Deadpool vs Thanos #1 (2012)
by Tim Seeley & Elmo Bondoc
cover by Tradd Moore
It might be a joke, Deadpool, but taking seriously things that were never supposed to be analyzed is my thing.
Let’s check on Saint Cynthia Island, which is apparently Doctor Doom’s vacation home.
Deapool kills the island’s… manager, I presume?
In case you didn’t catch it, Saint Cynthia Island is named after Doom’s mother… and here he is, in his vacation clothes.
And then Deadpool casually shoots Doom dead.
Sounds legit.
No attempt whatsoever to explain how Deadpool managed to get this done.
SHOCKINGLY, Doctor Doom isn’t really dead.
But Deadpool actually DID kill him: Doom just came back to life.
But it’s not just Doom: other people Deadpool tries to kill immediately come back to life, and once he learns Thanos is behind it he strategizes. Kind of.
But it turns out that NOTHING in the universe is currently able to die, since the manifestation of Death has disappeared. And Thanos recruits Deadpool to find her.
I generally like Deadpool stories, but this one isn’t particularly funny.
I did chuckle at the zombies forming a union to protest against their master, though.
Doom doesn’t show up in issues 2 and 3.
I should note that the aspect of “death disappears” is not treated as a joke.
Despite the title, this miniseries is 90% a Thanos story and 10% a Deadpool story.
Deadpool vs Thanos #4 (2012)
by Tim Seeley & Elmo Bondoc
Turns out the reason why nobody is dying is that Death has been imprisoned by Eternity (the embodiment of the universe), mostly because of what happened back in Infinity Gauntlet.
This doesn’t entirely work with Marvel’s cosmology at the time, since these two are supposed to be equals. But thematically it’s a neat scene.
Yeah this is just a bit above Deadpool’s pay grade.
Death eventually empowers Deadpool and Thanos to put up a fight against Eternity himself.
The Thanos side of the story is actually pretty good!
In fact, Deadpool ruins this story for me. Like I said I like Deadpool, and I like Thanos, but these two don’t have enough chemistry to overcome how different they are.
I suppose it COULD work… good Deadpool stories aren’t just comedies and he’s shown time and time again that he can pull off serious moments. Which do happen in this series eventually, but it’s too little too late.
Eventually Eternity undoes everything that happened in this miniseries, INCLUDING the death of Doctor Doom.
Doom is not a fan.
Doom significance: 0/10
Silver Age-ness: N/A
Does it stand the test of time? N/A
Not a real review so I can’t give real scores. I can’t really recommend this one, it has some neat ideas but not well executed. They should have left this as a Thanos story, maybe with a team-up with Deadpool in one of the issues. As it stands, it’s a bit of a mess.
It was a Doombot all along
If we take the scene at face value yes, Deadpool kills the real Doom. Except I have a problem with Doom saying that he saw his mother in “his childhood home”, since all flashbacks to Doom’s childhood show him and his family moving from place to place without a fixed home.
He could be speaking metaphorically, granted, but then the emphasis on the home would be suspect.
Which leaves me with three hypotheses:
1) this is a decoy Doombot meant to lure potential assassins
2) this is someone unaffiliated with Doom pretending to be him
3) this is blatantly just a comedy and we’re not supposed to take the Doom scene seriously… but where’s the fun in that?
HOWEVER, in issue 3 Mephisto drops this bombshell:
I’m skeptical of EVER trusting anything Mephisto says, but at the same time I can’t find any reason for him to say that (Deadpool and Thanos are not in the scene when he does), and there’s nothing that explicitly prevents this from being in continuity.
Sooo… it’s actually:
4) Doctor Doom really died
Times Doom has died: 2