Title: Night of the Living Deadpool (Goodreads)
Author: Cullen Bunn
Artist: Ramon Rosanas
Published: Marvel Comics, 2014
Pages: 96
Genres: Graphic Novel
My Copy: eBook
Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)
Deadpool is a Marvel Comics mutant anti-hero best known for his dark humour (he is sometimes referred to as “Merc with a mouth”) and breaking the fourth wall in his comic. He is a mentally unstable mercenary, weapons expert and has regenerative healing abilities. The perfect hero to put into a zombie apocalypse and in Night of the Living Deadpool this is what happens.
The series begins with a nod to The Walking Dead, which is a homage to that classic opening scene in The Day of the Triffids. Deadpool wakes up from a food coma a few days later and finds that he has awoken to the zombie apocalypse. This four issue series goes on to make multiple references to the genre.
Writer of Deadpool Killogy, Cullen Bunn joins forces with a relative new artist, Ramon Rosanas. The series is a stylised black, white, and red (for Deadpool) with a very warped sense of humour. What stuck with me through this series was not just the references to classic zombie movies or macabre nature but the short, straight to the point approach to the genre. Comic book series can often go for a long time and while that is good, it was nice to start and end a series in one sitting.
I loved the art within this book; I liked how Ramon Rosanas avoided using colours within the comics. It highlights Deadpool as a character not like all the others, while leaving the focus on the drawings rather than the colours. This style is different to what is seen in Sin City but it works; flashbacks are in full colour so really it portrays the apocalypse as a dark time for humanity.
Because this series was only four issues, I find it hard to talk about this comic book. Everything happened so fast and then it was over. I enjoyed the short and sweet experience as stated before but the lasting effects are very small. I was left with memories of the references and art but nothing much more. I think this means that it will be a good series to revisit again; it is just a weird experience.
I’m not sure if I’ve seen a movie that I liked more than the book. I know if I read American Psycho before seeing the movie I might have enjoyed it more. I think there are plenty of examples of books I didn’t enjoy because I saw the movie first. Others include Psycho by Robert Bloch and Limitless by Alan Glynn. There are a few movies that I enjoyed more than the books, like The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver, The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson and The Hunter by Richard Stark (Payback, 1999) There are books I thought were average and I would rather invest 2 hours watching the movie than 8 or more hours reading the books. Even if the movies turned out bad, it was still less of an investment than reading the book.