Solitaire: You Are Deadpool

The solo adventure book is no stranger to the comic book. In the nineteen eighties, Diceman was a five-issue series from Fleetway which published stories involving characters from its sister publication, 2000 AD, including Judge Dredd, Nemesis the Warlock, Sláine, Rogue Trooper, Torquemada, and ABC Warriors. Diceman also ventured into political satire with the comic strip ‘You are Ronald Reagan in: Twilight’s Last Gleaming’ and Fleetway would continue this theme with the separate solo adventure book, You are Maggie Thatcher: a dole-playing game in nineteen eighty-seven. Marvel Comics satirised the solo adventure book format with a comic book mini-series all of its own and with the only character it could—the fourth wall breaking, genre busting, Marvel Universe killing Deadpool. In You Are Deadpool, Al Ewing—who has also written for 2000 AD—and Salva Espin and Paco Diaz let you take the ‘Merc with a Mouth’ on another romp through Marvel’s back catalogue after a job goes wrong, and in the process pokes fun at some key moments of Silver Age, Bronze Age, and Modern Age comics across the history of Marvel Comics.

The set-up is simple and one which you can ignore or dive straight into the action. The Tomorrow Man hires Deadpool to steal a Time-Travel Helmet stolen from the Time Variance Authority by the Roxxon corporation and stored in a high-security facility. All Deadpool has to do is get in, steal the helmet, and get out again. Nothing could be simpler. Except, it goes all wrong and Deadpool gets flung back in time. Each of the five issues, or chapters, of You Are Deadpool is set in a different time period. For example, in chapter two, Deadpool lands in nineteen sixties New York where the storylines see him become a beatnik poet and pop artist—complete with de rigueur beret, and potentially be at the birthplace of both the Fantastic Four and the Incredible Hulk! In the third chapter, he dumped in the swamps of the nineteen seventies where he encounters Man-Thing, Dracula and a host of classic monsters, as well as a certain Richard Milhouse Nixon turned antihero in spandex! In chapter four, Deadpool returns to New York, but not of the nineteen sixties, but the nineteen eighties where he up against Kingpin alongside Daredevil and the Punisher, all before doing a quick run through history and back again in chapter five.

You Are Deadpool is no mere ‘Choose You Own Adventure’ book. It includes rules and mechanics. As explained at the being of the first chapter by Deadpool himself directly to the reader—because Deadpool is of course going to break the fourth wall—along with author (though not of this comic, though there is a Warhammer fantasy Battles gag in there at his expense. Twice), Kieron Gillen, Deadpool has two stats, Badness and Sadness. These start at zero and as he progresses through the story, he gains points of Badness for acts of violence and being a badass, and points of Sadness for learning things which make him feel down. These do not have any effect on the mechanics per se, but depending upon which one is higher than the other, they will direct the reader down one path or another. Combat is handled by rolls of six-sided dice. If Deadpool and the reader roll higher than equal to their opponent’s roll, he beats him. Otherwise, Deadpool and the reader lose. The reader rolls two six-sided dice for Deadpool, whilst also rolling one, two, or three dice for his opponents. Typical security guards might only have the one die, but the Incredible Hulk rolls a total of four six-sided dice! Unlike other solo adventure books, the character of Deadpool has an advantage—a healing ability which means that he cannot actually die. Which means he can take a lot of damage, recover, and the reader can keep playing. Well, mostly. There are paths down which Deadpool can go and which do end the adventure.

Along the way, Deadpool can pick and hold three a total of three items to store in his inventory, anything from a doughnut, yo-yo, and shuriken to a deck of playing cards, a teapot, and a Rubic’s Cube—and more. Some of these will prove useful in Deadpool’s adventure. Interspersed in the storylines are several mini-games, including a simple ‘roll and move’ board game and a roll your own slam poetry poem. At the end of You Are Deadpool is checklist of achievements, which the reader can chose to tick off or not.

Structurally, You Are Deadpool consists of five chapters. Chapters one and five form the beginning and the end, whilst chapters two, three, and four can be played in any order. Either amusingly or not, at the end of chapter one, the reader is directed to chapter two or chapter three. This is not an issue and therefore not amusing if reading the collected You Are Deadpool, but of course, You Are Deadpool was released as a five-part mini-series of comics, issue by issue, month by month. So when You Are Deadpool #1 was published, the reader had to wait a month for You Are Deadpool #2 or two months for You Are Deadpool #3 to continue playing. Depending upon the ratings of Deadpool’s Badness and Sadness scores of course. Very droll.

Each issue or chapter itself, consists of between eighty and one hundred panels. Not all are non-sequential as you would expect for a solo adventure book. Certain series of panels can be read sequentially, just as you would any other comic or graphic novel, but for the most part, the panels are placed in non-sequential order. There is one consequence of You Are Deadpool being done as a comic book though. When reading or playing a solo adventure book, it is not uncommon to look at the illustrations as you flick past them to another paragraph and wonder what they depict and how you get there. In You Are Deadpool this is exacerbated because it consists of nothing but illustrations or comic panels…

Physically, You Are Deadpool is adroitly done. The artwork varies from chapter to chapter, so the second chapter, set in the nineteen sixties has a very pop art style. In between, the graphic novel collects the mini-series’ variant covers, including the ‘You Are Deadpool: The Antiheroic Role-playing Comic’, a parody which fans of TSR, Inc.’s Marvel Super Heroes will enjoy and a parody of Errol Otis’ cover to the B/X edition of Basic Dungeons & Dragons. At the end of You Are Deadpool, the author provides the story maps for each of the five chapters.

You Are Deadpool works as both a solo adventure book and a Deadpool story, but unlike most solo adventure books, it does not have much in the way of replay value—even with the achievement list at the end of the collection. This is primarily due to everything in each of the chapters’ different paths being drawn and thus on show—the blocks of text in standard solo adventure books being easy for the eye to gloss over, the panels of this comic strip not so much. So there are fewer surprises and hidden details, though the authors and artists do work hard to hide some. Nevertheless, You Are Deadpool is an entertaining and fun, if light parody of the solo adventure book, as well as the Marvel Universe.