Deadpool Killustrated #3

A Christmas Carol
"Stave 3:  The Second of the Three Spirits"
written by Cullen Bunn
pencils by Matteo Lolli
inks by Sean Parsons
colors by Veronica Gandini

Deadpool Killustrated recovers some of its quirky cleverness, which got lost a little in its second installment.  Its prologue in particular, a witty mimicry of Dickens' style in which Bunn acknowledges the "circumspect" nature of Deadpool's intent, hits on just the right tone while once again articulating the logical premise of the series.  There are, in fact, more jokes of higher quality in the first page than in the rest of the issue, though this is more a compliment for its opening than an outright dismissal of the rest.  Bunn sneaks in a few good zingers, mostly at the expense of Deadpool himself.

I find Deadpool Killustrated's insistence on maintaining chronological historical sequencing even within the Ideaverse somewhat unnecessary and perverse.  Especially as it is evoked in the series, literature exists simultaneously, no matter when it was written or the time it is meant to represent.  As a body of characters and stories from which new ones may be derived, there is no need to differentiate between Messina in 1178 B.C., India in 1900, or the entirely fictional Lilliput in 1699.  What does 1699 mean in Lilliput anyway?!  Why does Holmes need Wells' time machine to gather his band?  This temporal conundrum and its logical weirdness doesn't necessarily interrupt the overall logic of the concept, minimal as it is, but it is another of the intriguing consequences of his story that Bunn has left entirely on the table.  What kind of history would the Ideaverse have?  For that matter, what geography?

Given the medium of Mr. Bunn's satire, I suppose it's not surprising that Marvel comic book characters receive considerably less explanation than their literary comrades.  Visual equivalences, suggested by the alternating substitution of Marvel characters for their literary predecessors in sequential frames, are accomplished without comment, but it is apparently necessary to identify Captain Nemo, the cast of Kipling's The Jungle Book, and Scylla and Charybdis by name.  This is also in keeping with the heavily expositional quality of the series as a whole.  Though no character, perhaps in all of literary history, is better suited to exposition than Sherlock Holmes, his explanation for the displacement of part of Deadpool's personality into the body of Frankenstein's monster is entirely unnecessary.  His descriptions of how he and his team are always one step behind their quarry even more so.  On the whole, Deadpool Killustrated would benefit for a little more subtlety in its storytelling and few more literary allusions and jokes less obviously advertised by its own characters.