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!