Astonishing X-Men may not have offensive qualities of adverts, but Cable & Deadpool certainly does.  I'm tempted to simply register my irritation and move on, but before doing so, let's have a look at this week's excuse from Joe Quesada:- "There's always a compromise that has to be made when you're dealing with decisions like this."

Well yes, Joe, yes there is.  And you've chosen to compromise exclusively on quality, which is why most of your comics look like shit this month.  To be sure, DC have taken some extra advertising as well, but they haven't reached anything like Marvel's level of absurdity.  Cable & Deadpool #34: 24 pages of adverts during the course of a 22 page story.  52 Week 28: 16 pages of adverts during the course of a 21 page story.  (But four of them are the centre spread, so you can tear them out and reduce it to 12.  Marvel obligingly put one story page on the centre spread, to stop you doing that.)  The conclusion is virtually inescapable that DC care more about quality than Marvel do, and indeed that Marvel as a corporate entity are almost totally indifferent to the whole concept of quality.

The other line of defence is "Hey, but look at all these great advertisers we're getting!  It's great for the industry!"  Remarkably, people have actually been advancing this with a straight face.  The idea that Marvel somehow deserve a pat on the back for furthering the interests of the comics industry by publishing unreadable comics deserves some kind of medal for sheer gall.  I'm suppose to cheer for the success of this?  Listen closely: if this is the sort of product the comics industry wants to produce, screw the comics industry.  Let it rot. 

On to Cable & Deadpool, since it also contains some story pages hidden amongst its adverts.  Although to be honest, as you can probably tell, attempting to find them leaves me far too irritated to really pay any attention to the plot.

We're back in Rumekistan, the fictional country where Cable seized power a few issues ago before the crossovers took hold.  The location of Rumekistan has always irked me - it's apparently meant to be in central Europe, which suggests that either the creators don't know where central Europe is, or they don't know where countries ending in "-istan" are.  But let's leave that aside.

Cable has been doing a pretty good job of getting the wartorn hellhole back on its feet.  But because he embarrassed the US government during his Civil War crossover, they've hired the Six Pack to go in and sabotage things.  This means Domino and Deadpool both end up fighting against him for the pay cheque, with varying degrees of reluctance.

Cable seems to be turning into a version of Christopher Priest's Black Panther, planning fifteen steps ahead and outwitting opponents with spectacularly elaborate schemes.  Of course, the fact that he comes from the future gives the story some excuse for his remarkable predictive abilities.  Given that Cable has been parachuted into the cast of X-Men and that incoming editor Axel Alonso has been making worrying noises about wanting to do something with the character - er, you do know he's already got a monthly title, right? - I'm wondering how far Fabian Nicieza is going to be allowed to pursue his plan for the character.  But there are plenty of interesting ideas here, and it's good to see some use being made of Domino as a sane foil for the character, filling a role that Deadpool can't really perform.

Reilly Brown's art is... well, impossible to concentrate on, to be honest.  Still, I'm sure he spent a lot of time on it, and it's a shame that he might as well not have bothered.  Just draw stick figures next month, Reilly, they'll never notice the difference.

Oh, I give up.  It's a perfectly okay story which would normally get a B or a B+, but it's marred by ridiculously shoddy packaging and frankly, I'm way too irritated to pay any attention to it.  Actually, it leaves me in something of a dilemma about the rating, because to be blunt, I didn't enjoy reading this thing at all.  The only emotion it left me with was the urge to return it to Marvel, through their front window, glued to a brick.  (The management do not endorse or condone such activity.)  The point is, I cannot seriously pretend that this is in any way worth recommending in its current form.  On the other hand, to rate this month's Marvel comics on their merits, taking into account the format Marvel have chosen to publish them in, would mean rating all but the most exceptional comics on a scale from D- to D+, which would get old pretty quickly.  So I'm randomly compromising in the middle, based largely on how annoyed I am when I happen to be writing the review.  Hell, some of you will be reading this story in the trade.  Or you'll just download it illegally. 

It's worth mentioning that the vast majority of feedback I've had about this subject agree with me.  A tiny minority (and we're talking single digits) disagree and want me to write about the stories instead.  Well, I'd happily review the bloody stories, if only I could fucking read them.  You get annoyed by the fact that these reviews are mostly ranting about the adverts?  Well, now you know how I feel.

You know what really gets me?  It's the sheer contempt that radiates from every page.  (Because pretty much every page is either an advert, or it's facing an advert.)  Contempt for the medium, contempt for the creators, contempt for the stories, and especially contempt for the paying customer.  What the hell reaction do you expect me to have?

Sometimes I don't know why I bother.  I could be doing better things with my time than wading through this crap, and given the respect they show for the product, Marvel apparently agree.

Rating: C-

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