Deadpool: Badder Blood #1 Review

Written by: Rob Liefeld, Chad Bowers
Art by: Rob Liefeld, Shelby Robertson
Colors by: Jay David Ramos
Letters by: VC’s Joe Sabino
Cover art by: Rob Liefeld, Jay David Ramos
Cover price: $4.99
Release date: June 7, 2023

Deadpool: Badder Blood #1 puts Deadpool on the trail of Van Strutten, the man responsible for turning Deadpool’s friend into the biomechanical killing machine called Thumper.

Is It Good?

Deadpool: Badder Blood #1 is okay. This issue exemplifies one of the rare examples where there’s nothing technically wrong with it, but the issue will either work for you or not, depending on what you’re looking for.

Rob Liefeld and Chad Bowers’s story picks up after the Deadpool: Bad Blood mini-series with Thumper on the warpath after being turned into a killing machine by Van Strutten and Department H. Now, Thumper wants to kill Van Strutten, Wolverine and Cable want to capture Van Strutten so he can pay for his crimes, and Deadpool also wants to kill Van Strutten as payback for what the mad scientist did to Deadpool’s friend by turning him into Thumper. In other words, everyone wants Van Strutten for different reasons.

Then the narrative shifts as everyone goes after Thumper for different reasons after Van Strutten gives up his intel.

On the positive side, Lefeld and Bowers nail the individual voices of Cable, Wolverine, and Deadpool. Unsurprisingly, this version of the Merc with a Mouth is far superior to the abysmal slapstick going on in Deadpool’s main title at the moment. The pacing is good, and you get all the information you need to set the stage for the arc.

On the not-so-positive side, the dialog feels stiff, but there’s no single reason for it. All the characters are chatty, almost to the point of exposition overload, and while the manner of speaking matches each character, it reads like the players speaking a script out loud. It’s as if some parts of the dialog are thoughts or narration mixed in with the dialog, so the verbiage all runs together. Technically, it’s okay, but holistically, it feels slightly off.

But, of course, readers are just as likely to pick up this issue for Liefeld’s art more than anything else. So, does Liefeld still have his art chops intact? You betcha. In fact, this is some of Liefeld’s best art to date. The figure work is powerful, the level of detail in the line work is impossibly good, and the panel compositions are exquisite.

About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.

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Bits and Pieces

Deadpool: Badder Blood #1 picks up Deadpool’s race to save Thumper from himself with exciting action, a lightning-quick pace, and trademark Liefeld art. That said, the stiff dialog hinders the reading experience enough to bring down the enjoyment factor.