written by Joe Kelly
illustrated by Ed McGuinness (pencils), Mark Morales and Jay Leisten (inks)
colored by Jason Keith
Between an increasingly busy schedule, the inability to pick up my comic books on time and a general disenchantment with pop culture these days (something I'll explore more in a future post), I've found it harder and harder to review forms of entertainment that used to be a staple of this blog.
In the last couple of weeks, though, I've read comic book storylines that, even though the single issues are several months old, will only just start coming out in trade paperback form lately.
One such story line is "Itsy Bitsy," the second and final story by series creators Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness, which features an old familiar face to Deadpool, and a brand new psychopath cobbled together by infusing an anonymous small-time crook with Spidey's and Deadpool's abilities. Unfortunately this new villain gets it in her head to make the world a better place, by murdering pretty much everyone in sight who, to her mind, is making it a bad place. It's a pretty intense story, one that sees Spidey being pushed yet again to the limits of his own personal code that stops him from killing bad guys, except that what he doesn't know is that this time, someone is counting on him to cross that line. Ironically enough, it's up to the mass-murdering gun-for-hire Deadpool to stop Spider-Man from killing someone.
As much as this book is billed as a team-up, it's really mainly told from Deadpool's point of view. In the first arc he agonized over his contract to kill Peter Parker, which he fulfilled but ultimately undid through some black magic. In this arc, while a lot of focus is on how Peter is basically going off on the deep end, it's Wade that faces the moral quandary of whether or not he should let Spidey cut loose or do everything he can to stop him. The ending can reasonably be described as predictable, but as with most stories nowadays it's the journey that counts, not the destination and both Kelly and McGuinness have given fans a story that, to my mind at least, will go down as a pretty memorable one. Kelly even managed the trick of milking something useful out of the much reviled "One More Day" storyline.
Considering that Kelly has written a number of Spidey stories prior to this one, though, the real star here is McGuinness, who was apparently as excited to draw the character as fans were excited to see him work on Marvel's single most iconic character. I'm so happy he did it that it's actually an item ticked off my bucket list; now all that has to happen is for Jim Lee to do even just a brief stint on a Spidey book.
Following this book over several months was a distinctly jarring experience considering the repeated delays and fill-ins, but it was to Marvel's credit that they didn't let any other artist step in to work with Kelly on this book, and reading the issues from start to finish is a much more pleasant experience, and I'm certain it will look spectacular in trade paperback form. I won't bother grading the individual issues anymore, but suffice it to say that as a whole, this arc is a more than decent read and a good addition to the Spider-Man canon (which the only canon I'm really familiar with as I don't follow Deadpool quite as much).
8/10
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