Thursdays With Wade: Revisiting Joe Kelly's Deadpool Part 11

Today’s reading: Deadpool #14

Story: Joe Kelly

Art: Ian McDaniel and Anibal Rodriguez

After watching Wade alienate himself from his entire supporting cast during the two-part “Drowning Man” story, he spends issue #14 still buried under T-Ray’s magic snow in Golden Gate Park. With him out of the way, we’re free to explore everyone else’s reaction to Wade’s dark turn.

Let’s start with the two people who’ve perhaps suffered the most because of Wade: Weasel and Blind Al, who are currently stuck in The Box.

Al, of course, is no stranger to The Box, having spent plenty of time there as Wade’s prisoner. Weasel, though, is a first-timer. It’s dark, and there are sharp objects everywhere. Al says the best move is to be perfectly still, don’t make a sound, and maybe Wade will let them out when he returns. That said, the door is unlocked. All they have to do is walk out. So why doesn’t Al seem keen on leaving?

Al relates a story, probably the best monologue of the run:

“I had a buddy once, from my union days, Tommy Mulroom. Sweet guy. Made his own brandy and rolled his own cigarettes. Never saw his face, mind you, but I just knew he was a looker. Voice like silk. Tommy lived in Maine, bred Chinooks for fun after he retired from the job, had 16 of the critters. Maine, Weasel … 2,788 miles as the crow files. … I’d been with Wade for two years, and the mouth-breather was getting sloppy, careless. He gets called off to Guadalajara for a whack-job that’ll take at least two weeks. The window of opportunity cracks open. Instead of scrambling for the border, figure I’ll head for Tommy’s. Deadpool didn’t know him. … Plus, Tommy knows people who know people. … He can get me papers, put me underground … whatever I need. Takes me a day just t’fumble my way out of the house. I make it to the door with a few scratches and a bruised hip … and the sense I can’t go on. But soon as I feel the sun, that glorious sun, I don’t feel any pain, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to get away from the monster that keeps me in the closet. Usin’ a couple a’ tricks I picked up in the Girl Scouts, I manage to score enough cash t’start the trek ’cross country. … I train it out to Arizona and crash for a few days. Sun poisoning, touch of the flu. Have a fever dream about Tommy, where he takes me in his arms and reminds me not to sleep too long. Arms like cannons, body built like a brickhouse, the strongest guy I’ve ever met … Leave ’Zona, train t’Tallahassee, then it’s a fast and loose road trip direct to t’Maine with some college kid on a break. He digs the intrigue, the fake names, the cloak and dagger. I let him call me gramma … I call him Tommy. A cheap comfort, but what the hell, I’m old. … We hit Tommy’s place at sundown. Kid takes an extra second to hug a crazy old bird and leaves. Nice. I smell brandy cookin’ in the back. Tobacco makes the air tangy … smell of life. I start practicing my collapse into Tommy’s arms, and I’m about to the ring the bell when it hits me … the whining. Tommy’s dogs, the chinooks. Big dogs shouldn’t make sounds like that … begging sounds … then the door opens on its own … slow. The air spills out … wet … and I hear his voice. Gravel and gasoline. Wade says, ‘Watch your step, Alfred. Tommy made no-no in the house.’ The SOB found me. To this day, I don’t know how he did it … but there he was. With Tommy … What was left of him. Such a big man … The sounds that came out of him … they didn’t fit such a big man. … We just left him … with the dogs. … With all my hope. That, my friend … is how you build a prison.”

As if we needed any more fuel for the Wade’s a Bad Dude fire at this point.

But Al insists Wade has a good side. He did save her when he was under orders to kill her, after all. That’s how she became his prisoner in the first place. But his time in The Box has convinced Weasel of the opposite, and he skips town, taking a few of Wade’s weapons for protection. And Deuce the Devil Dog, whom Al never liked anyway.

Weasel and Al aren’t the only ones figuring out what to do next, though. At the interdimensional offices of Landau, Luckman & Lake, Zoe Culloden is wallowing in the sorrow of having wasted her time trying to groom Wade for the role of cosmic savior, so much so that she can’t even enjoy being sexually harassed by her co-worker, the hideous precog Montgomery, who comes bearing potentially good news about the supposed lost cause that is Wade Wilson. More on that in a few paragraphs.

Then there’s Gerry the Bum. Gerry visits the unconscious Wade and tells him he had to let T-Ray work him over, to teach him a lesson. “Now you know you can’t piggyback on someone else’s dreams. You gotta use your own two feet if you wanna walk the path to redemption,” he says before walking off.

It is at this point that Wade comes to, looks around, grabs the bottle of booze Gerry left behind and says, “I’m such a colossal jerk.” Which instantly summons Zoe, because we’re at that point in the movie where the hero has hit rock bottom, and he is now ready to begin his training.

Noticeably absent this issue is pretty much every artist who has worked on the book since its inception. Ian McDaniel becomes the new official penciller with #14, after a group of fill-in artists, including Pete Woods, Shannon Denton et al, replaced Ed McGuinness. The fill-in artists were generally doing their own spin on McGuinness, but McDaniel’s style is much darker, matching the tone the book has taken since “Drowning Man.” Even comic relief characters like the Hellhouse’s Fenway and C.F. look less comical under the new art regime.

While we’re mopping up after “Drowning Man,” a pair of interludes give us a glimpse at the next big arc. A heavily armored man is hunting for Deadpool and wiping out past associates, starting with a French Canadian mechanic we’ve never seen before.

Whoever this new guy is, Wade’s last antagonist isn’t done with him yet. T-Ray shows up at the Hellhouse to announce to the other mercs that he has defeated Deadpool, threaten them a little, then announce he’s taking a vacation. But he’ll be back, “to teach him some more truths about life.” (Everyone is forever trying to teach Wade lessons. What exactly about Deadpool screams “eager student?”) And T-Ray does return later on, with one hell of a retcon that will go on to be largely ignored.

Next time on Thursdays with Wade, Deadpool makes his first visit to the offices of Landau, Luckman & Lake, and we see more of the man hunting for Deadpool. See ya there!

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.

Thursdays with Wade: Joe Kelly’s Deadpool Revisited Part 1

Today’s reading: Deadpool #1, Jan. 1997

Story: Joe Kelly

Art: Ed McGuinness

Joe Kelly loves Deadpool. He says so right on the letters page of the first issue of this series, his first ongoing solo title (and a springboard to future gigs writing the X-Men, Superman and Superboy).

And like any good lover, Kelly wants Wade Wilson to change. He wants him to become a hero. But, y’know, still make jokes and kill people and stuff.

Deadpool #1 is the start of a 33-issue hero’s journey. As he goes about his daily business of helping topple regimes, harassing other mercenaries and hanging out with homeless people, he’s being watched by Zoe Culloden and Noah DuBois, representatives of the pandimensional firm of Landau, Luckman & Lake (formerly Landau, Luckman, Lake & LeQuare). Zoe first appeared in 1994’s Wolverine #79 and was also a major character in that book during the mid-1990s, accompanying Logan on a mission that should have resulted in him getting his adamantium skeleton back but instead turned him feral for a time and led him to kill Cable’s son, Tyler, as well as a number of Dark Riders (mostly the lame second-generation ones).

LL&L want Deadpool for a very important but very unclear mission. But first, they need to test him. More on that in a bit.

The book’s tone is established right away, as DP narrates a mission in the Bolivian jungles, but his prey can hear him doing so. There’s also a string of pop culture references (many now dated) in just the first scene, including bits about Marlin Perkins, Game Boy, Super Mario and a parody of lines from the Keanu Reeves movie Speed.

Ed McGuinness’ blocky, cartoonish style is perfect for this book about a master of cartoon violence. His penchant for drawing barrel-chested dudes will later get him gigs drawing the Hulk and Superman.

In the meantime, issue 1 starts a tradition of drawing what look like Street Fighter characters into Deadpool comics. One of the Bolivian soldiers looks exactly like Ryu, down to the red bandana, and Deadpool’s primary nemesis during the Kelly run, T-Ray looks like a differently-coifed variant of Akuma. Things get even more Street Fighter-y five years from this run, when Udon Studios draws the book in conjunction with writer Gail Simone. Udon has since become the primary name in Street Fighter comics.

But it’s letterer Richard Starkings who introduces one of Deadpool’s most important traits: His trademark yellow word balloons. The previous two minis, which we covered last time, had DP speaking in white balloons with yellow borders, and appearances prior to that used white balloons with red borders, but the yellow balloons are what we see today when Deadpool speaks on the page.

Also new to the Marvel Universe in this issue are the mercenaries of Hellhouse, the outfit Deadpool works for at the start of the series. Running things is Patch, a short, bald, mustachioed man who is not Wolverine’s Madripoor alter ego. Fellow mercs include T-Ray, who knows magic and hates Deadpool; C.F., a Blob-like fella who can take a beating and bounce back like a Looney Tunes character; Fenway, who speaks in baseball terminology; and, of course, Weasel, Deadpool’s best bud/punching bag/weapons and tech supplier, who will be played in next year’s movie by T.J. Miller.

Speaking of things that have carried over from the Deadpool minis, DP’s crush on X-Force’s Siryn has become official canon, with Weasel mentioning “that bonnie Irish lass” to get a rise out of Wade, who in turn socks Weasel across the jaw. Between Mark Waid and Ian Churchill’s 1994 miniseries and this issue, Wade and Theresa also teamed up in a couple issues of Jeph Loeb and Adam Pollina’s run on X-Force. If anything, said crush is one of the pre-Kelly seeds that makes Deadpool want to be as good as someone like him can be.

Siryn isn’t the only woman in Deadpool’s life, though. There’s also Blind Alfred, the vision-impaired Aunt May lookalike Wade keeps prisoner in his rundown row house in San Francisco. Why won’t be revealed for a bit, but what is revealed to us about her instantly is that while she’s a prisoner, she’s no victim. She trades barbs with Wade on the regular, hits him as needed, and her first act as an extant character is to threaten a Girl Scout with imaginary optic blasts and steal her cookies. Blind Al will be appearing in the movie as well, played by Leslie Uggams.

Then there’s Gerry, the homeless old Haight-Ashbury hippie Wade sometimes talks to. Or is he something more? (Spoiler: He is, but there’s really no indication of that at this point.)

A first issue deserves a special superhero guest star, right? So who do we get? Wolverine? The Hulk? Spidey? Nope, try again. It’s Sasquatch from Alpha Flight! Remember what I said last time about heroes being in short supply? Canada’s premier superteam was without a book at this point, but that would change in a few short months, when a second AF series would launch written by then-future Uncanny X-Men writer Steven T. Seagle and drawn by Scott Clark.

Deadpool is sent to Sasquatch’s Antarctic lab on a demolition gig trumped up by LL&L to test his abilities and see if he’ll sacrifice himself for the greater good, in the first of many years of stories in which Deadpool makes difficult choices to prove he can be a hero when he wants to be, a theme cropping up now in Cullen Bunn and Matteo Lolli’s Deadpool’s Secret Secret Wars miniseries. Specifically, Wade dives into a gamma-radiation vat to keep it from melting down and giving everyone in the Southern Hemisphere cancer (a disease that’s kind of a sore spot for him). This corroborates LL&L’s belief that Deadpool can help usher in a galaxy-wide age of peace. Except when Zoe and Noah tell him that, he essentially tells them they’re full of crap and to take a hike. Don’t worry, they’ll be back.

Nostalgic ad alert: The inside back cover lets people know that Independence Day will be available to own on VHS on Nov. 22, 1996. Just in time for Christmas!

Next time on Thursdays with Wade, we’ll check out issue #2 and the beginning of Deadpool’s long, strange frenemy-ship with Taskmaster. If you’re looking for the issue in a non-digital way, check out the Deadpool Classic Vol. 2 trade, which collects issues 2 through 8, plus the Flashback Month -1 issue and the 1997 annual in which he teams up with Daredevil and steals his dog (more on that later).

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.