Today’s reading: Deadpool/Death Annual ’98
Story by Joe Kelly
Art by Steve Harris and Reggie Jones
Congratulations, Deadpool, you’ve made it to your second annual! Time
to die kinda sorta.
Deadpool/Death ’98 was part of a wave of teamup annuals inspired by
the previous year’s Daredevil/Deadpool
’97. Others included Iron Man/Captain America, Alpha Flight/Inhumans, and
Machine Man/Bastion.
The issue opens with a close-up splash page of a freshly teleported
Deadpool about to receive a killing blow to the face from Ajax, the man who’s
been hunting him since issue #14. The punch
sends DP backwards over a cliff, cracking his neck on the ground below.
Now, Wade’s been killed by much worse over the years, but for the
purposes of this particular story, it’s enough to make him leave his own body
and reunite with the living embodiment of Death, whom we’re about to learn has
a history with our antihero.
Buckle in, kids, it’s origin story time!
Prior to this issue, here’s what we knew about Wade Wilson’s back
story: He’s a product of the Weapon X program, and his healing factor was
borrowed from Wolverine. He signed up for Weapon X because he had a rare,
untreatable form of cancer. He was a mercenary even before Weapon X, and he
dated a young Boston prostitute named Vanessa, who would go on to become the mercenary
Copycat and impersonate X-Force’s Domino for a year. Oh, and at some point he
became friends with Bullseye.
What this annual inserts into the mythos is that Wade Wilson was
actually deemed a failure by the Weapon X program after they experimented on
him. He was sent to a facility where the program’s rejects were held captive
for further experimentation by one Dr. Emrys Killebrew.
That’s right. KillEbrew. The second E is back. I asked Kelly on
Twitter about the change in spelling, in case there were some fun backstory. He
deferred to Mark Waid’s original spelling with the extra E and chalked the
Killbrews up to simple, forgiveable human error.
Assisting Killebrew is a man who calls himself The Attending who wears
an all-black bodysuit with a big white A on it. Picture Gaston from Beauty and the Beast cosplaying as Alvin
the chipmunk. The Attending – real name Francis – gets his jollies by torturing
the rejects and breaking their spirits.
The rejects themselves pass the time by placing bets on when they’ll die, hence their nickname for the facility: the Deadpool. GET IT?!
The Wade Wilson who enters the Deadpool is suicidal. His hair is
falling out, and the body scarring is just beginning. He feels his mind
unraveling. That’s when she walks in. A skull-faced dame in a purple, slinky
dress. Death comments that Wade shouldn’t be able to see her, being alive and
all. She seems extremely turned on for an abstract concept. The feeling is
mutual, but there’s just one small thing Wade has to do to get the girl: find a
way to die. “I can’t take the captain until the ship sinks, dig?” Death tells
him.
So Wade tries to kill himself again and again. And each time he is
thwarted by the Attending, to the point where he locks Wade into a wheelchair
with arm shackles. Eventually, Wade’s desperation, fading grip on reality and
knowledge of the Attending’s real name collide, and he begins to taunt and
provoke his antagonist, improving his odds in the Deadpool. His fellow rejects begin
to hold him up as a hero, which, of course, Wade balks at because this is
effectively the prequel to a hero’s journey.
In retaliation, Francis lobotomizes Worm, Wade’s friend in the
Deadpool. Wade snaps Worm’s neck to ease his suffering, violating one of
Killebrew’s chief rules about killing his test subjects. As punishment, Francis
rips out Wade’s heart.
Were this a couple pages ago, Wade would have been ready to embrace
Death, both figuratively and literally, but what happened to Worm filled Wade
with a need for vengeance. It also kickstarted his healing factor, effectively
turning him into Popeye. Wade tears through the facility, killing guards,
grabbing weapons, cracking jokes and claiming Deadpool as his new name as he
makes his way to Francis, whom he blows a nice hole right through.
Vengeance achieved, Wade calls for Death to come take him, but with
his healing factor now working at 100 percent, such is not to be. Wade
has a way of disappointing the women in his life that drives them away, be it a
bonnie Irish lass, a demon succubus or the living embodiment of Death.
We then return to the present, where Ajax takes off his helmet and
reveals himself as Francis to Deadpool’s ostensible corpse.
“I killed him first! He can’t just come out of nowhere and kill me
back! That’s not fair!” Ghost Wade declares.
He’s then confronted by the ghosts of his fellow rejects, brought to
him by Death with a request to finish what he started and kill Ajax for real
this time. He steals a smooch from Death and is resurrected, overalls
and all (he was wearing overalls when he was teleported to Francis at the end
of last
issue), his quest for vengeance reborn.
But what about the Mithras Directive and all that galactic
savior stuff? Later for that, we’ve got retroactive continuity stuff to clear
up. Which we’ll return to in the next reading, Deadpool #18. See you 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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