DEADPOOL #1-3 (2008): Secret Invasion

Deadpool gets a solo book (again) and starts with a Secret Invasion tie-in that ends up being one of the best of the lot–and one of the best stories of this series.

The skrulls invade a baseball game. 

Deadpool, dressed as team mascot, emerges with big guns to fight them.

He does well, of course.

But he surrenders and says he wants to join them.

Deadpool offers his knowledge of the Weapon X program as a bargaining chip.  He says it can help them use his blood to continue to evolve their creation of new super-skrulls.

But of course he’s tricked them.

His cancer makes it impossible for the skrulls to duplicate his healing factor.

But by then, he’s infiltrated the skrull ship.

In a double-cross masterminded by his real boss, Nick Fury.  Fury’s real goal was to have Deadpool steal the skrull’s scientific tech and upload it to Fury, so that he could use it to defeat the new breed of super-skrulls.

In the final panel, though, we see Norman Osborn intercept the transmission.  Because in the coming year of Dark Reign, Osborn will be even more of a Nick Fury than Nick himself.

Nicely done, good twist at the end, and, of course, incredibly rapid pacing with an appropriate level of silliness and humor. 

It’s no secret that Daniel Way is a bit of a hack.  No, wait.  That’s not fair.  He’s a writer who tends towards adrenaline and action sequences, and doesn’t focus on character (or even stories that have much weight to them).  Which is probably why did well with Deadpool.

Daniel Way had several innovations—Deadpool’s caption boxes actually talk to each other, and there are three: White, internal dialog; yellow, internal dialog; and yellow word balloons when he speaks out loud.  Another was “pool-o-vision,” which came later, and let us the readers see what crazy Deadpool saw.

Of all the books Daniel Way could write, this is the probably best suited for him.  Plus, Paco Medina is an excellent artist for this–he’s cartoony and capable, with clear lines and a complete absence of subtlety.