As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.

DEADPOOL / WOLVERINE #2
“Badlands”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colour artist: Guru-eFX
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Mark Basso

There isn’t much to say about this one, which isn’t a complaint. It’s just not that sort of book.

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE.

Deadpool. He remains mind controlled until page 20, when a blow to the head restores his normal personality, without any memory of how he got there.

Wolverine. Yet again, he tries to make an alliance with Maverick, though he’s openly sceptical that Maverick will actually stick to it.

Since the costume left for the mind-controlled Deadpool had another one next to it obviously designed for Wolverine, he and Maverick both make the reasonable assumption that Wolverine was supposed to be part of this plan as well. They have two theories as to why this hasn’t happened: that the buried trigger got removed in one of Wolverine’s Krakoan resurrections, or that Wolverine is being mind controlled, but in a much more subtle way. Either seems possible, though the Krakoan theory seems rather more likely.

In narration, he gives us a speech about the importance of memory as “the bedrock of who you are”, and says that not remembering what he has to do with “this X-Cutioner business” disturbs him – though oddly, he doesn’t mention the many, many other memory gaps that he’s had to deal with down the years.

SUPPORTING CAST.

Maverick. He brushes off the news that Deadpool is being mind-controlled, telling Wolverine that “We’ve both been down that road.” He’s referring to their time in Weapon X, obviously, but the line is ambiguous as to whether he’s sympathising or brushing it off – Wolverine seems to think that Maverick is trying to implicitly apologise for turning on him, though it’s hard to see where he gets that from.

He regards the O*N*E soldiers under his command as “triggerhappy”, which would fit with the way the organisation has been depicted in X-Men.

He’s surprised to learn that O*N*E are listening in to his conversation with Wolverine. He seems quite happy not to have to act on the order to arrest Wolverine, but it’s not obvious that he actively drags his feet to give Wolverine the chance to escape, as opposed to just wavering for a few seconds.

VILLAINS

Stryfe. He has a Batcave-style hideout in the Badlands (presumably, where Deadpool met him last issue). There’s a massive dinosaur fossil in one wall.

He says he’s “unbound by time”, which seems to just mean that he’s a time traveller. He thinks this gives him the perspective to know what needs to be “fixed”, presumably because he can better understand the consequences of major events. He regards his home time as a “punishing hell”, which he’s trying to avert.

The plan involves emptying a section of South Dakota through a Chernobyl-style nuclear power plant disaster, and then hatching a bunch of monster eggs. The monsters look a bit like skeletal dinosaurs, though they have some sort of blue veins and sinew running inside. Quite what this is meant to achieve remains unclear.

Director Talyn. The woman that Maverick takes his orders from; since he’s been hired by O*N*E, presumably she’s a O*N*E official? We haven’t seen her before, anyway. She tries to get Maverick to contain Wolverine instead of working with him. But to be fair, she offers a reasonably sensible justification: he may or may not be under the influence of the same person who just got Deadpool to nuke South Dakota.