Spider-Man and Deadpool are two of my favourite characters in the Marvel universe, so I was very curious about this volume. Marvel encompasses so many different types of story, and I feel that the adventures of Spider-Man feel much more rooted in reality than those of Deadpool, and I love crossovers that clash two very different feeling things.
There are quite a lot of different stories in this collection and I appreciated the variety – the first one sees Deadpool hired to assassinate Peter Parker, not knowing he is Spider-Man, while also being friends with Spider-Man. another has them sharing an adventure with Penn and Teller, one sees Deadpool appearing in a comic intentionally done in the style of the earliest Spider-Man comics, and my favourite has Spider-Man going down a darker, morally ambiguous path, while Deadpool starts to get more of sense of needing to do what’s right. In the midst of all that, they also clash with a character named Itsy Bitsy – the humanoid spider “daughter” of them both.
What I liked about this comic most of all is that it seems to go out of its ways to analyse the characters while comparing and contrasting them. Spider-Man and Deadpool are very different people and it’s interesting to see how they both respond to intense situations – you get a good sense of who each of them are at their core, and I loved that. Their relationship is explored in a lot of detail too, and the bond between them is one that I really felt – for me, that’s one of the most important things for keeping me invested in a story. They’re great together and I always enjoyed their semi-playful bickering, though not as much as I love the moments of true affection.
The only problem with this comic is that it is not really accessible to people who don’t have a pretty detailed knowledge of the Marvel universe. I’ve read some Deadpool and Spider-Man comics before, and I thought that I would know enough to fare well, but there were quite a lot of references to things, and aspects of their lives that you’re supposed to be familiar with, but I just wasn’t. This sometimes left me feeling alienated and confused. It did what I suppose it’s supposed to do – made me want to read more so that I could understand it, but it was a bit off-putting. I suppose I shouldn’t complain though – it was obviously written with an audience who is better versed in Marvel than me. Occasionally, it felt just a little too silly as well, not to a large degree, but enough to weaken my immersion (but what do I expect from crossover comics?)
Though I wish that I could have chosen a slightly more accessible crossover between Spider-Man and Deadpool, or perhaps that I had just read more comics about both characters first (they already know each other at the start), I still had a lot of fun reading this comic, and there was some genuine emotion and character development here. It was also pretty funny too (with a particularly hilarious Tommy Wiseau joke). I can’t recommend it to casual readers, but huge fans of the two characters will love it.
Rating: 7.7/10
