This week’s reading: Deadpool -1, July 1997
Story by Joe Kelly
Art by Aaron Lopresti and Rachel Dodson
Let us now flash back to Marvel’s Flashback Month, a 1997
editorial gimmick in which the company’s entire line interrupted itself to tell
tales set 10 years in the fictional past, just before the dawn of the Marvel
Universe as we know it. And so we got stories such as the day Cable landed in
the 20th century with long hair speaking the Askani language of the
future, or the time Professor Xavier confronted Magneto shortly before his
first appearance in 1963’s X-Men #1,
or the time young Peter Parker went fishing with his Uncle Ben and there were
monsters, but it was only a dream.
Deadpool -1 isn’t
so much about Deadpool’s past as it is the past of his supporting cast,
specifically Vanessa Carlysle, his ex-girlfriend and the mutant known as
Copycat, and Zoe Culloden, his would-be handler from the pandimensional firm of
Landau, Luckman, Lake & Lequare. Notice that fourth L? We’ll find out who
that is later. Much later.
Zoe – whom we haven’t seen in this book since issue +1 – has
been tracking Wade for five years as of the events of this issue. She follows
him to Boston, where Vanessa works as a prostitute, believing Wade is at a
“flux point” in his life where the choices he makes could affect whether he
becomes the galactic savior later. Most people at LLL&L, including Zoe’s
boss, believe Wade is not the droids they’re looking for, but Zoe wants a
promotion so badly she goes undercover as a rookie prostitute – changing from
skintight bodysuit to skintight minidress – in an attempt to manipulate events.
Meanwhile, young Vanessa puts up a tough front as a
prostitute, but she’s hopelessly in love with Wade and truly believes they can
escape their lives and move to the suburbs, a far cry from the woman who posed
as Domino for a year. Also her mutant powers don’t appear to have manifested
yet, so no blue skin or shapeshifting this issue.
Needless to say, this issue definitely does not pass the
Bechdel-Wallace test. While Vanessa and Zoe are the leads, they spend
nearly all their time talking about Wade.
This is the first we’ve seen of Vanessa in a while. She
hasn’t appeared or even been mentioned in the current series yet, and hasn’t
been featured regularly since 1993’s Deadpool:
The Circle Chase, although she did make a guest appearance alongside Wade and
current boyfriend Garrison Kane in 1994’s Wolverine
#88.
As for the main man himself, Wade appears twice in this
issue, very briefly, his face and hair in shadow, though still looking nothing
like the blond, wavy-haired, mustachioed, hairy-chested dreamboat he was healed
to resemble in Deadpool’s Secret Secret
Wars. At this point, Wade is just a heavy-duty mercenary, “responsible for
more suffering and carnage than your average cholera outbreak,” in the words of
Zoe’s boss. He had just completed the mission in which he captured Blind Al
(whom he was supposed to kill), and he’s just found out he has cancer, so the
character as we know and love him is still years away. Yet somehow he still
manages to speak in his trademark yellow word balloons, perhaps in an overly
cautious bid by the editorial team to make sure he was still recognizable.
Rounding out the cast is Montgomery, a precog for LLL&L,
making his first appearance. If a post-cancer Wade Wilson and the Cryptkeeper
from Tales from the Crypt had a baby,
and that baby grew up and were jammed into Mojo’s hoverchair, that’s about what
Monty (as Wade will come to call him) looks like.
The “flux point” so overly discussed in this issue appears
to have to do with the fact that Wade disobeyed the people who hired him by
saving Al and killing everyone else. In retaliation, an assassin is sent after
Vanessa, though Zoe ultimately kills him. Thinking this was all she had to do
get Wade over the flux point, she returns to LLL&L to gloat, only to be
told by Montgomery it was all pointless because the cancer will ruin him
anyway, something he probably should have seen coming earlier.
Aaron Lopresti guests on art this issue and gives us some
great homages to Jim Steranko’s ’60s work, especially on the cover and the Stan
Lee intro and outro (Smilin’ Stan framed all the Flashback Month stories).
Next time on Thursdays with Wade, we return to our regularly
scheduled continuity with Deadpool #6 and 7, in which our sociopathic antihero
makes a new friend who’s just as crazy as he is!
In addition to writing
for The Matt Signal, Dan Grote is now the official comics blogger for The Press
of Atlantic City. New posts appear Wednesday mornings at PressofAC.com/Life. His
new novel, Magic Pier, is available however you get your books online. He and Matt have been
friends since the days when Onslaught was just a glimmer in Charles Xavier's
eye. Follow @danielpgrote on Twitter.
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