Today’s reading: Deadpool #26-29, March-June 1999
Story by Joe Kelly
Art by Pete Woods (#26, 28 & 29) and Walter McDaniel
(#27)
You just saved the world, and your book’s been spared from
cancellation. Now what?
This is the question Joe Kelly is left to wrestle with as he
continues writing a series that was supposed to end with issue #25.
Fortunately, there’s one big mystery left over from the
previous 25 issues: Why does T-Ray hate Deadpool so much?
The answer to that question is one big retcon that has since
been unretconned, reretconned and contraretconned, in what can only be
described as the Continuity Curse of the Kelly Run.
But first, a cast reshuffle, a Howard the Duck villain, and a
pointless fight with Wolverine!
Deadpool has pulled up stakes from San Francisco and moved into
the Bolivian fortress he raided in issue
#1. And he’s got a new roommate. Blind Al is, inexplicably, out, and
Montgomery, the former Landau Luckman & Lake precog, is in. You may recall
from the end of issue
#25 that Monty kissed his true love and co-worker, Zoe Culloden, who upon
promotion to overboss had him decommissioned and thrown out of the company
because she couldn’t handle having a skinless, wheelchair-bound boyfriend.
Wade also has a new pilot: Ilaney Bruckner, whom you may
remember from the Ajax story. Turns out she didn’t die after all!
(Writer’s aside: This seems like something I should’ve known
and pointed out in writing about Ilaney earlier, right? Yes. If I’m being
completely honest, the eight issues that make up Kelly’s Deadpool denouement
kind of faded from my memory, save for the big T-Ray reveal at the end and the
fight with Wolverine.)
Sadly, much like before, Ilaney is the butt of a number of
fat jokes that I still maintain were wholly unnecessary.
Despite having saved the world, Wade is still a miserable
sack of stuffing. Part of him believes all he did was curse the human race to
remain unhappy as a result of getting to keep its free will. He’s no longer on
the LL&L payroll, and so he’s gone back to mercenary work, though this time
for a Moroccan gentleman named Alestaire Grunch who tortures cats and used to
be the business (and life?) partner of Patch, the diminutive old curmudgeon who
runs Hellhouse.
Wade’s also going a bit nuts … OK, nutser. He’s begun
hallucinating a beautiful, raven-haired woman who hangs out with bunnies and
pours liquor into milk jugs. And so he’s started seeing a shrink. Or rather,
he’s started seeing Howard the Duck villain Doctor Bong. His prescription, or
Deadpool’s interpretation of it, at least: Go fight Wolverine.
Logan just so happens to be in San Francisco’s Chinatown
district, visiting a generic old friend. And he’s brought fellow X-Man Kitty
Pryde along with him. Kelly does a great job of mocking Wolverine’s narration
boxes from the time period, that mix of violent 1970s antihero appropriating
Eastern zen wisdom:
“Smell is the sense that most closely links us to memory. A
breath of half stale air in a district like Chinatown unlocks a glut of images.
Old friends, lovers, dead goat on a beach, my tricycle, Ginger, the spice and
the castaway, chopsticks jutting out of a guy’s eyeballs like cockroach
antennae. Sometimes, I wish that when I smelled an egg roll, it just smelled
like an egg roll.”
Deadpool disguises himself as an old-lady street merchant but
drops the ruse once Wolverine’s sniffer susses him out. He then proceeds to
provoke Logan, who doesn’t appear to be in a fighting mood until Wade hits
Kitty with an uppercut straight outta Street
Fighter. As Wade and Wolvie exchange blows, Wade comes to the realization
that he knows the woman in his hallucinations.
“She’s just the broad who stole my heart a long time ago,
then got dead,” he tells Doctor Bong. Issue #27 closes with the actual woman of
Deadpool’s hallucinations running from some unseen terror in Atlanta. She drops
a locket, inside which is a picture of her with a man, and the inscription
reads, “Love always, Wade.”
Issue #28 opens with some creepy looking narration boxes we
haven’t seen in a while, familiar green flames and a fella in a cloak plotting
to make Wade Wilson’s life miserable from afar. We’ll get back to him.
In the meantime, Alestaire’s got a new assignment for
Deadpool, in Atlanta of all places, a job that came on magic paper that turns
into green flames (SEE?!). The target, the raven-haired woman from Wade’s
hallucinations. But he’s not the only merc on the job.
Enter Bullseye. How long has it been since these two crazy
kids hung out?
“Issue
sixteen. Greece,” Wade replies, a mere hint of the fourth-wall breaking
that will become far more pervasive under the next writer, Christopher Priest.
Deadpool sees this familiar woman as the key to his sanity
and tries to talk his old friend out of making the hit. Bullseye responds by
stabbing Deadpool in the side and bounds off to do his
anything-can-be-a-deadly-projectile schtick. They have a pretty sweet fight
that ends with Bullseye taking a boomerang-shaped spoiler to the chest. Despite
the mask – and the face covered in scars beneath it – the woman, Mercedes,
believes Deadpool to be Wade Wilson, her long lost husband. And Deadpool
believes Mercedes should be dead.
But wait, when was Wade ever married? Was this before or
after Weapon X? How come this wasn’t mentioned in the Flashback
Month issue? And what does T-Ray have to do with any of this?
Patience, my friends. We’re getting there.
Issue #29 opens with Deadpool forcing Latverian scientists
to run DNA tests to prove Mercedes isn’t a clone, by threatening their prized
collection of Star Trek memorabilia.
Monty, meanwhile, wants to know who this woman is who’s
sleeping in Wade’s bed and why he’s never heard of her, despite spending years
researching his life in preparation for him to become the Mithras.
Deadpool doesn’t get very far in explaining when a horde of
zombies comes crashing into his Bolivian pad, led by none other than Black
Talon.
For those who did not read this past fall’s Deadpool
vs. Thanos miniseries. Black Talon is a voodoo priest who wears a
rooster costume and practices necromancy. He comes seeking Mercedes because as
a resurrected dead woman she is a near-perfect construct and he wants to learn
her secrets.
This fight scene is played nearly entirely for laughs,
including Deadpool’s own. Assisting in the hilarity is Monty, who, given his
physical appearance, attempts to blend in with the zombies, grunting things
like “Brains is good food” and “Eep op ork ahh ahh.”
Eventually, though, the old ultraviolence kicks in, and
Mercedes screams for Wade to stop mercilessly wailing on Black Talon, who by
now has lost control of his zombie horde, which has turned to dust. Wade
responds in sadly characteristic Wade fashion:
“Maybe you didn’t notice, but this chicken McNugget impaled
me with a ten-inch steak knife! Healing factor or not, I’d say I’m entitled to
a little payback! So get off my hump before I forget my life has gone ape snot
since you breezed back into it and wish I’d never saved you in the first
place!”
Mercedes runs off, and Deadpool lets slip to Monty this key
bit of backstory to close out the issue:
“Years ago, in the snow, “Crazy” (the Patsy Cline song, later
featured in the Deadpool video game)
playing in the house behind us, my wife was murdered, and all I could do was
watch.”
The story of Mercedes’ death, and how Deadpool and T-Ray
play into it, will be revealed across the final four issues of the Kelly run,
which we’ll cover in next week’s final Thursdays
with Wade before the Deadpool
movie premiere. 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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