Thursday, September 24, 2015

Thursdays With Wade: Joe Kelly's Deadpool Revisited Part 5



This week’s reading: Deadpool #6 and 7
Story: Joe Kelly
Art: Ed McGuinness

Starting with Deadpool #6, our man in red’s world becomes intertwined with that of another crimson-clad leading man: Daredevil.

We start where all plots have started so far in this series – at the Hellhouse, where two jobs have come in: one to break someone out of a mental institution, and one to kill that same person.

Despite a claim that he “gave up killing for Lent” (a byproduct of his time with Siryn), Wade takes the job(s), because it’s his book. He breaks into the Gutman Institute for the Mentally Unhinged by disguising himself as a doctor attempting to commit a patient, namely Weasel, who pretends he’s convinced he’s Ricki Lake, because it’s 1997 and that is a topical reference.

Meanwhile, it turns out that in addition to hiring Deadpool both to kill and kidnap her, the patient in question, a woman named Mary with three warring personalities, hired an obscure supervillain, the Vamp, to stop Wade. The Vamp’s power was turning into a big-headed, male-presenting monster called Animus, so get ready for a bunch of Crying Game references that seem less than enlightened in the age of Transparent and I Am Cait.

Once the Vamp is dispatched, Wade fulfills the part of the contract asking him to remove Mary from the asylum, after which she reveals herself as Typhoid Mary, one of the Kingpin’s personal assassins and a primary enemy/occasional lover of Daredevil.

She also likes high kicks. Or at least Ed McGuinness liked drawing Mary performing them. He also likes drawing Patch’s eyebrows as long and gravity-defying as his white Yosemite Sam mustache, so do with that what you will.

Oh, and she apparently used to date T-Ray, as we learn in issue #7. So there’s that.




The alabaster one’s vendetta against DP picks up again in #7, as he tells Weasel, effectively, that Wade’s ass is grass. “I’m going to nuke your pal Wade today. About 8 p.m.,” T-Ray says, channeling his inner middle school bully.

T-Ray’s threat leads Weasel to visit Deadpool’s house for the first time, to warn his buddy of impending doom. Wade isn’t home, but he does meet Blind Al, who freaks right out, intimating violent consequences for violating Wade’s sanctum sanitarium. More on that later.

Meanwhile, back at the Hellhouse, T-Ray makes good on his threat, using his as-yet-undefined magical abilities to burn off Wade’s mask, exposing his scarred face to the other mercenaries. In a rage, Wade kicks Mary out a second-story window. Mary survives the fall uninjured, but it helps her remember something important: She has to kill Daredevil! And that’s where we’ll pick up next time, with Daredevil/Deadpool Annual ’97.

Random bit 1: Blind Al in issue #7 mentions Deadpool’s Squirrel Girl Underoos. Now, Squirrel Girl was created in 1992, but she didn’t really become popular until the past decade. In fact, according to her Wikipedia page, the character was largely MIA between 1992 and 2005, save for this one reference, so one wonders whether this joke found an audience at the time.

Random bit 2: A scene in which Gerry the Bum talks to himself about Toaster Strudel, and the price its creator paid for crossing big Pop Tart. This is the first time we’ve seen Gerry since issue #1, and while it’s a funny bit, and in hindsight we know what his deal is, reading spoiler-free it just seems tossed in. That said, it remains my favorite Gerry scene.


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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