Gwenpool Strikes back mini review

Ok so I don’t do reviews on comic books very often. Most of my blogs tend to be vs debate respect threads or related to Death Battle in some way. But I’m gonna try my best and write a fairly half-assed review of the recent Gwenpool strikes back mini. It’s divided into 3 sections. Things I liked, what I didn’t like, and what I’m mixed on.

Things that I liked.

I liked a lot of the explorations of Gwen’s 4th wall abilities in this mini.The flashback ability was really cool, particularly with how she just started changing reality by making up bullshit on the fly. I loved how Gwen used gutter space to grab various versions of herself from across the timeline to fight with her. I loved how she used gutter space to go back to a point in marvel continuity where she could get Thor’s severed arm to use as a glove to wield Mjolnir.

I liked Gwen’s interaction with Mr.s Marvel at the end of the mini. It was both heartwarming and a bit sad given the context(Kamalah was essentially gaslighting Gwen by accident). BEING HONEST these two characters really need to have a team-up book, because they seem to have chemistry in a similar vein to Spiderman and Deadpool.

The ending of the book was pretty solid and it addressed a lot of the complaints I think people had in the earlier issues.

I also think Gwen retconning her own history to be a mutant is extremely clever since it gives her a valid reason to just show up in new books for the time being. It also gives her next writer some wiggle room if they want to give her additional powers that are less difficult to write around.

Things I’m mixed on

Gwen’s characterization

So Gwen’s characterization is probably the most polarizing thing about this book. Laying down some context, Gwen is a character that has a REALLLY hard time getting out of the shadow of Deadpool and Spider-Gwen. Most of the time when I see this character brought up in reddits or forums, I tend to see her written off because people thinks she’s just a lazy cash grab combination of the two, and that her existence is unnecessary.

A big reason why a lot of people ended up liking her, is because they read her comic and saw that it defied their expectations in regards to what her personality and backstory actually was. She wasn’t Gwen Stacy, she was an original character named Gwen Poole, playing out the role of an isekai anime. She doesn’t use crass humor like Deadpool, and instead was more whimsical and bubbly. She was never random for randomness sake, and her actions had reasonable explanations from the point of view of somebody who knows the comics medium. She also tended to only make references to marvel lore and comic tropes, rather than current real-world trends or memes.

Now GSB doesn’t change her identity as an isekai protag, but it does dial back a lot of those more original traits while increasing her “Deadpool-ish” traits.

She curses a lot more, to the point where some pages have entire word balloons covered in F#ks. She’s way more sexual than she’s ever been, particularly with the jokes about shark penisis, surprisingly overt references to monster girl H-games, and putting her butt on cam. Her plans are also a bit more “manic/odd” for somebody well versed in comics, such as her wanting to get powers from spider-man via his fluids(it’s a reference to the elsworld spider man reign comic) or wanting to seduce members of the fantastic 4.There’s also a lot more pseudo-cut-away gags and references to memes. Such as a fortnight dance segment, a random chibi version of herself that kept popping up, the derpy school photos,etc.

Now I am going, to be honest, I'm not a big fan of this characterization and I don’t care much for memes, cutaway gag, or pop-culture references. It has nothing to do with age either(I’m only in my mid 20s), it’s just cut away gags tend to be disconnected from the plot and from my experience a lot of the media that incorporates memes or social trends tend to feel outdated years later. Looking at a show like Yo Yo Yogi shows you what I’m getting at.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHylnwA-jV8

But all that said this change in characterization was CLEARLY done on purpose. Gwen seems to be emulating Deadpool and using cheap tactics to garner attention in an attempt to stay relevant and attract readers. Gwen even says herself near the end of the book that she knows she wasn’t acting like the version of Gwen people prefer.

And tbh I think this is actually pretty clever, albeit somewhat of a double-edged sword. Because it runs the risk of alienating people who did enjoy her original run and reaffirms the opinion of those who see her as just a female Deadpool. At least assuming they don’t actually finish the mini. It also doesn’t really help that she’s often written out of character in guest appearances like champions, the Rocket and Groot book( though funny enough the book points this out as well).

Yeah I know some personality drift is common when different people write the same fictional character. But that’s generally best implemented in characters that have been around for years or decades, with more media exposure, and who probably have a “core” version of themselves most people can default to when they think of the character(Batman in TAS, Ironman in the MCU,ect). Gwen’s like barley 5 years old, has a single 25 issue run, and a handful game appearances. Having so many different takes on her character is probably confusing to people outside of her fandom.

But yeah overall I like the idea. I think it might have helped if Gwen “broke” the strikes back persona or something a few times earlier so it would be clearer what she was doing though.

Not explaining some of Gwen’s powers

I think the comic at times was a bit to freeform with Gwen’s abilities in terms of their application. I liked them overall, but Comic drake put it best in a video he did on Gwen recently. Gwen has the ability to break the 4th wall, but it’s more “grounded” than a lot of other characters. Her powers have rules and she needs to experiment with them to figure out how they work. For example, after she interacts with word bubbles, so she figures out she can grab sound effects to silence them since those SFX effects are similar. She experiments with panel borders, and she discovers gutter space after making a hole in one of them. She came into the marvel universe at a point in the mid-2010s and didn’t have knowledge of anything that happened after that.

Now the flashback power is explained pretty well, but there’s a lot of points in the mini where she seems to just do things without an explanation being given. Like she telekinetically moves a bag of money in issue 1, but the comic never brings it up again. She can apparently interact with, summon or surprises the author of her own comic, but this awareness of them was never established. There’s a point where she mentions in issue 3 that she’s apparently read the immortal hulk(she recommends it to the reader), but that clashes with how she wasn’t aware of events that happened in marvel after she arrived in her original series. Granted she can apparently access other comic runs via gutter space(which was also introduced in this run), so she could have read it that way.

And it’s not a huge issue. It’s just seeing Gwen slowly figure out how to interact with panel borders or entering gutter space was a big part of the last run, so just hand waving her discovery of those powers here comes off as less enjoyable.

Minor continuity things

Another small nitpic. When Gwen pulls her older selves to fight the hulk from various points in the timeline, some of them should not have the reality-altering 4th wall powers yet. Particularly unbelievable, champions and rocket Gwen, since they all came from a time period before the evil Gwen arch in the original comic. Unbelievable Gwen specifically also shouldn’t have been aware of her series being canceled due to the time period she was pulled from(no 12), which she implies she knows when she asks strikes back Gwen if she got another ongoing.

The champions Gwen dying also doesn’t quite make sense, cause the whole evil Gwen arch had “future squad” trying to kill present Gwen specifically to prevent her future evil self from existing. Gwen herself even cut off that bad timeline from happening by refusing to turn evil and therefore preventing that future from happening.

Things I didn’t like

The flow of the story

So this is the only real problem I have with the mini. It feels like the story doesn’t quite know where it’s going most of the time, particularly in the first 2  issues. There’s a lot of plot threads that get introduced and then dropped.

Like there’s the whole “intrusive thoughts” thing in the first issues, which wasn’t really brought up again in the later issues.

Gwen makes a big deal about wanting to get more traditional superpowers writers can rely on because her normal abilities are overpowered in issue 1. But this plot thread is just dropped until the very end of issue 5, and even then it kind of just got reintroduced by accident.

Issue 2 doesn’t feel like it was integral to the story at all. Issue one doesn’t really lead into the plot of trying to seduce members of the fantastic 4. Additionally Gwen only really decides to make Gwenpool island in issue 3 after seeing her sales data and talking to Deadpool, which didn’t really need to be connected to the fantastic 4 plot either.

I'm also slightly confused as to what happened to all the other Gwen's that where time-displaced in issue 4, once we started issue 5. They kind of just disappear from the plot, which is odd since a few of them seemed to want to call out the strikes back Gwen on her behavior.

Overall I think a lot of plot beats could been tighter and that the mini would have flowed better if the structure of issues 1 and 2 had been altered so they could naturally progress into the latter half of the series better.

Like off the top of my head, maybe in Issue 1 Gwen wants to get superpowers, and she discovers the flashback ability. In issue 2 she uses said flashback ability to engineer giving herself traditional superpowers. Then the rest of the mini can play out similarly with her making the island to use said powers to prove herself, than retconning herself to be a mutant so she can be apart of those books.

I dunno if that would work exactly. But it's vague idea I can come up with.

Overall opinion

I think the book was pretty decent. The original run was still better in my opinion and I’m really hoping we can go back to that characterization soon, but this book executed most of its ideas well enough that I enjoyed it. I think it kind of just needed to be a bit tighter and less directionless at the beginning because the story doesn’t start to get stronger/more cohesive until around issue 3(and possibly even 4 depending on who you ask). Any other complaints are more about exposition and continuity.

I’d give it an 8 out of 10