In general, it's nice to see Deadpool play a bigger role in the Marvel Universe. I enjoyed the opening arc of Daniel Way's "Deadpool" series, even if the series lost my interest shortly after. And I gave a glowing review to the "Amazing Spider-Man" issue by Joe Kelly and Eric Canete that featured the merc with the mouth. Deadpool can inject some much needed self-parody into a sometimes too serious superhero universe.

But "Deadpool Team-Up" #898 is just a poor comic.

I guess the joke of the numbering is that it's hilarious to think a comic like this could ever reach #898 (or #899 last issue, because counting backwards is also hilarious -- see DC's "Countdown" for more examples of laugh-a-minute graphic narrative), and that joke is just about as funny as the rest of this issue.

This is a comic that tries to parody a Sam Peckinpah movie, a comic entitled "Bring Me the Head of Mickey Dobbs," and fails to do anything but plod along from one scene to the next in the most uninspired way possible.

This is a Deadpool comic that has all the energy of a Ben Stein lecture. This is a Deadpool comic in which a witty line of dialogue reads like this, "Aside from talking trash about the beautiful Bea Arthur, God rest her soul, it don't get more personal." I guess the joke there is that Bea Arthur is dead. And was not beautiful. Just in case you didn't get it.

And as jokes in this issue go, that's one of the better ones.

It's mostly just a lot of scampering around and backstabbing, as a bunch of freelancers stumble over each other to satisfy a Mexican crime boss. You know, like that Peckinpah movie about Alfredo Garcia, except instead of the tormented and sardonic Warren Oates, we get Robin Williams in a Ryan Reynolds costume. And the Zapata Brothers! They're Mike Benson creations from "Moon Knight" who talk like third-rate Tarantino rip-off characters from 1995 but dress like luchadores.

That's who Deadpool has the "team-up" with.

And with the final line of the issue stating, "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," more such team-ups might appear on the Marvel horizon.

For the love of the saintly, gorgeous, and dead Bea Arthur, I hope not.