Friday, June 19, 2009

X-Men Universe: Civil War by Peter David, Dennis Calero, Fabian Nicieza, Staz Johnson, Klaus Janson and John Stanisci

The great hero registration has started, and most of X-Factor want to go anti-registration. With Quicksilver returned and taking up with X-factor, the X-Men arrive to let him know they aren't going to take either side in the debate. They would rather stay aloof, if they can. But the other mutants in X-Factor don't agree.

And Quicksilver is back after the events in "House of M" and "Son of M", and with a new power: the power to bring back the powers of other mutants. The question is, do the other mutants know this? And when the X-men come to get him, will X-factor defend him as part of Mutant Town, or turn him in?

Meanwhile, Deadpool is lured into working for the forces of Registration by the power of lots of money and the ability to take on anyone he wants to begin with. Deadpool is hoping to find some pretty girls to grope and hopefully do more than that with, but all the women he's asked to bring in are too large or too ugly for him.

His old pal, Cable, also has a problem with Deadpool working for the forces of Registration, and sets him up so that Deadpool will see what he is doing is wrong. But Deadpool is crazy, and it might just take a confrontation in the office of the President of the United States to make Deadpool see what he's doing? Or is Cable just using Deadpool so that the forces working for Registration will see how horrible and ridiculous the whole thing is? The question is, can Cable make Deadpool, who's certifiably crazy, see sense?

I don't care too much about Deadpool, and I'm not a big reader of X-Factor, so the X-Factor part of this book left me completely cold. I wasn't familliar with many of the characters (Except for Monet and Quicksilver), and I was only slightly familliar with the whole Civil War thing, so I ended up not being thrilled by this graphic novel.

The part with X-Factor is about one comic's worth, whereas the Deadpool and Cable story is two to three times as long, and is just more interesting and gripping, even for someone who isn't all that interested in the two characters. The stories are so different as to seem ridiculous as part of the same book, but I suspect that neither story was long enough to put into a graphic novel on its own.

While the two stories didn't quite clash, I wondered what the two had to do with each other. They are loosely linked via their connection to the X-men, but I didn't see much point to either story in the overall scheme of things. They are stupid tie-in stories that don't add anything to the main story of Civil War. Whoa! Deadpool is an idiot who'll work for anyone who promises him the prospect of money and unlimited fighting? Didn't we already know that? Not recommended, even if you have money to waste.

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