Civil War: X-Men Universe

Ok, another Civil War book, but this one has promise because Deadpool plays a major part in the book.  Of course I love Deadpool and I knew he would make an appearance which made this one of my earliest purchases of the supplementary Civil War books.  Now knowing that I’m a big Deadpool fan, if you’re not then take my review with a grain of salt.

Ok, so I bought it for Deadpool, but the action starts with Jamie Madrox (Multiple Man) and his X-Factor friends.  Am I still allowed to call them X-Factor?  See I haven’t follwed X-Factor pretty much since Joe Quesada pencilled it.  Ok, that’s a slight exaggeration, but not that far off so I’m way out of the loop.  I have no idea who Tryp is, why he’s important, who Layla is, what the purpose of Mutant Town, et al.  Needless to say, as a stand-alone book, at least as far as the first half is concerned it does a very poor job of standing on it’s own two legs.  That said I don’t really think that it was the intention of Marvel to make the supplementary Civil War books to be read as stand alones, but it was still a bit of a disappointment to me.

The used-to-be-called-X-factor saga is all about Quicksilver post House of M and what stand Jamie Madrox and his compatriots are going to take in regards to the whole Civil War thing.  I like Multiple Man, and I used to like Quicksilver, but I’m afraid being so out of touch with the whole X-Factor gang left me a bit confused as to the importance of this story because from an outsiders perspective I’d have to say that no one really cares about Mutant Town or its’ inhabitants.

Then we get to the Deadpool story, yay!  The merc with the mouth makes a decision that he wants to work for the government hunting down good guys that don’t want to register.  Deadpool decides that in order to get the government to take notice of his limitless skill he will clobber a group of unregistered heroes and deliver them to the proper authorities.  In typical Deadpool fashion however the super-hero group he chooses has already registered and he just manages to make an ass out of himself after getting beaten to a pulp by Squirrel Girl.  If that right there isn’t enough to make you want to read this book then there is definitely something wrong with you, or with me.

Somehow Deadpool still gets offered a chance to be a government sponsored bounty hunter of non-registered heroes and he even gets a shiney badge to boot.  So of course he heads out to mix it up with Daredevil and the rest of the core group of rebels including Captain America and Hercules.  After another humorous butt kicking Deadpool comes to realize that his good friend Nathan Winters-Dayspring Askani’son also known as Cable just happens to be on the other side of the fence of the Civil War as Cable fears a future with government controlled super-heroes.  Of course that leads to a bunch of Wade versus Nathan action that never gets old.

My take, if you are a fan of the Cable / Deadpool series you should pick up this book because the second half of Civil War: X-Men Universe is a fun read.  If you’re not a fan of Deadpools, well the X-Factor story just isn’t enough on its’ own to make it a worthwhile purchase.