Thursday, June 23, 2011

New Mutants #26 & Deadpool #39

We'll be kicking this off with this week's Pick of the Litter, New Mutants #26. If I score it anything under a 9, it would have disappointed me. That's how excited I am about that comic. Along with New Mutants, I'll be checking out Deadpool, which if it's like last issue, should be good. Let's get started!

New Mutants #26:

Summary: We get underway with a young man who lost his mutant powers during the HORRIBLE M-Day idea discovering Sugar Man's base. He runs into some former mutants Sugar Man gave powers to(using a variation of the mutate bonding process! Awesome!!), and they take him to meet Sugar Man himself. Sugar Man promises to help the young man provided he did Sugar Man a favor, the favor being to help Sugar Man find his way home. With the possibility of being “special” again in his head, the young man agrees to undergo Sugar Man's procedure. While that's going down, the New Mutants are snooping around an old HAMMER run warehouse looking for Nate Grey. They run into Commander Rogers, who tells them there was nothing in the warehouse except for some old HAMMER machinery. The New Mutants are about to leave until Doug Ramsay is able to “read” one of the rooms in the warehouse and realizes that reality was being subtly warped in the warehouse, which was something Nate could do, leading the team to believe that Nate very well could be there. Back with Sugar Man, he's managed to gift the young man from earlier with a power(acid vomit), and takes him into the room Nate was being held in the Omega Machine. Nate warns the young man to leave while he could, but Sugar Man explains that while hooked up to the Omega Machine, Nate could open extra-dimensional portals, with Sugar Man hoping one of the portals would lead back to his home dimension, the Age of Apocalypse. Sugar Man ties a rope to the young man and tells him to enter the portal created by Nate and the Omega Machine. Upon entering the portal, the young man runs into a giant creature, which promptly eats him... Oh well... Sugar Man pulls out the severed rope and realizes that he'd once again hit a dead end. Before Sugar Man could do anything else though, the New Mutants manage to pinpoint his laboratory's location, at which point Sugar Man sics a few of his loyal mutates on them.

Thoughts: This was very, very good. Now, Nate didn't really do much here except warn that guy Sugar Man turned into a mutate not to trust Sugar Man, but this was more of a set-up story leading to the battle next issue, so I was pretty pleased with it overall. There was a lot to like here, and a lot of nice nods to the past, such as Sugar Man's knowledge of the Genoshan mutate process(which he created from a bastardized version of AOA Mr. Sinister's work), as well as mention of Nate's reality warping and dimensional powers. Now Nate can't warp reality to the degree of the Scarlet Witch circa Avengers Disassembled, but he has shown some degree of reality warping. On top of that, during his mutant shaman days, Nate was able to open dimensional portals to other worlds. So a BIG kudos to Andy Lanning and Dan Abnett for actually doing their research on these characters before writing this story. On the negative side, nothing all THAT interesting happened here... But for me? Nate Grey, Sugar Man, Steve Rogers, AND a story that's been researched and makes sense is more than enough for a very high score!

Score: 9 out of 10.I LOVE this comic!!!!!


Deadpool #39:

Summary: Stuck between an angry Hulk and a preschool full of kids, Deadpool tells the kids and their teacher to hide inside their school, figuring the Hulk would simply pulp DP like he wanted. As the Hulk approached though, Pool realized that there was a great chance that the Hulk's attack on him would collapse the school, killing the kids inside. Not wanting to be responsible for the deaths of a bunch of little kids, Pool forces the kids and their teacher to get on a school bus which Pool starts to drive away from the area. The army has mobilized to the area as well, and realizing that Pool was responsible for Hulk's rampage, decide to kill him, figuring that would calm Hulk back down. Spotting Pool in the school bus, and not seeing the kids(since Pool told them to put their heads down), the army shoots at the bus with a tank, which Pool swerves to avoid, letting it hit the now even angrier Hulk. Fearing for her kids safety, the teacher goes to the front of the bus, small talks Pool for a moment, and swipes one of his handguns, shooting Pool in the head. With Pool down, the teacher rushes her charges off the bus and to the army. When Pool wakes up, the Hulk, who has calmed down considerably, pulls Pool out of the wreckage of the bus and demands to know why Pool would do something this stupid, endangering the lives of dozens of people, including the preschoolers. Pool comes out with it and tells Hulk that he has a death wish, and figured the Hulk was the only thing alive capable of beating him so badly that he'd be unable to heal from it. Realizing Pool was utterly insane, and not wanting to see him endanger anybody else on his mad quest for suicide, Hulk punches Pool so hard that his entire upper-body literally explodes... Damn! Unfortunately for Deadpool, he actually heals from that a few weeks later, and this issue ends with Steve Rogers telling a doctor that Deadpool had been tried while he was still knitting together, that he'd been found insane, and would be heading to a mental institution in England.

Thoughts: What can I say? I really liked this issue! It was good, stupid, Pool-a-riffic fun! As a matter of fact, Daniel Way did what nobody has ever been able to do, make me like the Hulk just a little bit. As this issue moved towards it's climax, I figured Pool would tell Hulk his plan, and Hulk would simply be a good hero and walk away from the crazy Deadpool. When Hulk told Pool he was dangerously crazy and then pounded him, I was impressed. Seriously, after Pool put Hulk into one of his rages and endangered the lives of all those kids? Hulk did the responsible thing by trying to put Pool down like a rabid dog. So from here, Pool will be placed in a prison that was being converted into a mental institution... That should be a hilarious blast.

Score: 8 1/2 out of 10.And that my friends, is going to leave a mark!

9 comments:

  1. That DP Comic was pretty damn funny, I gave it a really close rating to yours, and that ending caught me off guard. I also figured Hulk would pat DP on the head and walk off to go find Betty or something, but him punching DP so hard he EXPLODED and only his belt was left was epic.

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  2. hep bub! expect more to come...

    Saidi

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  3. I'm glad someone is finally doing right by your favorite character, X! Hopefully he'll make a bigger appearance next issue. It would be pretty awesome if this whole thing ended up with him actually being a regular member of one of the X-teams.

    I still can't get over the fact that someone has actually decided to use Sugar Man...that's a character I honestly thought I might never see again. Now all we need is Nemesis/Holocaust, or whatever they're calling him these days!

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  4. Totally agreed, JT! I thought for sure Hulk was gonna simply leave Pool alone, but when he pasted him because he was a menace, that was all kinds of great! Like I said, I've never been much of a Hulk fan, but this one comic has me a little interested now!

    I'm hoping the same thing, Marc. With it looking like the X-characters will be splitting up, this is a great chance for Nate to finally have a place on one of the teams(preferably the New Mutants). I know he's always been a loner and all, but there are times he's worked with others(during Onslaught, with Threnody, Astonishing X-Men), so I'd be fine with that. As for Sugar Man, his appearance was a hugely pleasant surprise! Like you, I never expected him to pop up again, and the fact that DnA mentioned his past with the whole Mutate bonding process, I was DAMN impressed! As for Holocaust, if he'd come back, I'd be on cloud 9!

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  5. Isn't Nate a little old to be on the New Mutants? Not that I'd be complaining at all if he became a regular member...and I'm not sure he really belongs on any of the other teams. I guess if he joined NM, that would be returning the team to its roots in some ways; they haven't really had a character who was extremely powerful (and kind of "out there" at the same time) since Warlock.

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  6. I don't think he is, Marc. I'd peg Nate between 18 and 20, he debuted at 16 in around '95 or '96. Now Cannonball has to be in his early 20's, because I'm pretty sure Husk was outed as around 19 or so when she was in that relationship with Warren in Austen's Uncanny, and Sam is the oldest of the Guthrie clan. I'm pretty sure Sam was the oldest New Mutant back in the day at 16, with Sunspot being 14(if I remember correctly). That was back in about '83 or so. Since the current New Mutants team is comprised of most of the original members, you'd think the age range would be around late teens to early 20's, and by my logic, Nate would fit in fine. As you can see though, I spend WAY too much time thinking about the ages of Marvel characters! :P

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  7. GAAAAh please don't you even mention that Husk/Warren crap! WTF Austen was thinking !

    Since Holocaust was killed by Hyperion I'm gonna put him in the "Stryfe from hell" event. BTW My X-factor team will soon be complete I think you're gonna like the villains I meticulously selected to face them in district X (yep in my fanon Disassembled & what ensued never happened!soooo...)

    Saidi

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  8. Hmm, I forgot about the current New Mutants roster having so many people from the original team. In that case, I guess X-Man is a better fit!

    Oh, and I agree with Saidi, let's NEVER speak of the Husk/Angel relationship again! Sooo wrong...

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  9. Oh, I'm in TOTAL agreement with you guys about that whole awful Warren/Husk relationship. There was a lot of crap during the Austen Uncanny run, but Warren boinking Husk in the air, RIGHT ABOVE HUSK'S MOTHER, is definitely one of the lowlights for me...

    As for the Holocaust thing, I'm hopeful they'll either say a) it wasn't the real Holocaust, but an alternate dimensional one, or b) just ignore it ever happened! Hyperion snorting Holocaust to death pisses me off to this day... That guy was an AWESOME X-villain!

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