Review by Frank Plowright

After a engaging series of madcap adventures in her own series, Gwenpool ended up with the West Coast Avengers for a while, and it then fell to Leah Williams and David Baldeón to launch a new solo career. Her USP is that although a resident of Earth 616, she actually originates on “our” Earth, where she was a massive comics fan, so knows all heroes and villains and their secrets. Somehow her being transplanted enables trickery with form, like crawling between panels and jumping between pages, used by Williams to good advantage as she’s able to free herself from a trap.

Gwen realises her ongoing series has been cancelled, so her task is to use the miniseries collected here to generate enough popularity to ensure she sticks around. One time-honoured method of bolstering sales is to feature guest stars, so Williams features plenty, and Gwen has the background knowledge to embarrass them all. Which she does, not least with the fundraising volleyball tournament featuring characters in their skimpies.

Due to Gwen’s reality bending powers it’s not only the guest stars who’re put through their paces. As seen on the sample art, shocks await Baldeón over and above what he’s asked to draw. He’s handed a bonkers story and delivers every nutty panel, plenty of them, with Gwen explaining to the audience again and again a necessity. He’s possibly the only artist who’ll ever get to draw Steve Rogers and Tony Stark naked and sharing the same oversized t-shirt to protect their modesty. In a comic at least, as you just know at convention after convention fans are going to want recreations of that page.

Williams is true to the earlier Christopher Hastings incarnation to the extent of calling him up to write a single page, and giving her own thoughts on versions of Gwen written by others. This also provides the vehicle for a few other comments about stranger moments of Marvel’s continuity, yet you’re going to be surprised near the end by a really touching scene with Ms. Marvel, and a clever resolving of who Gwen is. Or might be. That’s just the way things are with superhero comics.

All in all, everyone who loved the creative and good natured Gwen earlier is going to be more than happy with Gwenpool Strikes Back. It’s also found in the Gwenpool Omnibus.