Review by Frank Plowright

As IVX opens Deadpool has a problem. His first team of Mercs for Money decided they didn’t need him, and while the replacement team consider him an asset, they’d prefer Domino to do the actual, you know, leading, because as seen in Mo’ Mercs Mo’ Monkeys, Deadpool hardly knocked things out of the park when in charge. Neither did writer Cullen Bunn for that matter, but he’s on slightly better form here without recapturing the spirit of the manic triumph that was Merc Madness.

Domino, Gorilla Man, Hit Monkey, Machine Man, Masacre and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (yes, really) are the current crew, best seen over the first shorter story resolving a few differences and taking down the Circus of Crime in its new incarnation. Let’s just refer to Negasonic Teenage Warhead as Ellie, as that’s easier when she’s key to the two chapters tying in with the tiff the Inhumans and the X-Men were having in 2016, generating the IVX title. Bunn’s deliberately kept Ellie’s abilities vague, in part by having artists show things not commented on in the dialogue, but she reaches a crisis point in a story largely set five years in a future that’s come about via a decision she’s made. It’s a touching piece about how the road to hell is paved, or would be if Iban Coello wasn’t overcrowding the panels and blurring the storytelling. And he was so good last time round.

Brian Level draws the opener, also stylised, and both tales set up plots not completed in what’s the final of the Mercs for Money graphic novels. Both Level and Coello’s work is also reprinted in bulkier paperback Deadpool Classic Vol. 23: Mercs for Money.

Not found there is the final story, which tops the lead material, being a pastiche of 1980s TV animation Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. For reasons unnecessary to know, Deadpool has replaced Spider-Man, and hangs around with Firestar and Iceman battling crime. Scott Koblish captures the cheap look of the animation art and writers Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan capture the hokey tone. The joke is that a cheap animated version of Deadpool might be inserted into that world, but he retains his lack of boundaries and murderous personality. The battle with the Sinister Six is hilarious, as are the couple of short sitcom style jokes that follow.

Nowhere near as entertaining is Adam Warren’s ‘Nü Flesh’ about a genetic experiment gone wrong and freaky fleshy monsters wreaking havoc.

The parody is the highlight, and most of the remainder swithers around average. That parody really is funny, mind.