Deadpool 17, Nova 8, The Trial of the Punisher 1

Deadpool 17
Posehn and Duggan (w) and Shalvey (a) and Bellaire (c)

Deadpool has freed Captain America and Wolverine and fills them in on the situation: North Korea, Weapon Plus, Butler, mutants based off of Deadpool's DNA and others', Deadpool's daughter, etc. Though they're not totally trusting of Deadpool (despite, as he points out, the fact that he warned them about this very sort of thing happening just a day or two before this very thing happened), they immediately understand the horrors of what's happening here and vow to help. The mutants borne of the Deadpool's DNA are planning to break out but they have to rescue their families first, knowing that leaving them there or alerting anyone to the breakout is as good as killing them. Deadpool, with the help of Cap, takes down the guard towers. A couple of other North Korean guards are prepared, though, as they inject themselves with some sort of serum that turns them into giant rock-like monsters. The pair kill a couple of the mutants (in horrifyingly grotesque ways) before Deadpool and Wolverine team up to blow one of them up. The other surrenders and tells them everything he knows about the situation, up to and including where Butler is now: Camp 23, the same place the families of the new mutants are being kept.

This book continues its upswing as the plot keeps its pace and the characters get fleshed out a little more. We get brief but somewhat interesting looks at the new mutants and we see a good amount about Cap and Deadpool particularly at various times. For Cap, the situation here bears a striking resemblance to Auschwitz and he doesn't hesitate to get involved in this, even if it could be seen as a sort of declaration of war from America. Deadpool, meanwhile, realizes that he's been told since his time in experiments that he's always been told who he is and, instead of being better, he's played the part. We've seen a deeper and more introspective Deadpool over the last two issues without sacrificing too much of the somewhat-crazed and typically funny Deadpool. He has a couple of nice moments with the two heroes and one really nice moment with Wolverine as they talk about Wolverine's healing power being lost (the only book outside of Cornell's Wolverine to even mention it). Some more stellar art from Shalvey and Bellaire and we have yet another book I'm really pleasantly surprised by.

Nova 8
Wells (w) and Medina and Vlasco (a) and Curiel (c)

Nova has finished rebuilding the skate park with the local workers and begins to walk away as the girl he has a crush on from school recognizes his voice. He freaks out and flies high into the sky, where he takes off his helmet to yell at it for not disguising his voice. To his credit, he realizes this was a pretty dumb move and instantly falls back to Earth, not protected by his Nova armor. He manages to get the helmet back on right before he hits (ruining the skate park again). There he's picked up by the watching Speedball and Justice, who have followed him since he zoomed by them last issue. They explain that they'd like him on their team and that they know a bit about Novas, enough to entice him to come with. Unfortunately for him, things may be complicated as Thanos has been made aware of the presence of a Nova on Earth and, though he doesn't have time to deal with it himself, he sends Kaldera, the maybe-daughter of Proxima Midnight. The issue ends as Kaldera, in full supervillain regalia, shows up at Sam's house.

Another pretty well-paced book as we get a fair amount of action with some really quick writing. This is the difference, in a nutshell, between back-and-forth dialogue and good, snappy writing in comics. Fewer words per panel moves the book far better. Speedball talks a lot but it's very clear he's talking extremely fast; it's his character and it's specific to him. Justice tries to slow him down but keeps getting overridden by Speedball's energy. When one person is talking in chunks like this, it defines them. Speedball, then, is incredibly well-defined here. His character's a little strange, given the angst he's gone through recently, after Stamford, but it's not a bad turnaround for his character. Like I said, it's a little strange, maybe a little jarring, but it definitely can still work. A lot of time has passed and he's done what he can (as seen mostly in Avengers Academy) to try to pitch in for his part in the accident. Anyway, the book continues to be pretty smart and funny (I had a laugh that startled my dog as Nova crashed right back into the skate park again; granted, it's not at all difficult to startle my dog) and seems to be heading in the right direction. Rather sad that writing is being handed off to Duggan on issue ten; Deadpool is turning around so I'm not as disappointed in this as I was a couple months ago but I'm still not totally sold on him and I am totally sold on Zeb Wells, who impresses me every time I see him pop up. Sad to see his run gone so soon.

The Trial of the Punisher 1
Guggenheim (w) and Yu (a) and Gho (c)

Surprise review as I didn't catch this one on the "new comics" list until after I'd written my pre-game post this week and was standing in the comic book store looking at a new Punisher book. Neat. Anyway, Punisher has handed himself in after killing a district attorney and bringing the body directly to a police station. He's immediately brought to prison and put on trial, where his tough attorney, who doesn't appear to be afraid of him but is equally unsure about what he's trying to pull, begins to make the claim that he's legally insane. The prosecution, then, brings in witnesses who have seen Castle committing crimes or seen the resulting crime scene and have some expertise in the matter, painting a picture of a man with an agenda and with enough mental faculties to be considered aware of what he's doing and aware of a sense of right and wrong. Meanwhile, Castle seems to be plotting something, as he shows his attorney a notepad with what looks to be gibberish on it, claiming it's his "to-do" list.

Not a bad book, though somewhat hard to place in the Marvel Universe. If you're not looking for chronology or anything like that and are a fan of Punisher and/or procedurals, you could do worse than this book. It's not a Punisher book in the sense of "look at all these bad guys he's killing right now, look at him plotting to do it then doing it" (though it could very well turn into that in the second and final issue of this mini). It's more a Punisher book in the sense that it features a nearly silent protagonist who clearly has something going on but who is not about to reveal it right away. The bonus of this is that it's only a two-issue mini, so we're not going to have to wait long for our answers. Hopefully we'll get even a little more than that, as there's a little author's note at the end of this where Guggenheim talks about how he wanted to put the Punisher on trial and have Matt Murdock show up as a witness or somehow related to the trial, as both an antagonist of Punisher and as a lawyer. There was no sign of Murdock here, though, so maybe he's coming next time? Still, the book holds up well enough on its own without any guest stars so now it just kind of feels like a weird note. Solid writing, good characterization for a lot of the newly created characters (one of the police interrogators and Lisa Santos, Frank's lawyer, are both well characterized simply by the way they talk), and a pretty interesting plot. Should have a nice wrap-up next time.