2016 was not so long ago, and yet in the ever-shuffling era of creator-centric runs and new #1s, things tend to feel foggy. Which big rebrand was going on in 2016? What were the major books at the time?
Why were Spider-Man and Deadpool best friends?
It was the era of All-New, All-Different; Secret Wars had just concluded, restructuring the Marvel Universe to include elements of the Ultimate Universe. A fresh face was being pushed forward: young heroes like Miles Morales (Spider-Man), Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel), and Amadeus Cho (Hulk) were being pushed to the forefront. It was the era of Marvel women: Jane Foster was Thor, Laura Kinney was Wolverine, and A-Force hadn’t yet been torn apart by angry man-children.
For all that new direction, both Spider-Man and Deadpool were cruising on their own momentum. Peter Parker’s corporation, Parker Industries, was a going concern even after the departure of Dr. Octopus, who had taken over his body and life. Deadpool, while nowhere near as prolific as he had been in previous years, still commanded a multi-book presence; with his own ongoing, a recurring role in Uncanny Avengers, and a crew of mercenaries in his employ, Spider-Man / Deadpool seemed to be just another layer of the character’s ongoing saturation of the market.
It wasn’t clear what could be gained by throwing the characters together, particularly in an era that was so focused on fresh ideas, lineups, and diversity. Certainly, there was money to be made: with Spidey and Deadpool, there always is.
The Deadpool Boom had not only over-saturated the market, it had also smudged the character with the fingerprints of dozens of creators looking to take the character in different directions (some of which included a Deadpool dog and disembodied head). The return of Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness, who had launched Deadpool’s first ongoing series back in the 1990s and cemented themselves as major forces in the character’s development, felt like a back-to-basics, a refreshing return to the version of Deadpool who fans had fallen in love with in the first place.
It isn’t a bad formula – the McGuinness/Kelly issues collected in Spider-Man/Deadpool Modern Era Epic Collection: Isn’t it Bromantic? really does feel fresh, dynamic, and clean. Better written, illustrated, and constructed than the creators’ original run with the character, it also provided a sort of update on their legacy – with not nearly as many contrivances and fewer cringe-worthy, problematic jokes, this is a book they could look back on without wincing.
Marvel Comics
Deadpool’s struggle with morality, a major theme in those early stories, returns here. He needs to prove himself worthy of a seat on the Avengers, and it’s on this uneven basis that our team-up is hung: perhaps he can learn heroism from the paragon of heroic virtue, Spider-Man. With nearly three decades of heroic journeys in his own right (and despite being on a team with the actual heroic paragon, Captain America), this premise feels particularly thin until it is flipped on its head: Spidey, faced with his corruption at the hands of Mephisto and another Spider-clone killing in his name, begins to struggle with his own morality.
It’s hard to buy Peter’s commitment to straight-out murder – he is not a character whose darkness can ever be fulfilled – but it provides a compelling turning point for Deadpool: forced to watch his hero battle with demons he knows all too well, he is forced to play the uncomfortable role of angel-on-the-shoulder, making the morally-sound pleas he himself has ignored for so long.
All of this can feel a bit tedious, a bit over-baked, but it nonetheless manages to feel honest, a clean resolution for a creative team important to the character. Backed up with issues written by comedians Scott Aukerman, Paul Scheer, and Penn Gillette (originally slated in between delayed issues of the main narrative), the book revels in its jokey fun. It never takes itself too seriously, and it felt like a ray of sunshine following so much of the same.
Spider-Man/Deadpool Modern Era Epic Collection: Isn’t it Bromantic? is a book that glimmers with a post-Deadpool flood optimism, a recent period of Marvel history where things looked bright and voices were being heard. Neither Spider-Man nor Deadpool are likely to find themselves in such comfortable positions (CEO for the former, married-with-child for the latter), and as such the book feels like an isolated moment of happiness.
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