Deadpool (Vol. 3) #45 (Story 8)

Background

This is the last story of the last issue of the last title of Deadpool, EVER.

Until the next one, of course. After Secret Wars. Maybe.

The issue is a 96-page (including ads) monster. It features a full-length lead story, half-a-dozen 5 page stories, and this closing tale which also runs to a full-length 20 pages.

Story 'Deadpool Roasts the Marvel Universe: An Infinity Gauntlet Tie-In'

Thanos has hired Deadpool to steal the Cosmic Cube. But while Thanos waits outside in his helicopter, Deadpool decides to use the cosmic cube to steal Thanos's Infinity Gauntlet from off the Titan's very own wrist and then use those powers to... hold a celebrity roast.

Hence the title: "Deadpool Roasts the Marvel Universe."

Except that Deadpool doesn't roast the MU. Instead, everybody else roasts him. Well, tries too.

None of it is funny either way around. Eventually Deadpool uses his Infinity powers to make everybody in the audience laugh, because quite honestly nobody else would even smile otherwise. I know I didn't.

Spider-Man appears on-stage as one of the leading celebrities. Spidey's jokes aren't funny. I mean, they're deliberately tragic not-funny, which is somehow supposed to be funny for the reader, except it's not. It's just plain old not funny. Not not-funny funny.

General Comments

Over far-too-many pages, the story flails around in every direction – desperate to try and find some sort of raison d'etre, but can't lay its hands on anything. In the end, Deadpool breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to us the reader, bitter, and apparently trying to blame some of his problems on us.

I feel his pain. If this dogs' breakfast of a hatchet-job was my epitaph, I would also be somewhat bitter.

Overall Rating

The mess just goes on-and-on. You know, I drove across Kansas once, from west to east. It was a shorter ride than this story. At last the whole thing ends when Deadpool waves his stolen Infinity Gauntlet and makes the whole "roast" never have happened.

Frankly, that's all for the best. A mercy killing, really.

I love Deadpool. I was collecting New Mutants when he first appeared in issue #98, and I followed him through those original Limited Series and Deadpool (Vol. 1) as well. It's a tragedy that he goes out this way. Not with a Bang, but with a Whimper.

One Web.

Let us never speak of this again. This story never happened.

It retconned itself out existence from within itself, as if it was printed on Möbius strip-paper, using ink poured from a Klein bottle.