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Happy April Fools everyone, if there can really be such a thing. I’ve elected to celebrate this most ignominious holiday by delving deep into the “fool” part of the name with a look at one of my favorite superhero G-listers: Foolkiller. Created in 1974 in the pages of Man-Thing by the incomparable Steve Gerber, Foolkiller is one of the many bizarre no-name characters that tend to pepper the lower tiers of the Marvel echelon. He’s best described as a more comedic version of the Punisher, largely because Steve Gerber was one of the premiere funnymen of ‘70s Marvel comics (he invented Howard the Duck, after all.)
From those humble beginnings Foolkiller’s actually been re-imagined about 4 different times, once as a hardcore murder vigilante with a weird bondage gimp costume, once in the Marvel mature readers line MAX Comics, and once as part of Deadpool’s expansive entourage. I’m going to focus today on the last of those three, the Greg Salinger Foolkiller, and his short-lived five-issue comic from 2016 written by Max Bemis, drawn by Dalibor Talajic, and colored by Miroslav Mrva.
As I said, Foolkiller (2016) follows up on the adventures of Greg Salinger, the second iteration of the character. Though Greg has had sporadic solo titles in the past his longest running appearance was as a member of Deadpool’s team Mercs for Money, which is why his costume is specifically like a purple version of Deadpool’s. He doesn’t have any powers if that’s what you’re wondering, just a compulsive need to kill people he considers fools, which I think is why he eventually transitioned into being more of a comedy character.
To be sure, Foolkiller (2016) is a comedic book though it’s very much in the style of black comedy that Max Bemis tends to favor. The series finds Foolkiller having hung up his costume and become a psychologist for SHIELD, working to try and reform Z-list villains like Young Red Skull while living in Queens with his girlfriend Melanie. Unfortunately for all involved Greg isn’t quite as cured as he thought and starts to relapse, becoming Foolkiller again to bump off is patients.
Now just from the outset, I should say Foolkiller is a very idiosyncratic comic and I’m not really surprised it only lived for 5 issues despite being billed as an ongoing series. It’s about as niche as a niche comic gets: a dark comedy where people actually die starring a G-list superhero who bumps off Z-list villains in-between long and bizarre monologues about psychology. It’s closest point of comparison for comic fans might be some of the more recent Ant-Man stuff or Superior Foes of Spider-Man only it’s much, much bloodier.
Honestly a lot of the comic is most similar in tone to Bemis’ previous work Evil Empire, a fairly prescient work these days. It’s all wrapped up in the idea of Foolkiller as a more personally aware yet no less awful character. He’s fully aware of his own history of childhood abuse and backsliding behavior it’s just that awareness can’t necessarily save him from repeating the same toxic behavior. What helps here is that Foolkiller doesn’t fall into the trap of being a proud jerk, a character type, which has become more and more prevalent and more and more taxing. At the end of the day, Foolkiller wants to be a good person he just sucks at it.
That’s actually why I’ve always been drawn to the superhero screw-up archetype, like Ant-Man or Jessica Jones, their very definition as superheroes means they’re trying to do the right thing and can’t retreat into a shell of self-accepted awfulness. In a lot of media, it’s far too easy to have a character where their own interpersonal failures and immaturity as a badge of honor, but the whole definition of the superhero is to struggle against complacency, cowardice, and the baser instincts of our nature.
In the case of Foolkiller, it’s actually an even more unique approach as he’s fully aware of his own psychological shortcomings and ultimately willing to reach out for help when the costumed murdering gets a little too all-consuming. All of this ends up very well illustrated in issue 4 where Deadpool makes an extended cameo where he helps Foolkiller get a handle on how to sell a comic and Foolkiller gives him psych advice.
Incidentally, that’s very much the crux of the comic’s comedy: applying psycho-therapy help to the off the wall weirdness of a superhero universe. A lot of Foolkiller’s clients are completely goofy one-off joke characters and the villain’s ultimate plan turns out to be that he keeps sabotaging himself and wants Foolkiller to help him overcome this flaw and then act as a therapist to his super-powered mafia.
Given all the psychobabble flying around and the way our protagonist has a somewhat tenuous grasp on the real the artwork has a big task in reflecting Foolkiller’s fractured outlook while still being understandable, luckily Talajic and Mrva manage this excellently. Talajic has an easy command of the comic medium and his panels never feel cluttered even though some of them are very full. Most importantly, the book understands how to use sequential art as a way to fade through events that aren’t realistically sequential.
This basically just means there’s a lot of good use of montage in the comics, most of which are probably some degree of imagined. Again, issue 4 is where this is shown off the clearest as Foolkiller and Deadpool filter through several locations and costumes. It’s actually the kind of scene that works best in a comic book because the reader has time to examine each individual panel before moving to the next one, making it easier to follow the flow through radically changing settings and designs.
Mrva’s coloring is also real solid. Coloring is one of the more thankless elements of comic books in that folks tend to only really notice it when it’s bad but in this case, a lot of good work goes into it. A lot of the job here is in making characters pop, a reflection of the bright dots of weird lunacy that define the superheroes in this otherwise mundane environment.
Mrva does a great job creating a background palette of cool night colors and earth tones that serve to highlight Foolkiller’s purple tactical suit. What’s more, there’s a lot of color balancing that goes into the book’s caption boxes, especially with multiple narrators, not to mention the great washed out color work that goes into the fantasy and dream sequences.
Foolkiller definitely isn’t a comic for everyone, in fact, I’d dare say it’s a comic for almost no one but it’s one I definitely enjoyed and I don’t think I'm unique enough a being to be alone in that. It’s the kind of mini-series that back issue bins at comic book shops were basically made for, a weird one-off that was too bizarre to maintain itself but just curious enough to keep itself circulating on blogs like this.
There were a lot of those that came out in the ‘90s like Druid or A. Bizarro, which fits because Foolkiller does have a very ‘90s vibe to it (I mean, the main hero dresses exactly like a parody of a ‘90s superhero- all pouches and guns.) It’s entirely possible that without the same grounding in superhero tropes or a willingness to accept a darker kind of comedy that brushes off death you won’t enjoy this book but I really liked it.
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