Thursday's With Wade: Joe Kelly's Deadpool Revisited Part 3

Today’s reading: Deadpool: Sins of the Past #1-4 and Deadpool (Vol. 3) #3-5

Story by Mark Waid (Sins of the Past) and Joe Kelly (Vol. 3)

Art by Ian Churchill, Lee Weeks and Ken Lashley (Sins of the Past) and Ed McGuinness and Kevin Lau (Vol. 3)

Issues 3 through 5 of Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness’ Deadpool tell the book’s first long arc and give us more of a peak into Wade’s past than we’ve gotten previously.

Spiritually, these three issues act as a sequel to Mark Waid and Ian Churchill’s 1994 Deadpool: Sins of the Past miniseries, as they pick up two big threads from that four-issue story: They reintroduce Dr. Killbrew, the scientist responsible both for curing Wade’s cancer and disfiguring his entire body, and reteam Deadpool with Siryn, the X-Force member on whom he has developed a major crush.

We also get a pretty sweet fight between Deadpool and the Hulk, and we get to see what the mercenaries of Hellhouse get up to when Wade’s not around (Hint: It mostly consists of cowering in front of T-Ray).

A lot of what transpires in issues 3 through 5 depends on some working knowledge of Sins of the Past, so here’s some context: In Sins, Black Tom Cassidy, who was effectively turning into a living tree, had obtained the services of one Dr. Killebrew (note the spelling; it changes when he resurfaces in Kelly’s run) to help cure him. Killebrew believes the only way to cure Tom is to give him some of Deadpool’s regenerative cells (Note: Deadpool’s healing factor is itself a warped genetic copy of Wolverine’s). So Tom has some goons try to take Deadpool in, one of whom slices off DP’s hand, which Killebrew then affixes to Tom, red glove and all. The series ends with Deadpool taking Killebrew away in a boat, demanding the doctor fix his healing factor, as Wade noticed it was taking him an inordinately long time to grow his hand back.

… Except Deadpool apparently skipped out on the doctor shortly thereafter, never actually addressing the issue, according to Kelly. So when Deadpool loses a finger to Taskmaster in issue 2, he’s right back where he started, unable to grow back more than a wee nubbin.

Cue the opening of issue 3, and the arrival of a mysterious package at the Hellhouse that turns out to be Wade’s missing glove, along with a love note from Black Tom. Wade decides to go on a revenge run, enlisting Siryn – Black Tom’s niece – in the process. The two track Tom down to a chalet in the Swiss Alps, only to find not Tom – who at the time was busy harassing the students of Generation X – but Killbrew, and a box full of red gloves.

In addition to being spelled differently, Dr. K looks different, too. Churchill drew Killebrew with Sandy-colored hair and a little more wisdom in his eyes: Albert Einstein meets David Crosby. McGuinness’ Killbrew has grayish-white hair, a fuller mustache and is rounder of belly: Wilford Brimley meets Dr. Light from the Mega Man games.

Either way, Killbrew tells Deadpool he’s dying and wants to fix him as penance for past wrongs. The only thing that can save Wade is an infusion of gamma-irradiated blood, and only because he took that gamma bath in issue 1.

And so, Deadpool gets his biggest, greenest guest star to date in issue 4. During this period, the Hulk had taken over one of the Florida Keys and was in one of his more violent “Leave Hulk alone” phases. So after a fight that ends with Deadpool impaling the Hulk on a rusty street sign, DP gets his blood, Killbrew gets his cure and Wade can set about crossing “Kill Killbrew” off his bucket list.

… Except that Siryn gets between the two and pleads with Wade to spare Killbrew’s life, which he does, after much hemming and hawing. Siryn serves as the angel on Deadpool’s shoulder throughout this arc, getting Wade’s hopes up for a romantic relationship just enough to get him to do good, while making it clear to him that her primary duty is to X-Force – of which she had recently become a junior leader – and that they could only be friends, at least for now, and possibly moreso if Wade continues playing nice. That being said, she also reveals she’s cool with him essentially stalking her, knowing that he watches her sleep outside her bedroom window at the Xavier Institute, leaving her “safe t’dream.” Sorry, that’s just creepy.

The Siryn-Deadpool relationship never really develops beyond this. Deadpool, in fact, moves on rather quickly to a new woman who is in no way good for his mental health, and not long after that the living embodiment of Death, with whom he still maintains a relationship. Siryn bounces from team to team for a while, moving from X-Force to X-Corp to X-Factor Investigations, where she ends up impregnated with a clone of Jamie Madrox, the Multiple Man. According to writer Peter David, Deadpool made one cameo appearance in that iteration of X-Factor, off-panel.

As for Killbrew, we’ll see him again in about a year’s time, in a story that further fleshes out Wade’s experiences in the Weapon X program and introduces an even bigger threat from his past.

Before we part ways, let’s check in on the other denizens of that marvelous mercenary meat market, the Hellhouse. Issue 5 ends with a look at T-Ray inside his lair after a big hit, where it’s revealed his powers involve some kind of magic, and his back is covered in a large, horrific scar, with names carved into his flesh below it, including Wilson’s. He’s clearly being built up as a big-bad for Wade – one who has no qualms killing children for money, it turns out. Exactly why he hates Deadpool so much will be revealed much later, and then retconned and unconned and may or may not involve Thanos. But for now, let’s enjoy T-Ray for the menacing, alabaster Street Fighter knockoff he is (speaking of which, keep your eyes peeled for the Kevin Lau-drawn Zangief knockoff hanging around Hellhouse).

Next time on Thursdays with Wade, we’ll cover Deadpool’s Flashback Month issue, which tells the story of Wade’s ex-girlfriend, Copycat, and just how long Landau, Luckman & Lake have been keeping tabs on the man in the red pajamas.

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.

Greetings from Battleworld: Secret Wars Week 5

Welcome back to Battleworld, everyone. This week, Dan Grote looks at the new issue of the core Secret Wars title, and the much anticipated return of a married Spider-Man...

Secret Wars #3

Story: Jonathan Hickman

Art: Esad Ribic and Ive Svorcina

Imagine you survived the end of the world. Now imagine you were supposed to survive the end with all your loved ones, but you watched them ripped away from you at the last second. NOW imagine you wake up in a new world where your sworn enemy isn’t just its ruler or its savior but its GOD. Not only that, but, as Dr. Strange puts it, “He is very, very good at playing God.” NOW imagine how Reed will react next issue or whenever he finds out his wife and daughter are Doom’s most trusted advisers, his son spends all day playing in the palm of a planet-eating giant and his brother-in-law is [spoiler].

And we were worried Marvel didn’t care about the FF anymore.

Secret Wars #3 dedicates itself primarily to answering questions, which is good because I’ve had a lot of them since this event started. As of this issue, we now know:

• What happened to Reed Richards’ Raft ™ from the 616 universe and its passengers, which if you’ll recall from issue #1 included Black Panther, Spider-Man, Star-Lord, Captain Marvel, Thor, and a Phoenixed-up Cyclops.     
• A very few select characters remember what happened before Battleworld, and we know why the rest don’t recall.
•  How much time has passed since the final incursion.
• Where Johnny Storm is, and oo-da-lolli it’s a mini gut punch that makes perfect sense.
• Why Dr. Strange is the right hand of God Emperor Doom ™, and what happened to the Molecule Man, last seen confronting the Beyonders alongside Doom and Strange in New Avengers #33.
• How many Spider-Men survived the final incursion (although if you saw some of Marvel’s post-Secret Wars teaser images, I suppose you’ve already had that spoiled).

It’s a lot to take in, and besides most readers who haven’t seen everything Jonathan Hickman’s written for Marvel since Secret Warriors, nobody’s having a harder time with this than 616 Reed Richards, whom Esad Ribic draws in a perpetual state of exhausted, bearded shellshock. But I can only imagine the moment of clarity issue #3 provides will be brief, as Battleworld has much more to reveal, and we’re not even halfway there.

Side note: As someone who’s met him at cons, I very much appreciated the full-page house ad toward the end of the issue memorializing Herb Trimpe, who was the first Marvel artist to draw Wolverine for publication, among his many other credits for the company. Trimpe died in April at 75.

Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #1

Story: Dan Slott

Art:  Adam Kubert, John Dell and Justin Ponsor

Some Secret Wars comics are meant to tell the complex story of Battleword (Secret Wars). Some are meant to be jumping-on points for new readers (A-Force, MODOK: Assassin). And some, unabashedly, are love letters to Comics Fans of a Certain Age. This book (and the digital-first X-Men ’92) is most certainly the latter.

Renew Your Vows takes place in what, at least to start, feels like a simpler time. Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson are married and have a young daughter, Annie. He works at the Daily Bugle and brings hot-scoop photos to an always-yelling J. Jonah Jameson. He’s not an Avenger. He patrols the streets of New York with other street-level heroes like Daredevil, the Punisher and Moon Knight. Captain America wears his old wing-tipped mask. Eddie Brock is still Venom and looks like a big, slobbering black-and-white monster.

Dan Slott’s name may be on the cover, but it sure reads like David Michelinie or J.M. DeMatteis to me. And it’s all being drawn by Adam Kubert, one of Marvel’s rock-star artists in the years after the Image exodus. For Spider-fans, this book is a warm, fuzzy blanket.

At least to start.

When a supervillain named Regent starts killing off superheroes and claiming their powers as his own, and Venom escapes from prison and threatens his family, Peter is forced to make a choice that will inform the series going forward.

“That was the day I learned what trumps great power … an even greater responsibility.”

We’ve seen alternate-future takes on Spider-spawn – “Mayday” Parker swings immediately to mind – but we’ve never seen Peter actively raise a child, at least to my recollection. “Renew Your Vows” turns back the clock on basically every Spider-Man story of the past decade, but it also sets it forward, showing us the darkness of a world where “One More Day” never happened. Is this Spider-Man’s darkest timeline (and if so, is there still paintball)? It’s too early to tell, but it’s worth sticking around to see.


...While I examine the return of the evil future Hulk and the most light-hearted of any tie-in you're likely to see.

Future Imperfect #1
Story: Peter David
Art: Greg Land

Peter David has a long history with Marvel comics, and despite famed runs on Spider-Man and X-Factor, it will be his Hulk run that he is most remembered for. And of that run, Future Imperfect, the story of the Hulk going into the future to fight an evil version of himself called the Maestro, is probably the most famous, so it makes sense that if Marvel was picking and choosing great alternate history stories to make realms of Battleworld it would be one of them, and make even more sense they'd get Peter David to write it. David jumps right into the deep end, referencing the Secret Wars status quo with Maestro as this realm's Baron. Not only do we get the Maestro and Janis, Rick Jones's granddaughter introduced in the original story and who plays a role not only there but in the back end of David's original run on the ongoing Hulk series, but Ruby Summers, the daughter of Scott Summers and Emma Frost introduced in a dystopic future X-Factor story. The issue establishes what Dystopia, the city ruled by the Maestro, is like, and we see that there's a rebellion in place against it, which includes Ruby and Janis. The desert, the city, it's all classic dark future stuff, but David works with it and keeps it feeling fresh. When Ruby stumbles across a old man in an eyepatch wandering the desert claiming to be Odin, she thinks she's struck gold for the rebellion. Unfortunately, after she brings him to their base, it's clearly not Odin. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to reveal that "Odin" is in fact the Maestro reverted to human form, and a battle commences. Greg Land is an artist I can take or leave (I was a huge fan of his early work on Birds of Prey and Nightwing, but his excessive photo-referencing in recent years leaves me cold), and while in combat nearly all his characters have screaming their heads off expressions on their faces, his page layouts were solid for the fight between the rebels and the Maestro, and it came together well in the end. As with a lot of these Secret Wars tie-in first issues, the final page has a shock reveal, this time of a surviving hero who is leading the rebellion, and it's a nice reveal, one that should lead to a classic throw down in the next issue. With its nods to previous Peter David work, and his usual quick ear for witty dialogue, Future Imperfect looks to be a solid entry to the Secret Wars tie-ins, and since Marvel has said the Maestro is here to stay after the event, this would be a good place to get to know him.

Giant-Size Little Marvel: A Vs. X #1
Story and Art: Skottie Young

All these dark Secret Wars tie-ins got you down? Well, Giant Size Little Marvel is the cure for what ails you! The opening montage, which has musical notes bouncing around the narration and made me try to read them to the tune of the Tiny Toon Adventures theme song, lays out exactly what Secret Wars is about before before bringing us into the kingdom of Marville (not to be confused with the Bill Jemas series of the same name, possible the worst comic Marvel ever published), where at the intersection of Avengers Street and X-Men Way, the little heroes get into all kinds of mischief. The opening fight scene, which is perfectly tame and all ages, is a result of Iron Man melting one of Magik's toy ponies, and her summoning a monster to eat him. The main plot of the issue revolves around an escalating battle to build the best food stand at the corner, from lemonade, to hit dogs, to hamburgers, to Asgardian ribs, and so on, until it all breaks out in a brawl. Skottie Young is a master of drawing adorable little versions of Marvel characters, and the cameos fly fast and furious throughout the comic. While this isn't going to give you insight into the greater working of Battleworld and God King Doom, it's delightful fun and a good palette cleanser. Between this series, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, and the new Groot ongoing from Marvel, and DC's new Bat-Mite and Bizarro series, it's a good time for all-ages superheroes from the Big 2.

Fit to Be Tied In: A History of Marvel Crossovers and Events- Part 8: The Leftovers

I’ve largely tried to keep the chapters of this series A) grouped thematically and B) under 1,000 words each. As in life, not everything fits into such neat little boxes. With that in mind, here are some of the events the previous chapters missed.

Acts of Vengeance (1989): It’s the old supervillain switcheroo. A group of Loki-led nasties (Dr. Doom, Magneto, the Red Skull, the Kingpin, the Mandarin, and the Wizard) decides the best way to thwart their enemies is to change dance partners. And so you have Spider-Man fighting a giant mutant-hunting Tri-Sentinel, and Rusty and Skids from the New Mutants fighting perennial Spider-baddie the Vulture. The plot, of course, fails, mostly because the villains can’t stop fighting each other, to the point where Loki ends up imprisoning the Kingpin, the Wizard, and the Mandarin. Most importantly, we get a story in Uncanny X-Men about Psylocke being transformed into an Asian, bathing-suit clad ninja programmed to serve regular Iron Man enemy the Mandarin. This version of Betsy Braddock has largely stuck ever since. “Acts of Vengeance” also gave us the first appearance of the New Warriors superhero team, who would go on to inadvertently cause the Civil War. Fun fact: Among the villains who declined the supervillain team-up was Apocalypse. (Matt's aside: A personal favorite from this event is when Holocaust survivor Magneto slaps around Red Skull's Nazi ass in Captain America #367)

Operation: Galactic Storm (1992): A big Avengers-family crossover that spanned Avengers, Avengers West Coast, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Wonder Man and Quasar. The Avengers butt into a war between the Shi’ar and the Kree because the conflict is somehow destabilizing Earth’s sun. The story is considered a throwback to the 1970s’ Kree-Skrull War, in which the Avengers also took part, and features a uniting of the two Avengers teams – East and West Coast – and an overall beefing-up of their ranks (Hey, everybody, Gilgamesh is back!). The crossover has a bit of a bummer ending: A Nega Bomb kills billions of Kree, the mastermind of the whole conflict turns out to be the Kree’s Supreme Intelligence and the Shi’ar annex the Kree, leaving Lilandra’s mad sister Deathbird in charge of them.

Maximum Carnage (1993): AKA the crossover that got me reading comics regularly. Carnage – the figurative lovechild of Venom and the Joker – breaks out of prison and goes on a killing spree across New York with his Harley Quinn, a new supervillain called Shriek, and a gang of Spider-villains including the demonic version of the Hobgoblin, Spidey’s Doppelganger from the Infinity War, and Carrion. To stop them, Spider-Man teams up with Venom, Captain America, Iron Fist, Deathlok, Nightwatch, Cloak & Dagger, Morbius, Firestar, and the Black Cat. The villains are finally defeated with the power of love and hope – in the form of a Stark-tech device apparently powered by the Star Sapphires and Blue Lanterns. The Spidey-title crossover went on to inspire a 1994 Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis video game that came in a sweet red cartridge (And shortly after all that, there was “The Clone Saga,” but the less said about that mess the better).

World War Hulk (2007): A few years back, a secret superhero cabal called the Illuminati (Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Charles Xavier, Dr. Strange, Black Panther, Namor, and Black Bolt) decided the Hulk was too much of a threat and blasted him off into space. While away, he overthrew the rulers of the planet Sakaar, took a wife and made a nice little life for himself. Then the ship that took him there exploded and killed his pregnant wife, and Hulk. Was. Pissed. So he makes his way back to Earth with some space friends to get revenge. After all is smashed and done, Hulk is reverted to his Bruce Banner form and arrested. The Incredible Hulk is renamed The Incredible Hercules, following that hero’s adventures with Amadeus Cho. A new series, Skaar, Son of Hulk, follows the adventures of … well, I suppose it’s obvious. And another new series, Hulk, debuts featuring a Red Hulk who is later revealed to be famed Hulk-hater Gen. Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross.

Shadowland (2010): Before Mark Waid could relaunch Daredevil into one of Marvel’s best books, the character had to be completely run into the ground. And how better to do that than turning him into a demon-possessed ninja lord in a sprawling crossover with the company’s other street-level heroes? In addition to the main series by Andy Diggle and Billy Tan, Shadowland sucked in Spider-Man, the Heroes for Hire, Daughters of the Dragon, Punisher, Wolverine, Moon Knight, Ghost Rider, Black Panther, the Thunderbolts, Shang-Chi, White Tiger, the Night Nurse, and Elektra. Even the Kingpin appears to team up with the heroes in an attempt to stop Matt Murdock and the Hand from destroying New York. Among the series’ repercussions, Daredevil kills Bullseye (Don’t worry, he gets better); Daredevil kills himself (he gets better AND gets a new series); a new Power Man is introduced who looks like the one from Disney XD’s Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon; and the Black Panther, who has an entire country to deal with, takes over patrolling Hell’s Kitchen.

Spider-Verse (2014): A reality-hopping, Spidey-chomping, vampirish character named Morlun and his kin, the Inheritors, seek to wipe out every Spider-Man ever, until they all team up to stop them. We’re talking Peter Parker, Miles Morales, Spider-Woman, “Mayday” Parker aka Spider-Girl, Peter Porker the Spectacular Spider-Ham, Spidey 2099, Ock-Spidey, the Scarlet Spider, Gwen Stacy (whaaaa?), Uncle Ben (whaaaaaaaaa?), et al. Many Spiders die, but many Spiders also live, and some even get their own ongoing series, such as Silk, an Asian-American woman who was bit by the same spider that bit Parker; and new fan-favorite Spider-Gwen, a Gwen Stacy from a reality where she got bit and Peter Parker became the Lizard and died.

So there you have it. It’s not every crossover ever, but hopefully this series gave you more than enough background headed into Secret Wars, which if we’ve timed these right, should be starting nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnow. Happy reading!

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.