With the release this weekend of the movie Deadpool comes with it a question. Most interested people have asked this question where only a portion has gone forward to pursue its answer. Quite simply, the question is: “Who is Deadpool?” Wade Wilson or Deadpool was created by artist/writer Rob Liefeld and writer Fabian Nicieza in the early 1990’s in issue #98 of the X-Men spin-off comic book: The New Mutants. He has a super-human healing factor similar to Wolverine and played a villain in both the pages of The New Mutants and X-Force. It went on that way for a while until 1997 when writer Joe Kelly and artist Ed McGuiness took Deadpool, who now starred in his own monthly comic book, in a whole new direction. Deadpool became an action-comedy. This week we’ll be taking a look at the comic book that changed the way Marvel looks at mercenary anti-heroes.
In the first three panels we see exactly what kind of story this comic will be: “The Bolivian Jungle. Steamy. Rank. More humid than a church pew on Sunday. And Quiet…So Deathly Quiet.” “Sir? I think I hear him. I—I think he’s talking–?” “Duh. It’s called narration. You ignorant Simp. A literary device that allows one to establish tone—exposit information—And in a pinch, it’s a lively way to distract a pack of feebs like yourselves!” Yup that’s all you need to know about what’s coming here-on-after. That doesn’t even include the moments that Deadpool breaks the fourth-wall.
Continuing on in the first issue we see Wade taking on missions for money until one such mission takes him to Antarctica. All the while displaying his witty dialogue, he finds himself up against Alpha Flight member Sasquatch in an attempt to sabotage a covert project and ends up threatening the entire Southern hemisphere.
I won’t ruin the ending but what happens is pretty cool. It’ll be easy to see why this “Merc with a mouth” is so popular and perhaps why the feature film will be just as fun as the pages it was adapted from. I haven’t been able to go deep and immerse myself in the vast adventures of Wade Wilson but I think that it’s something that I want to explore.
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