Review by Ian Keogh

You are Deadpool? Seriously? Is that really what you want to be? Thankfully, you’re not. Wade Wilson remains Deadpool, but the controlling intellect behind what he gets up to is you in this form of role playing game constructed by Al Ewing. There’s a tutorial to bring you up to speed, and a free Deadpool dice if you want to pull out pages 9/10, cut it up, paste it to card and glue it together in a cube shape. You’re not going to do that, are you? Deadpool didn’t think so either. So, you’re going to need your own dice, a pencil and a sheet of paper to tot up the badness and sadness scores along with a record of the three objects you’re allowed to retain at any time. Or your phone. Alternatively, the UK edition is a slipcased hardcover supplying you with die, pencil and paper.

Credit to Ewing, his task was to set up a game that in effect began again with each successive chapter, constructing those options leading us from panel to panel and having a use for assorted objects that may or may not have been picked up along the way. On top of that he’s also managed to create a decent Deadpool adventure. He’s even ensured the artists, Salva Espin (sample art) and Paco Diaz have room for an occasional big image and aren’t entirely restricted by having to place sequences of random panels on random pages.

As if all the work creating the game and its intricacies wasn’t enough, Ewing indulges himself by sending Deadpool back in time, and satirising the writing of the different periods at Marvel, especially enjoying the contradictions of the 1970s Ghost Rider. And who’d have thought Rufus “Super Midnight” Carter would ever be seen in a Marvel comic again?

With most Deadpool graphic novels you can expect a lot of laughs, but those are just the side dish for You Are Deadpool, which is an altogether longer experience, consistently clever, and something you can come back to again and again. You’ll have to actually, as the chances are you won’t complete the game without wiping out a few times.