Terry Pallot

The current run of Deadpool --- which stretches back into the previous volume --- has been one of the smartest, most sophisticated takes on one of Marvel's most juvenile characters. Over the course of over sixty issues, Gerry Duggan and crew have infused Deadpool with a level of complexity that the character had been missing for decades. Recently, Wade Wilson has been pulled in all directions by the Avengers, the Mercs For Money, his burgeoning relationship with his daughter Ellie, and his failing marriage with Shilkah, Queen of Monster Metropolis. In the most recent issue by Duggan, Mike Hawthorne, Terry Pallot and Jordie Bellaire, Deadpool #17 one of those bonds snapped, and a classic Marvel hero paid the price. Spoilers follow.

I think I can pinpoint the moment that I fell in love with the backstory of the Dragon Age games as my realization that Thedas, the name of the world in which all your adventures were taking place, was really just an acronym for "The Dragon Age Setting," which just happened to sound like a nifty name for a fantasy world. Even beyond that, though, I love the world-building that goes on in those games, and the way that it's weaved into a story that feels like it has a vast history full of cultures and religions that are engaging and vibrant, with bits and pieces that are even more interesting than the main storyline sometimes. But as much as I love reading all that stuff in the game itself, and as much as I'd prefer it if there was a way to read all that stuff without having to stop in the middle of my dungeon crawling and page through whatever ancient tome I just picked up, it's not the kind of thing that I thought I'd be into reading, say, an entire novel about. It was going to take a lot to get me to follow it from the game into another medium, which is probably why Dark Horse decided to give the new Dragon Age: Magekiller comic to the creative team of Greg Rucka and Carmen Carnero, and ended up with a comic that's unsurprisingly pretty great.