The Unbelievable Gwenpool by Christopher Hastings is in my opinion, one of the best Marvel comics
over the past few years and it really shined at using this character in fun and unique
ways.
It was a funny book, but it never leaned too far into the wacky and memelike because contrary
to popular belief from people who have never read the book, Gwenpool is not just a female
version of Deadpool.
The series also had a lot of heart, offering some touching character moments that were
earned through top quality writing and character development.
Then all of that amazing character building was thrown out the window in favor of flossing
and dabs, thus ruining the character and just turning her into yet another Deadpool!
Well at least that’s what I thought and I made an in depth take down video that did…
surprisingly well.
But here’s the thing, I was wrong.
Like super duper wrong.
But you know what else I get wrong?
My password, like… a lot.
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free, But anyway, back to the video.
Outside of some super cringeworthy cameos and guest appearances by writers that really
didn’t seem to understand the character, Gwenpool Strikes Back by writer, Leah Williams,
is the first real follow up to the Unbelievable Gwenpool.
The over the top not-so-Gwen personality that Williams gave Poole seemed like a huge slap
in the face to many fans of the character.
If you look to my previous videos, a lot of the comments were “LOL GWENPOOL IS AN ISEKAI”,
but beyond that, it’s clear that a lot of people agreed with my take about the book
being really bad.
The big problem though is that the comic wasn’t done yet and it definitely had a lot to say
about the people that criticized it in the issues that came out after my video.
For context, I made my reactionary video on only three out of the five issues that Gwenpool
Strikes Back was slated for and in the VERY NEXT ISSUE of the book that came out after
I made that video, my thoughts and frustrations were directly addressed.
See, the entire plot of Gwenpool Strikes Back is that Gwen realized that she was starting
to lose popularity and was on track to becoming forgotten to time which basically spells death
for any comic character.
If she didn’t do something drastic to change things up, well then Gwen was going to be
a goner.
This led to such antics as Poole irradiating herself in hopes of getting new powers, teaming
up with Deadpool, and wreaking havoc on the Fantastic Four, but for the grand finale,
Gwen had something up her sleeve.
You see, Gwenpool set up a big fanservicey Marvel superhero swimsuit battle royale that
she planned to win in order to demonstrate that she was a serious contender, but for
some reason, all of the younger generation of characters didn’t seem to get the memo
about this being a swimsuit competition thing.
The other heroes thought that this was a joke, but to raise the stakes, Gwen shot Bruce Banner
in order to turn him into the Hulk.
Of course, a rampaging Hulk means that chaos ensues.
Now in order to get better control of the situation, Gwen reached into the timestream
in order to pull various other versions of herself for a massive team up and what follows
is brilliant meta-commentary on how sloppy the character's production history has been
over the years.
In my previous video, I mentioned that my biggest problem with the Gwenpool character
is that every single time that someone other than Christopher Hastings wrote her, they
seemed to greatly misunderstand who the character was.
This led to multiple depictions in various crossovers and cameos of Gwenpools with VERY
all over the place personalities.
Okay, maybe that’s a stretch.
At the VERY least, these characters were noticeably different from the characterization that was
seen in the Unbelievable Gwenpool series.
So when Strikes Back Gwen grabbed her past selves, these different personalities handled
by other writers were the ones that she nabbed.
Obviously, she also pulled the Hastings incarnation who was labeled as the fan favorite because
we'll… she is.
I also have to mention that I love how Strike Back Gwen also tried to recruit “Gwen Prime”
A.K.A. the character’s first appearance which was a joke variant cover of a Deapool
comic.
I felt super validated in my frustrations over Gwen’s inconsistent depictions when
I saw all of these different versions of Gwenpool together in an official setting, showing off
just how different they all are.
And in case the fact that they ARE different wasn’t clear, they’re all specially labeled.
Even my least favorite version of Gwenpool got to show up which is the depiction from
her brief crossover in the Rocket Raccoon & Groot series.
This obnoxious, gun toting Gwen wanted to solve every problem with gratuitous violence
which Strikes Back Gwen shuts down hard with "Take it down a notch, Harley-Gwen.
You're embarrassing us."
I love this sequence because they book is also seemingly taking shots at the frustrations
that I have with DC Comics regarding how they’ve been ruining the character of Harley Quinn
by trying to turn her into their own female Deadpool.
Admittedly, I’m probably reading too much into that last part, but at the very least,
I really enjoyed this sequence and it felt like it was written just for me.
Another moment of validation came from the interaction of Hastings Gwen breaking into
tears when she saw how awful her future incarnation turned out to be.
I said in my previous video that I would rather see Gwenpool become forgotten to time rather
than live on as something completely unrecognizable and as something that the original character
herself wouldn’t be a fan of.
This is just *chef’s kiss*
Anyway, with the team all assembled, Gwenpool started making quick work of the competition
including lifting Thor’s hammer by getting ahold of his severed and rotting arm.
In the end, there were only two fighters left in the battle royale, Gwenpool and Kamala
Khan AKA Ms. Marvel.
These two have been friends for a good long while and Kamala did not want to fight Gwen
or really anybody at all.
Hell, when she beat Miles Morales earlier, it was just because she kicked his butt in
a game of Red Hands which makes no sense because you know, Spider Sense.
However, in addition to not wanting to fight, Ms. Marvel also noticed that Poole was not
mentally in a good place.
She’s been escalating things more and more in a way that’s clearly a manic episode.
I personally suffer from clinical bipolar depression and yeah, that explanation makes
total sense.
When confronted with this, Poole has what looks to be a panic attack and she lashed
out at Kamala who to her credit was able to deescalate the situation.
The two of them then talk about Poole’s fear of becoming a forgotten comic character,
which from the outside is a super irrational thing to be upset about because remember,
outside of a few other fourth wall breaking characters like She-Hulk and Deadpool, this
is everybody’s real life.
But you see, Gwenpool is a really interesting case.
Her entire origin is that she’s a comic fan that came from our real world and as a
result, she knows a lot of information that she shouldn’t and she later developed the
ability to manipulate the fictional reality around her.
The crazy thing though is that she was always a comic character!
Since it’s literally impossible for a real person to go inside a comic book, the world
that Gwen thinks she comes from either doesn’t exist or is just an alternate Marvel universe
that heavily resembles our real world, but one that’s still fictional nonetheless.
This idea was played with in the Unbelievable Gwenpool series and in Gwenpool Strikes Back,
Christopher Hastings comes back for a single page in the form of a talking cloud so that
he could reveal that Gwen’s parents are named Ted and Martha Poole which is odd because
if she really came from the real world then he wouldn't have the ability to name these
real life people.
Hold up though.
If Gwen was always a comic character this entire time then how does that explain her
reality manipulation powers?
That’s a plot hole!
Well during their conversation, Ms. Marvel speculates that Gwen might actually be a mutant.
As most people know, mutant powers tend to manifest around adolescence and due to the
nature of reality manipulating powers, Gwen’s abilities might have distorted her memories
in a way that made her remember the world as a work of fiction.
Even though this explanation comes from nowhere and is super contrived, Gwen just kind of
goes with it in order to make Kamala happy and honestly, I think we’ve all been in
a similar situation.
I mean, not the whole ”Hey, you’re a mutant with super powers.”, but just saying something
to make a friend happy and shut up.
Anyway, after their talk, Poole forfeits the battle and goes into the space between comic
panels in order to mope and be sad, but here’s the thing.
Even though Gwen says to herself that she knows she’s not a mutant, this new origin
story got retconned into existence by her talk with Ms. Marvel.
As Gwenpool looks into the abyss, accepting her series cancelation and therefore her death,
a Krakoan gate appears before her, which takes Poole to the mutant nation of Krakoa where
she’s embraced by Wolverine as a member of the mutant race.
Presumably, she’ll be safe here.
I mean if you think about it, once you’re an X-Men character, you get to stick around
no matter what.
I mean freaking Glob of all people gets to appear in comic after comic.
So someone as popular as Gwen?
Well the sky’s the limit!
Most importantly, it’s this page right here that really sold me on Gwenpool Strikes Back,
but it needs some context to truly appreciate it.
The last time that Gwen stared cancelation in its face was at the end of The Unbelievable
Gwenpool series and it ends on a super heartwarming note when a more mature, future version of
the character appears to inspire her younger self.
In this page of Strikes Back, Gwen explains that she couldn’t be the fan favorite version
of the character from the previous series nor that mature future version of the character
because she had work and character growth to do in Gwenpool Strikes Back which helps
bridge the gap of who the character was and who she’ll later become later on down the
line.
The major obnoxious shift in personality was only there temporarily in order to hammer
home this point and she assures us that we’ll never see this version of who she is ever
again because the series is now over.
I think this is a super clever approach and when I tweeted about my changed thoughts on
the series, a very awesome fan and moderator on the Comic Drake Discord, Ruben, wondered
if the change in the tone of Strikes Back was intentional from the beginning or if it
was in response to the fan backlash kind of like what I presented in my previous video.
In hopes of getting more information, I crossed my fingers and desperately hoped that Leah
Williams wasn’t mad about my previous video and I tagged her.
To my surprise, she chimed in with an answer!
She said that because Gwenpool Strikes back was a mini-series, there were obvious limitations,
but this idea of bridging was always intended to be the point of the book.
In her eyes, there’s no other character that could pull off this feat which is something
that I definitely agree on.
She also agreed to do an interview with me so if you want to see that, you might want
to subscribe.
Hint hint.
Even though I cringed super hard at the early issues of the book, I’ll happily eat crow
and say that the ending made the entire experience worthwhile.
I’m glad that my friends convinced me to stick with the book and I’m ultimately glad
that I read it.
That said, I’m a bit worried that this is going to be required reading for any new writers
that take on Gwenpool.
So will they focus on the cringy first part or will they understand the point of the last
two issues and portray her in the more “proper” way?
I think you can really only do this kind of tone shift with the character one time, but
I guess only time will tell.
And hey, if any of those new books suck then I can just make a mean take down video and
rake in all of those sweet sweet negativity views!
Most importantly, I think I learned a valuable lesson in basing my opinion on a story in
progress and that you can only really have an informed perspective when you look at a
work in its entirety.
I get super upset about people leaving dumb ass comments on my content when they’re
clearly just in a rush to tell me how wrong I am, but they never bothered to finish the
video.
Nine times out of ten, I directly address the stuff that they complain about later in
the video and if they weren’t in such a rush to be outraged, then they’d have less
ignorant comments.
By labeling Gwenpool Strikes Back as terrible because I was too impatient to wait for the
last two issues to come out so my opinion could be more informed, I come off as a massive
hypocrite.
I can and should be better than that.
Anyway, that’s all I have for today.
So if you liked this video then, I’d recommend subscribing, watching more content on my channel
and just keep on reading comic books.
I hope you learned at least a little something new and hopefully, I’ll see you next time.