When last we met, I opened up with some observations about Marvel's stop-start scheduling policy, and the explanation that had just been offered at Newsarama.  Basically, David Gabriel had claimed that Marvel put tons of effort into spreading out all the books, and especially into making sure the X-Men titles didn't ship in the same week.  But sometimes delays screwed it all up.

I observed that for the last few months, the schedules had been completely screwed up to start with, even before any delays had taken hold, which tended to suggest a more fundamental problem.  But I gave them credit for the June solicitations, which were rather saner.

Well, now we've got the July ones, and they're as crazy as ever.  The month opens up with Astonishing and Uncanny both shipping in the same week, which is supposed to be the cardinal sin that they struggle to avoid.  Week two has four books, and then week three has just one.  And it's not even an important one.  It's New X-Men #40.  Then, for week four, it's up to five again - including X-Men, X-Men: First Class and World War Hulk: X-Men.  With the best will in the world, I find it hard to believe that this is the best schedule reasonably attainable.

Anyway, in the fortnight I've been away, not much has happened in the X-books.  Plenty of comics have come out, but only one has actually finished a story.  That book is Cable & Deadpool #39, the concluding part of an arc about Deadpool trying to regain a sense of identity.  Cable has been conveniently absent throughout this story, presumably in order to give Mike Carey a free reign now that he's joined the cast of X-Men.

It's a curious issue.  This storyline began with Deadpool becoming worried about his lack of moral centre.  Somehow, at the last moment, we've shifted into the vexed topic of T-Ray.  This still involves Deadpool's sense of identity, but it's not quite the same question.

Now, T-Ray was a villain created to serve as Deadpool's archenemy back when Joe Kelly was writing his solo title.  Quite why T-Ray hated Deadpool so much was left unclear for a while, until Kelly attempted an audacious, and not entirely successful, revision to history by declaring that Deadpool wasn't really Wade Wilson, as he'd always claimed to be.  T-Ray was the real Wade Wilson.  Deadpool had stolen his identity but, because of his own insanity, he no longer remembered doing so.

This was terribly complicated.  Once Kelly left and T-Ray fell into obscurity, it became a dreadful nuisance which was politely ignored.  Frank Tieri attempted to undo the story during his brief run on Deadpool, but did so in a manner so bizarre and unconvincing that the Official Handbook flatly refused to accept it as valid.  (If you haven't read it, then basically, a random mystic event occurred, and then Deadpool said, "Well, that proves I'm the real Wade Wilson."  And readers everywhere yelled, "HOW?!")

Some of the dialogue in this story rather suggests that Fabian Nicieza doesn't know about the Frank Tieri arc.  T-Ray talks as though he hasn't been seen since the Kelly story, for example.  But it doesn't matter, because there's no contradiction, and this story kicks the whole issue into touch rather more effectively.  Turning a dreadful continuity quagmire to his advantage, Nicieza uses this mess as a metaphor for Deadpool's more general uncertainty about his identity, and teases the possibility that we, and the characters, might have to live with not knowing the answer.

But, once Deadpool has beaten the bad guy, Nicieza helpfully spends a couple of panels giving chapter and verse for why Kelly's initial story doesn't fit with previously established continuity, decisively condemning it to the bin once and for all.  I approve of this.  Don't get me wrong, I liked the original Joe Kelly story on its own merits, and it's true that this retcon tears it apart.  But in the longer term it was just a cumbersome and confusing piece of baggage.  Since no writer in years has shown the slightest interest in working with it, the character is better off rid of it.

In the long run, then, this is a good move for the character.  On the other hand, as a continuity fix, it doesn't make for the greatest story in its own right, and I'm not wholly persuaded that this resolution answers the quest for identity that Deadpool had embarked on in the first place.  To some extent the story seems to be deliberately leaving those questions open, which is fair enough, but I don't feel that the story quite works as a pay-off for the recent arc.  (And presumably we're moving on to another story next month, which is an X-Men crossover.)

Still, it's a fair enough story, and there are plenty of genuinely funny moments to liven it up.

[Footnote: I'm told that although the notoriously incomprehensible Deadpool story mentioned above was credited to Frank Tieri, he didn't actually write the issue in question, and finds it as baffling as everyone else does.]

Rating: B

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