Review by Frank Plowright

Deadpool Classic Vol. 23 collects another batch of Cullen Bunn’s Deadpool material. He’s usually at the upper end of the quality scale when it comes to the Merc With the Mouth, but not everything here satisfies as you might want.

The peak is early as Deadpool’s gathered a bunch of other mercenaries to help him out on assignments. There’s Foolkiller, who’s self-explanatory, the teleporting Solo, and horror flick reject Terror who replaces his body parts from the dead. Stingray used to be an Avenger, briefly, not a mercenary, so he’s a puzzle, and there’s Slapstick, who’s a cartoon, or as he prefers an “Animated American”. Masacre is the Mexican equivalent of Deadpool.

Despite being a strangely incompatible bunch, their first five chapter outing provides all the slapstick, smart mouths and major mistakes you want from Deadpool. An object is retrieved without too much trouble, but the people who’re supposed to pay for it have been slaughtered, leaving the assorted mercenaries with the goods, but no money. The solution is to auction it, at which point mayhem ensues.

Bunn is skilled at dredging up the obscure mistakes at Marvel, and repurposing them as joke material, and this doesn’t just apply to his new team. The book’s other greatly enjoyable sequence features more obscurities, this time with Deadpool acquiring Spider-Man’s black costume in the 1980s just after Peter Parker discovers it’s actually an alien symbiote, later Venom. Bunn generates hilarity from both the situation and the times.

Salva Espin and Iban Coello draw most of the content, both smooth superhero artists, with Espin (sample left) less likely to concentrate on the figures alone. Bunn’s plots tread a fine line, and overselling the comedy with gross exaggeration would undermine the intention. Thankfully neither Coello nor Espin resort to that, leaving the comedy to the captions and dialogue.

After a cracking first outing for Deadpool and the Mercs for Money, the remainder of their material only sparks into life occasionally. While acknowledging the farce of their opening appearance isn’t a formula able to sustain repetition, an injection of standard superhero problems, or as near as Deadpool ever gets to them, isn’t the answer either. The longest plot concerns the Mercs rounding up characters emitting radioactivity, and Deadpool only belatedly realising the people paying him are the greater threat. The original third rate team of mercs are quickly shuffled away and replaced instead with second raters like Domino and Machine Man, but it’s serviceable, not outstanding.

The saggy middle section doesn’t diminish the enjoyment provided by the opening and closing stories, but you might be better off picking them up in paperback as Merc Madness (with the bonus of Mascre’s first solo) and Back in Black. The remainder can be found as Mo Mercs Mo Monkeys and IVX, which has the bonus of another great 1980s pastiche.