When Deadpool became all the rage, I was pretty excited. I fell in love
with the character after reading both the Joe Kelly and Gail Simone
written issues of his previous series, and was stoked to see more
creators put their personal spin on the Merc With A Mouth. However,
despite a few varied short stories and anthology one shots, the only
creators who were prominently using the character were Daniel Way and
Victor Gischler. Way’s Deadpool is a great title, and features
much of the great and zany humor that was prevalent through Kelly and
Simone’s run. Gischler, despite writing a great X-Men series, doesn’t quite click with the character. Both Deadpool: Merc With A Mouth and Deadpool Corps
both feature hacky humor and uninteresting stories. Lately, though,
Marvel put out two titles that Deadpool fans the world over have been
highly anticipating: Rick Remender and Jerome Opena’s excellent Uncanny X-Force, which nails every awesome aspect about Deadpool, and David Lapham and Kyle Baker’s Deadpool MAX.

This is probably the most ambitious Deadpool outing ever published, as
it features the blackest of black humor and shows off the zaniness
surrounding the character in a much more clever way than most other
titles featuring him. Much like Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Deadpool MAX
is an alternate take on all of the established characters. Unlike the
sweet and joyful atmosphere of Thor, however, this title is quite
demented and nihilistic.

In Deadpool MAX #5, we are introduced to
Cable, who is portrayed almost like a parody of how he is shown in the
regular Marvel universe. Like Deadpool, Cable was a black ops agent for a
secret organization that manipulates their agents into performing
world-altering missions. After a trip to the future, however, Cable has
returned and tries to educate Deadpool about the many truths he has
learned on his journey. What’s funny about Cable here is that he seems
more like an ominous kook than he is in his 616 appearances, and while
we don’t get many scenes with him in this issue, he is set up to be a
very interesting addition to this already intriguing series. Kyle
Baker’s art greatly attributes to the bizarre and different flavor of
this book, as it has kind of a European look that is prominent in Heavy Metal. An interesting and darkly funny book that is enjoyable month to month.