Broken Frontier

Cable #25 is a fun read. It’s a standalone issue, retitled Deadpool and Cable #25, and shows us what happened during the “Messiah Complex” storyline, from Cable and Deadpool’s point of view.

While it is a prequel, and reveals a bit of what happened after “Messiah Complex” and before the Cable title started, it’s not really meant to uncover any major secrets or provide you with any useful information. It is what almost all Deadpool issues are: fun action-packed nonsense with witty banter and loads of quips.

As I said, this issue doesn’t do much to contribute to the overall story, but if you like Deadpool, this issue is great. It’s got all the traits of a classic Deadpool story, including talking to himself, random pop culture references and his tendency to speak metafictionally. The most interesting thing about this issue is that Marvel got Duane Swierczynski to write it. Swierczynski is a crime novelist, and is attached to books like The Punisher, Moon Knight, and Iron Fist. These are all incredibly serious books, with gratuitous violence and real life-and-death conflicts, and he does these genres extremely well. It was strange but pleasantly surprising to see him take on a Deadpool book and do such a good job.

Swierczynski maintains Cable’s stern demeanor throughout, which allows the Merc’ with a Mouth’s antics to shine through. I loved the ridiculous ways that Deadpool takes out his enemies, and how many outrageous cameos there were. The Purifiers, Predator X, the Marauders and even a Sentinel showed up to take part in some mind-blowing action sequences. None of them really make any sense, but they’re absolutely fun to read and, to be fair, you can’t really expect a lot of sense to come from any comic that revolves around Deadpool.

I’ve been a Paco Medina fan since his run on New X-Men a few years back. He does action scenes really well, and every panel of his is crystal clear. The reader always knows what’s going on. His style is absolutely perfect for this type of story. The way Medina uses body language and facial expressions on Deadpool really captures his insane but light-hearted condition.

I don’t know whose idea it was to put Cable and Deadpool together in a single title, or who decided to get Cable’s writer and Deadpool’s artist together but they deserve an award. Swierczynski and Medina have just as much chemistry in this issue as Cable and Deadpool themselves.