New Beginnings - Return of the Living Deadpool #1

by Matt Puddy

Some time ago you may remember that last year I reviewed Night of the Living Deadpool by Cullen Bunn. Now in true Romero-esque fashion we have the follow up - Return of the Living Deadpool.

For those who didn’t read NotLD, the very quick and basic premise was that over the course of four issues Wade Wilson found out that everywhere had been infected and people were turning into brain hungry zombies. Fighting his way through them all and trying to help people could only go so far, until he found there was a cure. The way to administer the cure though was to infect himself and then allow the surrounding zombies to rip him to shreds and eat him thus saving the world in his own bizarre way.

So where can Bunn and Virella go with this then? Considering how things were left I have to admit that even I wondered, so reading this first issue was with some trepidation.

Carrying on the artistic theme of having a greyscale story with the only colour being Deadpool, the story opens with a young woman called Liz scavenging. A few years have passed since the original outbreak so lore and stories have spread, both good and bad. So when Liz comes across a ‘pool her reaction is not the expected. She tries to decapitate him and is equally shocked when the amnesiac ‘pool doesn’t try to kill her and surrenders. Dressed in nothing more than his trademark red along with his inane and random commentary on the world the pair head off to safety from the night's visitors.

All is still not what it seems though. Along the way elements of Deadpool’s memory are slowly coming back along with his deadly skill and penchant for quips and violence towards zombies amongst other things. This is cut short when they run across a new band of people. A very familiar group as well. They’re all Deadpool variants! The main difference being they don’t seem to have the humour but very definitely have the blood lust. For the problem isn’t really the zombies any more. The real problem is far worse. The “cure” did stem the zombie problem but at the same time created, introduced and wreaked havoc in the form of the Deadpool plague and the newer deadlier living hell.

As I said before the artwork follows the same path as NotLD and the same colour palette, which makes the Merc with a Mouth really stand out at centre stage. The now typical colouring of his speech bubbles adds further familiarity to it all. The characterisation is also a return to the more split-personality that readers previously knew, so all in all this version of Deadpool is well outside the current Marvel Universe.

Aside from that there isn’t really much more I can say without going over how I reviewed NotLD, as it’s very much just more of the same. If you liked that arc you’ll probably like this one too!

Bunn has created an interesting new problem tale out of what was initially a fun four part tale to begin with. Seeing how he wrapped up the first arc, it’ll be fun to see how he’s going to solve this situation especially as the previous cure only made things worse...

Deadpool fans will love this; even zombie fans will get a kick out of it too. All in all a fun little comic, but nothing revolutionary after last year's offering. Very much more of the same. Which is no bad thing in this instance.

Matt Puddy is waiting for the inevitable Fifty Shades Of Deadpool miniseries...