story. That ended with Deadpool thinking he’d ended the zombie plague, then realising he hadn’t. What he instead did was unleash a whole load of more resistant zombies on the world, each with a little of his personality. It made for a joke ending to a story never intended to be continued, but continued it is, and so it’s now down to Deadpool to wipe out his doppelgangers. We’ve certainly seen Deadpool vs Deadpool before, but truth be told these Deadpools may wear the costume, but they aren’t much of a match for the genuine article.

Audience sympathy comes from Deadpool hooking up with a teenage girl who has to be feisty and resourceful just to survive, but while she drags Deadpool from place to place, Bunn’s focus increasingly becomes recasting zombie Deadpools in different roles. It gives Virella the chance for some funny visuals, but it’s limited. Plenty of people enjoyed Bunn’s first outing, but that there was no second sequel says it all about the sales figures on this.

Both of Bunn’s Deadpool zombie tales are combined with other material in the seventeenth Deadpool Classic: Headcanon.