The first ever Deadpool variant cover and the first (of many) Deadpool variants to take a shot at DC was on #12, riffing on DC's month of covers that were just headshots of their leads.
Today’s reading Deadpool #12-13, Jan.-Feb. 1998
Story: Joe
Kelly
Art: Pete
Woods (12-13), Shannon Denton (12), Nathan Massengill (13) and Walden Wong (13)
We’ve had a
lot of fun these past three issues. Issue
#9 gave us a new villain to mock; #10
gave us the Great Lakes Avengers, a team that exists to be ridiculed; and #11
was a seemingly endless barrage of jokes about Silver Age comics and Osborn
hair.
But as the
study group learned in Season 3 of Community,
trying to force things to be lighter only makes the darkness stand out more,
and stuff’s about to get real dark.
The Deadpool
of issues #12-13, collectively titled “Drowning Man,” is not a hero. He’s not
even a guy trying to be a hero. His inner demons have won, and by the end,
there is literally no one left to stand by him, nor should there be.
Wade has
become straight-up scary-boyfriend abusive. We always knew he had it in him (he
keeps an old woman prisoner, for chrissakes), but we’re distracted by the jokes
and the pop culture references and the cartoon violence. Without the laughter,
we start to think maybe Typhoid Mary was right after all: Wade spends so much
time trying to be a good guy because that’s exactly what he’s not.
He’s also
not big on his actions meeting his words. Remember when he told Al he was going
to let her go in issue #10 and then hunts her down in the aquarium anyway? How
about when he considered messing up the timestream to give young Jack Hammer a
better life before he becomes the porn-addicted punching bag better known as
Weasel? How about when he tells Al in issue #13 that he’s NOT going to meet
T-Ray at Golden Gate Park at high noon to settle their score once and for all,
and then he totally does.
For those of
you keeping score, here’s what Wade does to each of his so-called friends in
these two issues:
Blind Al: Picks
her up by the face and shoves her in The Box for secretly becoming friends with
Weasel.
Weasel: Straight-up
punches him in the face. Also puts him in The Box, for the same offense.
Siryn: Grabs
her and threatens her when she won’t listen to him. Also gets in a fight with
her X-Force teammate, Warpath, and makes a bunch of Native American jokes.
Zoe: Grabs
her by the throat and demands she help him find Siryn. Later, during Wade and
T-Ray’s showdown, she decides Wade is beyond saving and teleports out.
Deuce: Gets
a pat on the head and a “Good dog.” Wade can physically harm and threaten three
different women, but apparently animal abuse is over the line.
For all
this, Wade gets what he deserves. Typhoid Mary, posing as Siryn via purloined
image inducer, rapes Deadpool in the field from the movie Field of Dreams. And T-Ray leaves him broken and literally
heartless in a magic-fueled snowstorm.
The end of
issue #13 is essentially the polar opposite of the end of issue
#250, when Wade dies surrounded by friends and family, feeling pure,
unadulterated love as the world burns.
Issue #12
concerns itself primarily with Wade tracking down Siryn, the only person Wade
believes can ease his anguish with T-Ray threatening his life. When he finally
finds her, he accuses Teresa of not being there when he needs her, but Teresa
makes the salient point that Deadpool was conveniently not a part of the recent
Operation:
Zero Tolerance crossover, in which Bastion and his Prime Sentinels
destroyed the X-Mansion and hounded the mutants across the various X-titles.
“That’s
mutant stuff … not my problem,” Wade declares, proving exactly why he can’t even
handle being in the friend zone.
Later, in
issue #13, as Wade and T-Ray fight, we get glimpses of why T-Ray hates him so
much. He claims Deadpool tore out his heart. It was snowing, which T-Ray
re-creates using his magical note paper. He then generates a spear from the
same mystical notepad and carves out Wade’s heart. A mother and her child pass
by Wade’s limp body. The mother contemplates coming to his aid but balks after
realizing she doesn’t want her son to see a corpse. The last panel is a wide-out
shot of Wade face-down in the snow, as the boy wishes him a Merry Christmas.
Nowhere to
go but up from here, folks!
Before we
wrap, though, we must return to the mystery of Gerry the bum. In issue #12, we
see Gerry globetrotting once again, this time in Germany, conversing in the
native language, though without the aid of a back-page translation (the phrase
“New Coke” comes up at one point). In the next issue, we see him teleport back
to his bench at Golden Gate Park, waiting for Deadpool to arrive for his fight
with T-Ray. This is the first time we see Gerry exhibit any sort of ability,
and it certainly explains how he got to Europe.
When Zoe
arrives at the park to stop the fight, Gerry says the word “Mandelay” to knock
her unconscious, expressing a working knowledge of Landau, Luckman & Lake’s
neural killswitches. “Now Wade can finish this, uninterrupted,” Gerry says
before walking off to score some snacks. He’s not seen again this issue.
When we
return to the book, a new regular art team of Walter McDaniel and Anibal
Rodriguez starts up, as Wade’s supporting cast deals with the aftermath of
“Drowning Man,” we finally get a look inside The Box and a ghost from
Deadpool’s past looks to reconnect.
But that’s a
story for later. Next time on Thursdays with Wade, I tag in Matt, who fills us
in on a Deadpool guest spot in an arc of Heroes
for Hire that came out about where we are in our story. See ya then!
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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