Thursdays With Wade: Revisiting Joe Kelly's Deadpool Part 10

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.

Tour de Deadpool: 10 Deadpool Supporting Cast Members You Should Care About

With the recent announcements of T.J. Miller playing Weasel and Morena Baccarin playing Copycat in the upcoming Deadpool movie, Wade Wilson’s supporting castmates through the years are starting to get some overdue time in the spotlight.

To prep yourself for next year’s film, here’s a little 101 on those who dare get close to Marvel’s Merc-with-a-Mouth:

Copycat:

Created by: Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza

1^st appearance: New Mutants #98, 1991, (masquerading as Domino), X-Force #19, 1993 (as herself)

Her thing: Vanessa Carlysle was a Boston prostitute who dated Wade Wilson before the cancer and the Weapon X program. Eventually, the shapeshifting mutant came into the employ of Tolliver, aka Tyler Dayspring, Cable’s son from the future. As part of that employment, she disguised herself as Domino during the period when Cable founded X-Force, while the real Domino was held prisoner. In addition to dating Deadpool, she also dated Garrison Kane, a member of the mercenary team Six-Pack.

Weasel:

Created by: Fabian Nicieza and Joe Madureira

1^st appearance: Deadpool: The Circle Chase #1, 1993

His thing: Weasel is Wade’s weapons and tech guy, information broker and friend, when the price is right. He also has no problem selling Deadpool out to a higher bidder, such as when he took a job with Taskmaster in issue #2 of Joe Kelly’s run. According to issue #11 of that same run, Weasel went to the same school as Peter Parker, as a student named Jack Hammer. Later, in Daniel Way’s run, Weasel gets a suit of armor and works as a Las Vegas enforcer named The House.

Blind Al:

Created by: Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness

1^st appearance: Deadpool #1, 1997

Her thing: Blind Al was Deadpool’s prisoner/roommate in San Francisco. Apparently Wade was supposed to kill her during a pre-DP mission in Zaire, but he didn’t. She looks like Aunt May with blue-blocker sunglasses and spiky hair, and in fact impersonates May in the aforementioned Deadpool #11 adventure. The two would prank and insult each other, and at times, Deadpool would put her in The Box, a dark torture chamber in Wade’s house. He eventually frees her.

T-Ray:

Created by: Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness

1^st appearance: Deadpool #1, 1997

His thing: T-Ray hates Deadpool. He’s a mercenary, like Wade, and his powers involve magic. He wears a bandage across his nose and looks like a character from a later iteration of Street Fighter. Oh, and he says his name is Wade Wilson and Deadpool stole his identity and killed his wife. So yeah, T-Ray’s a little bit of a continuity nightmare. But he looks cool.

Taskmaster:

Created by: George Perez and David Michelinie

1^st appearance: Avengers #195, 1980

His thing: Tony Masters uses a photographic memory to replicate the moves of anyone he fights. As such, he wields a sword like the Black Knight, shoots arrows like Hawkeye and wields a shield like Captain America. Though he spent more than 15 years as a third-tier Avengers baddie, he found his calling as a regular frenemy of Deadpool, starting with trying to lure away Weasel. Over time, Wade and Tasky would work as members of a new Frightful Four, fight for the love of Sandi Brandenburg and just plain fight.

Sandi Brandenburg:

Created by: Udon Studios, Ken Siu-Chong and Alvin Lee

1^st appearance: Taskmaster #1, 2002

Her thing: Sondra “Sandi” Brandenburg was a dancer-turned-office manager for mercenaries. She was romantically involved with Taskmaster and came to work for Deadpool and later Alex Haydn, aka Agent X, a character created in a mindswap of Deadpool and two other people. She had a habit of taking in strays and for a time was in an abusive relationship. Deadpool threatens the boyfriend, but Taskmaster straight-up kills him.

Bob, Agent of Hydra:

Created by: Fabian Nicieza and Reilly Brown

1^st appearance: Cable & Deadpool #38, 2007

His thing: Bob is, as his name implies, a Hydra agent, whom Deadpool pestered into helping him on a mission to rescue Agent X. He becomes an honorary member of Agency X upon also helping rescue agency members Sandi and Outlaw. He also becomes Deadpool’s sidekick as Cable disappears from the Cable & Deadpool picture, having abandoned the buddy-comedy book among the events of Civil War and Messiah Complex.

Deadpool Corps:

Created by: Victor Gischler and Paco Medina

1^st appearance: Prelude to Deadpool Corps #4, 2010

Their thing: Deadpool. Headpool. Dogpool. Kid Deadpool. Lady Deadpool. Together they traversed the multiverse righting wrongs and acting like a bunch of unhinged goons. If you think five Deadpools is too many, definitely don’t read Deadpool Kills Deadpool, Cullen Bunn and Salva Espin’s 2013 miniseries in which every Deadpool from every reality in the multiverse engages in epic battle.

SHIELD Agent Preston:

Created by: Gerry Duggan, Brian Posehn and Tony Moore

1^st appearance: Deadpool Vol. 3 #1, 2013

Her thing: Emily Preston is a SHIELD agent who contracts Deadpool to deal with an invasion of dead presidents conjured by a necromancer and former agent. She is killed by the undead George Washington and ends up trapped in Wade’s psycho psyche, leaving Deadpool to figure out how to restore her. Her consciousness is eventually transferred to a Life Model Decoy. Her SHIELD partner is named after and looks exactly like actor Scott Adsit, who played Pete Hornberger on 30 Rock. If Adsit is cast in the Deadpool movie, I will scream like a 13-year-old girl watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964.

Shiklah:

Created by: Gerry Duggan, Brian Posehn and Reilly Brown

1^st appearance: Deadpool: The Gauntlet #3, 2014

Her thing: Shiklah is a demon succubus who marries Deadpool, spurning Dracula, who had hired Wade to bring her to him. Because sure, why not? If Deadpool can be romantically obsessed with Death, why can’t he marry a demon?

Dan Grote’s new novel, Magic Pier, is available however you get your books online. He has been writing for The Matt Signal since 2014. He and Matt have been friends since the days when making it to issue 25 guaranteed you a foil cover.

The Matt Signal Advent Calendar 2014 Day 21: X-Force #44

X-Force #44, July 1995 

One of the most homaged comics covers is X-Men #138, the issue in which Cyclops leaves the team after the events of the Dark Phoenix Saga. Cyclops stands in the foreground, bindlestick in hand, while the rest of the team sits in the background, looking sad. Adam Pollina re-created the cover in X-Force #44, an issue that saw Cannonball get promoted to the X-Men.

Issue 44 marked a new direction for X-Force. The Age of Apocalypse had just ended, and a new creative team took over the book in Pollina and writer Jeph Loeb. The team moved back into the X-mansion after their last base – a former hideout for Arcade – self-destructed, and most of the team got new purple-and-yellow uniforms, cementing themselves as an extension of the X-Men brand.

Cannonball’s invitation to the majors was a first at the time. None of the New Mutants – X-Force’s forebears – had ever joined the varsity X-squad, despite expressly being recruited as the next generation of X-Men. Less than a year before, Jubilee, the youngest X-man, was technically demoted, shipped off to Emma Frost’s Massachusetts Academy with the rest of Generation X.

Sadly, one team’s Cyclops is another team’s Maggot. Save for a pretty sweet fight with Gladiator of the Shi’ar Imperial Guard, Cannonball got lost among the X-Men, a team that was already plenty big, and eventually left to rejoin his former playmates. He has since bounced back to the X-Men, to a reformed New Mutants team and now is an Avenger, arguably an even bigger team to get lost in.
 

A Second Look at a No. 1: X-Force (1991)

1991 was the most transformative year for the X-books since Len Wein and Dave Cockrum created the All-New, All-Different team in 1975. That fall, the books were revamped like a network’s fall TV schedule. Suddenly there were enough X-Men for two titles, X-Factor was now a government-run team made up of brilliantly written C-stringers, and Wolverine and Excalibur … OK, not every book underwent a huge makeover.

But two months before the Blue and Gold teams and Havok’s first gig as team leader, there was X-Force, the book that took a bunch of skinny, gangly-looking New Mutants and turned them into jacked weapon-wielding warriors under the direction of Cable, a paramilitary leader who looked like an AARP rookie on steroids.

Early X-Force followed the proto-Image format of the rockstar artist getting top billing and a writer, in this case Fabian Nicieza, who started working with Liefeld on New Mutants, scripting Liefeld’s plot. The same concept drove Chris Claremont from X-Men. Then the artists themselves – Liefeld, Jim Lee, Todd MacFarlane, et al – left several months later to found Image Comics, leaving Marvel with a major talent drain on its hands and giving rise to the Scott Lobdell era of X-Men.

One of these trading cards was polybagged with each X-Force #1

This X-Force had a different relationship to the X-Men than the X-Forces of the past decade. Whereas the modern X-Force started as a band of killers and trackers within the X-Men, the original team were fugitives hunted by the government, putting space between them and Xavier’s school and even some of their former teammates in the New Mutants.

Gone are the whimsical trips to Asgard and colorful characters like the alien robot who bonds with a boy who can understand any language. Now, everyone looks like they went to the Van Damme/Segal/Lundgren school of acting, where even older gentlemen like Cable and SHIELD Commander G.W. Bridge are Mr. Universe specimens. Domino at one point calls both Cable and Cannonball “beef bags,” a phrase that could not be applied to the coal-miner’s son just a few years prior, when he was being drawn by artists like Bill Sienkiewicz.

Even the introductory tag line sounds like it fell out of an action movie: “Some would call them heroes. Some would call them rebels. They fight for a fading dream in a world of nightmares.” Now, imagine that being read by the late Don LaFontaine, accompanied by “Rated PG-13. Exploding onto a screen near you this fall.”

P.S.: Three guesses what the G.W. in G.W. Bridge stands for, and the first two don’t count.

Picking up from New Mutants #100, Cable’s group starts out small, with his confidante Domino (who is eventually revealed not to be Domino), ex-New Mutants Cannonball and Boom-Boom, former Hellion Warpath (brother of dead X-Man John Proudstar), and new, Liefeld-created characters Shatterstar (warrior from the Mojoverse with the double-bladed sword) and Feral (Morlock).

The book opens with X-Force planning a raid on the Mutant Liberation Front, the group of thugs run by Stryfe, who will go on to become the focus of a major X-Men event in a year’s time. In the meantime, enjoy muddling through an endless string of clues about Cable’s and Stryfe’s pasts.

And the first Sign That This is Not the New Mutants occurs on Page 9, when Shatterstar cuts off MLF member Reaper’s left hand. Reaper essentially reacts like the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, holding his stump and saying, “Yeah, but you won’t kill me.” Feral then snaps Wildside’s jaw on Page 17. Note that the largest acts of violence are being perpetrated a) by the good guys and b) by the newest, Liefeld-created characters. As violent as they are, though, Cable’s rule is clear: “You can kill in self-defense, not for sport!” Because at this point, the Comics Code is still in effect. That said, he sees Stryfe two pages later and says, “You’re dead, end of story,” without Stryfe having attacked.

Meanwhile, in the B plot, former New Mutant and future Avenger Sunspot is training to run his family’s company – and take out assassins, or something – with his adviser Gideon, who clearly cannot be trusted because he is bald except for his long, flowing, green ponytail. The two prep for a hostile takeover by fighting robots, then end up getting taken over hostile-ly themselves by Black Tom Cassidy, leading to a pre-9/11 explosion at the World Trade Center that at the time was a novel idea.

Speaking of Gideon, there are at least three characters in this book – Gideon, Domino and Shatterstar – who are drawn with ponytails worn high on the head. And most of them are dudes. Now, I may have only been 11 at the time, but I do not remember this being a major fashion trend. There was never an episode of Saved by the Bell in which Kelly, Jesse and Lisa all wore high-on-the-head ponytails, and certainly not one in which Mr. Belding did. Thankfully, Liefeld apparently abandoned that fashion choice by the time he started pilfering his X-Force designs to create Youngblood for Image, but the ponytail menace didn’t start and stop with him. A Topless Robot post from 2013 points out that Omega Red, created by Liefeld compeer Jim Lee, and temporary Thor Eric Masterson also sported some sick ponies, though Masterson’s didn’t ride high on the head.

P.P.S.: Yes, that is my Gideon action figure. Maybe one day I’ll collect all the Externals.

Appropos of nothing: Bridge at one point refers to Cable as “the silent explosion.” Come on, guys. A fart joke? You’re better than that.

Dan Grote has been a Matt Signal contributor since 2014 and friends with Matt since there were four Supermen and two Psylockes. His two novels, My Evil Twin and I and Of Robots, God and Government, are available on Amazon.