Written by: Brian K. Vaughan; Illustrated by: Fiona Staples
Published: 2014
My Thoughts: What a sad, sad volume. A large portion of this volume is about grieving for people and past relationships and learning to live again. After two volumes of our delightful little family being on the run and hunted it was nice to see them settle down and enjoy actually being a family. Not only is Heist's home a sanctuary away from the chaos of the warring worlds but it's a respite where Marko and Klara can attempt to deal with their loss and, as we see, heal and begin to create a new future for themselves. This is all true for the enemies as well. Gwendolyn and the Will and Slave Girl/Sophie get a glimpse at a new future, one that doesn't involve murder and revenge. But what makes this volume sad is how quickly these possibilities are wrenched away. Their little moment of freedom or happiness or love is just that, a little moment, and I'm left sitting here feeling very, very sad.
Deadpool Killustrated
Written by: Cullen Bunn; Illustrated by: Matteo Lolli
Published: 2013
My Thoughts: The second I saw the cover of this comic, with Deadpool riding Ishmail's dreaded white whale and holding a bomb I knew I had to read it. Then two years passed. But now, now I have read it and I can say I was completely justified in thinking this looked like a terrific romp. The basic premise is that after the events of Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe Deadpool decides to get to the source of the problem and eliminate the seeds of famous character archetypes. What happens is a brilliantly meta and intertextual look at the history of storytelling and character archetypes through an absurdly bloody and camp Deadpool story. When Deadpool kills an "original" like Dracula, he also kills all the characters that Dracula has inspired. That includes the obvious vampire characters from Anne Rice and Twilight, but also characters who may not be vampires but clearly drew inspiration from the King of Vampires. As he kills the original, they flit between this first form and the characters that developed from it and a great deal of my love for this comic comes from me trying to work out exactly who all the comic or literary characters are. Very League of Extraordinary Gentleman-y in this way, although without any of the subtly!
Written by: Rick Remender; Illustrated by: Wesley Craig, Lee Loughridge
Published: 2014
My Thoughts: High school is hell for a lot of people. There are hormones flying through the air, people are struggling to find an identity and there is far too much homework. High school is a whole different hell when the students have to deal with all of that AND train to become assassins. Add in a bunch of family/gang feuds and you have a high school where watching your back is even more crucial. Deadly Class takes a lot of the problems we all experienced in high school (being new, being different), adds assassins in training and transports it back into the 1980s. It's like Harry Potter, if there was no magic or fun in HP and it all took place in the Forbidden Forest. It's a mash of musical, literature and film references, managing to make me feel nostalgic for a high school experience nothing like mine, in a decade also not mine. The art was really interesting, it's very minimalistic and colour plays an extraordinarily important role - which you can get an idea of from the cover. I'm very interested to see where this series heads.
