Book Review: Marvel Studios' Deadpool & Wolverine: The Art of the Movie
February 3rd 2025
Deadpool & Wolverine was one of the biggest movies of 2024, bringing the two titular characters into the MCU officially for the first time. On paper, an artbook based on the movie is an easy win, Marvel Studios have been doing these a long time and the fanbase is huge, so did Marvel Studios' Deadpool & Wolverine: The Art of the Movie stick the superhero landing?
This is a new format for the MCU artbooks, it’s just like the other books post Endgame, but now comes with a slipcase and lithographs. This is great news for fans of the older artbooks, that all came with slipcases and they were sorely missed. But, should we be careful what we wish for? That was wanted I wanted to find out and now present my thoughts here.
As before, this is not an art review. I’m not an artist and so I’m in no position to critique these guys at all. This is all about the book and how it delivers the art to you. I’m personally a fan of the art from the teams at Marvel and own all the artbooks, so know that anything positive or negative here is not reflective of their work, you can decide if you like that yourself.
For those interested, a video version of my YouTube review, posted last year, can be found here, or at the bottom of the page.
Build Quality
The book itself is like the others post Endgame, the size matches and comes with a hardcover, showcasing a wrap around piece of artwork. As always, the binding is good and the pages open well. Business as usual for Marvel then and that’s far from a bad thing.
Onto the slipcase then, which is where this stands out against other recent releases and this is thick and sturdy. Some can be cheap and not protective, but like the older books, this is of a good quality. The artwork on the front is from Head of Visual Development, Andy Park.
The lithographs are an interesting addition to me, while I don’t mind them typically, they have to be really good to warrant added value, but I’m not overly impressed with these. The print quality is good and they are almost as large in dimensions as the book, but the images on them aren’t huge, so it comes across as padding. Some people may love a print, but these feel only a little better than what you get for free at a local cinema for a big release. They come in a simple piece of folded card to keep them together.
Content
The book delivers what you expect from Marvel Studios; character art, world concepts, key art, weapons and more. Fans can be happy with what you get here. I’m always partial to a storyboard or early sketch, but they aren’t always included however, like in this book, though I’m more than happy with what is here, so I won’t hold that against it.
The book follows the events of the movie, showing art, both used and unused throughout. My favourite parts are usually seeing what wasn’t used, so sections for things like the variants for Deadpool and Wolverine, costumes and cameos are great. They show not only what specific designs didn’t make it, but also characters entirely.
As you would expect, it is character art heavy, but I knew that would be the case going in. There are some nice pages for Cassandra’s base inside of Ant-Man and the TVA though, as well as other aspects of the movie, so it still feels balanced.
If you want the suits, variants, characters and cameos, you’ll get some superb stuff. While not everyone here can get lots of different iterations due to space, I’m happy for the most part with how they allocated more pages to some over others. I would have liked a little more from the team at the end, Blade gets some good pages, but more for the others would have been nice too. There is repetition in the poses of some characters, with changes to the costume design, that I know some find off-putting, so worth noting.
I do think Marvels decision to cap the page count at 224 post-Endgame was a mistake. It works for some books, but with a large cast like this, I think going back to the early book pages counts, headed up to 350 in some cases, would have been really beneficial.
The text as always gives nice nuggets of info about the making of the movie, how it came together, artists thoughts and what was left out. It’s interesting without becoming a novel, I’ve always admired this about the Marvel Studios' books.
Credits
This book is continues the tradition of crediting the artists on every page and in the back. You can see below that they list all of the pages the artists are featured on too. There’s not much else to say, they always do this right and it should be the standard for all artbooks!
Use of Space
As has also become the norm from the Marvel Studios' artbooks, the pages are full. Nothing worse than blank space and you can never complain about an MCU artbook leaving huge gaps and wasting the pages. You get these books knowing they make the most of the space, so another positive for the book.
Value
My thoughts on this book are mixed, because this is where it unravels. Value is a big thing for me, as it should be for everyone. I was critical of the pricing of this book before its release, so was very curious to see if the slipcase and lithographs could justify the new big price jump.
I’ll break it down by comparing it to other books released by Marvel in 2024, as they are all the same size with a maximum of 224 pages, just without the slipcase and prints. These were books for Wakanda Forever, Ms Marvel, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, Quantumania and only a month earlier, The Marvels. I’ll also use Amazon US to make the comparison fair too.
At full price, these are $60, but you could pick up the earlier books for under $40 within a few months. This Deadpool and Wolverine artbook at full price is $100, shortly after release, only reduced down to $90 and around $80 at the time of posting this review.
This is my issue, unless this will reduce significantly like some of the others, I struggle to see how a slipcase and lithographs equate to close to the same value as a 200 plus page book. Comparing at full price, it is a 66% increase, same for the in UK, Europe and possibly elsewhere. If you are looking to a buy a book right now, it’s an over 120% increase from the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 artbook, which released in the same year.
The book is great, if this was like the others and released without the extras, I could recommend it without hesitation. Especially as Amazon often drops the price, or you may find better deals elsewhere. With the extras though, at this price, it’s harder to see the value. I like the slipcase, it’s of good quality, but despite this it still feels too much. The lithographs aren’t changing the game for me either.
As I mentioned before, the early MCU artbooks had higher page counts and we are going back a long time, so inflation plays a factor. But as an example, lets compare this to the 2016 artbook for Doctor Strange and adjust for inflation. The book was larger, had over 100 pages more and a slipcase, but would still only be around £50 or $70 today. Here, there are less pages and the price is still much higher. Even compared to artbooks in general, this is a high price, usually reserved for limited edition versions of a book.
Perhaps with an extra 50 pages it wouldn’t sting so much. Better yet, if this was a deluxe edition for big fans, with a solo book also available, then it would make more sense. But, this feels like it is needlessly pricing people out. Marvel don’t promote these book well, if ever. I believe if they did, they could all be best sellers and they wouldn’t need to pull a move like this, because it feels like they are taking advantage of dedicated fans. All upcoming artbooks with slipcases, including Agatha All Along, Thunderbolts* and Captain America: Brave New World, have this high price tag too.
Verdict
So after a rant about the price, what’s my verdict? If you’re a big collector, or a hardcore fan of the movie and characters, it’s a great book, but you are paying well for it. If you’re a more casual fan, or someone that’s more careful with their spending, it’s harder to recommend.
The book could sell well and become tough to find, or it may end up reduced in the future like the others and then well worth buying. My recommendation of this book unfortunately comes down to how much free cash you have or what prices you can find online, which is a shame. It often feels bad to talk about money, especially with something like art, but I appreciate it’s tough out there for a lot of people and it’s an important factor to consider. It’s a very good book in every other regard, especially the quality of art, the unused ideas and how it highlights parts they knew fans would want most.
For those interested in the book, you can order it here;
Below is my video review from YouTube, you can find more artbook previews on the channel too;
Tags;
Based On: #DeadpoolAndWolverine Series: #MarvelCinematicUniverse #MCU #Deadpool Publisher: #Marvel Studio: #MarvelStudios #Disney
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