Posted in: Comics | Tagged: bland design, deadpool, despicable deadpool, x-men, X-ual Healing - The Weekly X-Men Recap Column

X-Men: Bland Design – A Reboot Looms in Despicable Deadpool #297

Welcome, dear readers, to X-Men: Bland Design, the weekly multi-part recap column that strives to answer the question: "What if Ed Piskor had no art skills, a juvenile sense of humor, and less classic material to work with?"

It's been a rough decade or so for X-Men fans. As part of Ike Perlmutter's feud with Fox over the Fantastic Four movie rights, Marvel's greatest franchise has suffered many an indignity. Cyclops turned into a villain by writers and editors with a Wolverine fetish. The worst crossover of all time, Avengers vs. X-Men. A serious attempt to replace mutants with the Inhumans, thankfully killed by the god-awful Inhumans TV show. But that's all over now… supposedly. With a Marvel/Fox deal on the horizon, the Fantastic Four can return, but more importantly, Marvel can give a crap about the X-Men again!

But will they?!

Each week, we aim to recap what happened in all of the X-books, make a few jokes, and struggle to survive the experience as we reckon our love for our favorite characters with what can often feel like a "quantity-over-quality" approach to comic booking.

The final arc of Despicable Deadpool, The Marvel Universe Kills Deadpool, begins here. Woohoo! And to kick it off, a bunch of Marvel's C-list Dick Tracey villain ripoff gangsters are chilling on a casino boat with the Black Cat…

Deadpool invades the boat and demands 20 million dollars. To prove he's got nothing left to lose, Deadpool lights a table on fire and blows a random unnamed criminal's brains out. He's about to get away with the money, lecturing the villains about how there's always someone crazier than them around that they should be afraid of. Right on cue, Typhoid Mary grabs Deadpool's hand and clicks the detonator of a bunch of explosives he planted on the boat. She called his bluff. The detonator doesn't blow up the ship. Instead, it plays "It's Rainin' Men" on the boat's sound system. Wacka wacka wacka! That gives Lady Stilt-Man the opportunity to attack. Deadpool tosses a grenade and makes his escape with the money.

Outside on the deck, Deadpool beats up a few security guards before being confronted by Jack O'Lantern. Deadpool easily defeats him, then stops to pee in the pool. Then he escapes the boat to a bridge with a grappling hook, beating up both Stilt-Man and Lady Stilt-Man in the process. Up on the bridge, some cops try to bust Deadpool, but Deadpool beats them up and then uses his grappling hook to hijack a police helicopter.

Deadpool heads to church to give confession to a nun, Sister Danielle. Apparently, her church is a front for an assassination business. Deadpool wants to take out a contract on himself. That's what he needed to twenty million for. The call goes out, and a bunch of random villains who happen to be drinking together in a bar, including Bullseye and the Taskmaster, take the case. Wait, isn't Bullseye busy over in Old Man Logan? What about continuity?!

Uh… that's it, we guess? TO BE CONTINUED. This may be the shortest X-Men: Bland Design in history.

Despicable Deadpool continues to hurtle headlong toward its landmark 300th issue and impending #1 issue reboot, where nothing about the Deadpool universe will ever be the same again! This issue felt really short, like all of the action could have taken place on about 3 pages, but Marvel's got to stretch it out because of an obsession with numerology.

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