I won’t lie, it’s been a pretty stellar decade and a half to be a Marvel fan. The surge in superhero movies has delivered me three separate cinematic universes from Fox, Sony and the all mighty behemoth of Marvel Studios. More recently making the greatest comic book based TV series of all time with Netflix’s Daredevil, raking back the rights for Punisher, Ghost Rider and Spider-Man and announcing comic after comic thronging with women characters redesigned to perfection and women writers having control over their stories, the Mighty M had effortlessly left DC (now accepted to mean Dark Crossover, Ditch Continuity or Disastrous Comics) to languish in the grimdark grave its failed ‘New 52’ reboot dug for itself.
Now, though, I find myself on the humiliated side of humble as the punching bag I’d made of Marvel’s mainstream competitor has suddenly started pushing back. Within the space of a few months,
Harley Quinn and
Catwoman were confirmed as bisexual along with
Midnighter being promoted as the first openly gay male superhero to star in their own title.
Suddenly, DC have hit the generally accepted point where, by
Dwayne McDuffie’s Rule of Three, bigots believe queer comic characters are ‘taking over’ the line. How many queer characters are there at Marvel with their own books, you ask? None. Zero. NOT. A. BLOODY. ONE.
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| Deadpool negotiating the 'handsome fee' for a heist contract in Cable and Deadpool |
That’s right, the guy who wrote Deadpool having a pre-existing order of how attractive male movie stars are said that any perceived queerness is a result of Deadpool’s unique cellular structure. Here’s a link to the full debacle as it appeared in
his Twitter AMA.
Mixed reactions abounded after the exchange, ranging from taking these comments as Deadpool’s creator signing off on the queer aspects of the character to accusing Nicieza of conflating non-straight orientations with mental illness. Aside from Nicieza’s gratingly self-congratulatory tone and condescendingly dismissing queer fans for their ‘perceived’ sexuality, I was willing to chalk this up to a convoluted non-response.
What drew my ire much more was a group of commentators refusing to accept Deadpool's ambiguously queer identity because, as one Twitter user put it, ‘he’s a cartoon [and] has about as much queer value as Bugs Bunny’. This line of reasoning is based on the reduction of Deadpool to a two dimensional murderous jokester that contributes to the sadly prevalent and popularised mischaracterisation of him as a brotastic bullet sponge; a font of obnoxiousness that cannot even be plugged by putting a bullet in his brain.
The sheer amount of uncertainty and need for validation brewed by this meeting of minds and interpretations is of the sort that has defined Deadpool’s story for all the time I’ve been reading it. While he is disgusting, disloyal, lacking in conviction and riddled with self-doubt, Deadpool is representative and appealing to everyone once he is written with a pathos that has escaped a good amount of comic scribes. To convince you of this, dear reader, I’m going to recount some of the history of Wade Winston Wilson, Well Compensated Establishment Provocateur, his complexities and short comings and the modern changes to his canon that make now, in the context of Marvel’s diversity competition with DC, the perfect time to officially and unequivocally develop and confirm his pansexuality.
The obvious trouble with mainstream comic books is that, since so many authors contribute to any given title, the consistency that canon depends on is almost impossible to maintain. However, historical literary studies on how reading actually works provides the basis for what’s now called ‘head canon’. Applying to reading the teachings of phenomenology, the uncertainty that objects exist but the certainty that something like them cause the sensations they create, Edmund Hersel (trans. 1964) identifies that ‘reading’ begins once the certainty of the reader’s perception of a text is challenged by significant breaks, ruptures and transitions from what came before it.
More broadly and as studies went on, the influence of time and place of readings also caused and influenced these feelings of rupture. Further complicating matters, differences in education and knowledge of these previous historical contexts was seen to divide readers into what Stanley Fish (1980) calls ‘interpretive communities’. Here, comics, still seen as a low art form in comparison to prose, film and so on put them in the hands of what Roland Barthes (1996) calls a ‘popular audience’. As of Barthes essay ‘The Death of The Author’, the power of interpretation was placed in the hands of these reader, as it was gradually accepted that attempting to discover the authors true self through and singular purpose of their work was a restrictive
fallacy. Barthes states that ‘as soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality…the author enters his own death and writing begins’. This leaves the fictional text, combining language, medium and variously altered real world referents, unconstrained by the authors agency. Thus, texts and head canons contain as many responses as they can reasonably be said to support from various different communities and are given validity by their consensus and consistency.
However, when the disruptive and contradictory nature of comics canon is applied to Deadpool, as one insightful
Mary Sue commenter pointed out, ‘canon can’t exist for him since parts of him are constantly changing’. For the uninitiated, some backstory: Wade Wilson was an ex-soldier and mercenary before contracting terminal cancer. In a last ditch effort to save himself, he volunteered for an experimental military program that sought to graft Wolverine’s mutant healing powers onto a human and create a new kind of super-soldier. However, instead of removing the cancer, the healing factor simply produced new cells to replace those that the disease raging in his system destroyed. The process left Wilson permanently scarred.
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| Deadpool/Death Annual 1996 |
Following extensive, torturous experimentation at the hands of the Weapon X program, Wilson adopted the name ‘Deadpool’ after the betting ring he and his fellow lab rats had on who was most likely to end up dead next. After breaking free and killing everyone in the base, Deadpool emerged into the world filled with an immortality defined by rage and nihilism while his mind and body remained in a constant state of decay and rejuvenation.
The limitations this state of flux has on Deadpool’s memory, perception of reality and, consequently, creation of head canon for the character is best explored in the complex, bitter-sweet and life-affirming run on Cable and Deadpool from the early 2000s written by Nicieza with art by Patrick Zircher and Reilly Brown. Over the course of the series, Deadpool’s brain is broken, repaired and rewired so often that, when trying to fix a plot hole ridden part of his back story, he gives up entirely. True to his fourth wall breaking self-awareness, Deadpool tells the reader to simply choose which version of events they prefer.
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| Deadpool confronts resurrected nemesis T-Ray who may or may not be the real Wade Wilson in Cable and Deadpool #47 drawn by Reilly Brown. |
This approach, similar to Nicieza’s latest comments, is particularly troubling as it abandons the concept of consistent canon for Deadpool, as any backstory can be written off as false memories or hallucinations. As a result, this gives credence to the idea that anything about him, including his sexuality, is subject to interpretation and equivocation. This leaves him reduced to a hyperviolent, paper thin cartoon with no personality beyond quips and homicidal chaos.
While that is understandably the most obvious draw of the character, it’s completely appalling to suggest that Deadpool is in no way consistent. As with every three dimensional character, Deadpool’s consistent personality is defined by that number of contradictions he represents: the sad clown, the mercenary with a conscience and the victim of his choices. The mischaracterisation that has sparked the modern popularity of Deadpool comes as a result of the tragic nuances of this third dimension being progressively mishandled, interfering with the tone of his origin and further fragmenting his story.
After Cable and Deadpool ended, Deadpool began his solo rise to popularity as Daniel Way had him literally explode back onto the scene with a guest appearance in Wolverine: Origins drawn with typically brutal wonder by Steve Dillon. Here, some major criticisms of Deadpool as simply another Wolverine are debunked, even as this series’ aim was to clear up Wolverine’s canon and not Deadpool’s.
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| Two unkillable killers play 'Duck Duck Goose' in Wolverine: Origins #21 |
From this re-introduction, Deadpool proceeds to whip Wolverine, now free from the strain of his own erased and repressed memories and out for revenge, all over San Fransisco. After variously stabbing, shooting, exploding and paying workmen to drop pianos on his target in what amounted to a four issue long fight sequence, the tragedy of Deadpool’s existence comes into play once he captures Wolverine.
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| 'Look at me!' - Wolverine Origins #24 |
This exchange confirms the immutable difference between Wolverine and Deadpool: while Wolverine refused to become the living weapon he was created to be and so becomes the poster boy for rebellion and self-determination, Deadpool chose to be exactly the kind of killing machine Weapon X were trying to make him but hides the tragedy of this identity behind his mask. Giving up control to what his mercenary clients and what his torturers (and writers) make him, Deadpool’s appeal to anyone struggling to honestly assert themselves is the source of his anti-heroism and relatability.
The uptick in popularity this iteration of the character brought on was continued as Daniel Way began his own Deadpool centric book, placing himself among the pantheon of such fantastic past scribes as Joe Kelly and Gail Simone, beginning in the 2008 crossover event Secret Invasion drawn by Carlo Braberi. However, the tragedy of his origins was presented in a much more brief, cartoonish way in Deadpool #2.
As an unfortunate side effect the tragic elements of Deadpool’s character that fuel his irresponsibility, in turn borne of being hurt so much he no longer feels in control of his actions, was thoroughly diluted. The resulting appeal to self-pitying, immature dudebros that this indistinct, truncated origin recap brought on eventually came to consume Deadpool as much as his untreated cancer would have. Such a mischaracterisation reached it’s apex in the insulting and abysmally dull limited series Deadpool: Suicide Kings written by Adam Glass and illustrated by Barberi.
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| The lowest, most awkward point in Deadpool history... |
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| ...and what the writers think of their audience |
As he is is targeted by gang boss Tomb Stone and teams up with Marvel's best known street-level heroes, the sinister but vulnerable Deadpool of previous series is reduced to an odious heckler in his own story, overshadowed by equally unrecognisable iterations of The Punisher, Daredevil and Spider-Man in what amounted to a man baby fantasy of being rewarded for malaise and misanthropy with the unforgivably objectified Outlaw.
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| Narratively rewarding the 'Nice Guy' and pretending they're not. God I hate this book. |
Whether it was the fact Barberi was the most regular artist for Way’s Deadpool series or not, the stench of Suicide Kings now hangs heavy over the unfairly maligned and often deftly plotted 65 issue run. Lacking a consistent tone of origin, backstory or characterisation over this period meant Deadpool’s appeal was undermined for anyone but douchebros, his anti-heroism serving only to validate adolescent nihilism and a childish refusal to follow basic social norms. With that assumedly homophobic conception of the audience in mind, asserting Deadpool’s pansexuality would result in an irrecoverable loss in sales. Popularised and more visible than ever, this version of Deadpool looked like it was the new normal.
Thankfully, the lack of definition that Deadpool had long suffered was obliterated in the haunting, gut wrenching and character redefining five issue arc The Good, The Bad and The Ugly by new series writers Gerry Duggan and Brian Posehn with vibrantly transcendent art from outstanding comics super couple Declan Shalvey and Jordie Bellaire. During the previous arc of that series (drawn by Mike Hawthorne), Deadpool is heavily tranquillised and has his kidney stolen by a highly trained assault team. Once the squad return for their next harvest, Deadpool injects himself with a super dose of adrenaline to stay conscious and kills all but one member of the squad to get some answers. Learning that parts of him have been being stolen for years, Deadpool, along with the consciousness of SHIELD Agent Emily Preston that was magically transferred into him after she was murdered by zombie George Washington (comic books!) sets out to confront the schemes mastermind: ‘Butler’.
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| Wade's freedom is a fantasy in Deadpool #14 |
Later captured for seemingly the umpteenth time by Butler and with the secrets of his healing factor being sold to the North Korean army, Deadpool is isolated and repressed enough that the healing of his canon can begin. Attributing his memory problems to the mind wiping ‘Tabula Rasa’ drugs Butler’s group have given him and teaming up with co-captees Wolverine and Captain America, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly then economically sets Deadpool’s origin up against the two clearest, most recognisable superhero origins under Marvel’s control and sets up it’s clarification.
As the group join forces to rescue North Korean death camp prisoners surrounding Butler's lab, Cap's involvement in the story resonates as it reads across from Cap’s unequivocal origin as a symbol of anti-fascism. Wolverine’s involvement with the story resonates as he rescues the innocent people that Butler has used Deadpool’s organs to make living mutate weapons for the Koreans; the same sort of weapon he refuses to be. Deadpool’s involvement, since he isn’t on a mercenary gig and not under someone else’s control are purely selfish: wanting to kill Butler for using him and to be validated as a hero by saving single mother Carmelita Camacho who, unbeknownst to him, has been raising their illegitimate daughter and is now being used as leverage to keep him compliant. Only one of those goals pans out:
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| Tragic, dynamic beauty in Deadpool #17 and #18 |
Despite the obvious
fridging, this soul destroying page marks Deadpool's realisation that the only reason Carmelita is dead was specifically because of his refusal to take responsibility for his actions and sleeping with her as a goof while on an earlier mission with Luke Cage and Iron Fist. Now there is only one question left to make Deadpool a consistent character with a traceable backstory: which of the many tonally confused actions of his convoluted backstory actually took place?
Over these two pages in
Deadpool #19 is where the modern Deadpool canon begins. Far more dramatically and effectively than Nicieza who deferred to ‘debate’ rather than convincingly fixing plot holes in Deadpool’s backstory, Duggan and Posehn validate whatever head canon the reader has through allowing them to decide which parts of previous stories were real events and which were simulations incepted by Butler. By killing Butler and permanently stopping him muddying Deadpool’s story any further, there is no longer any opportunity for such equivocation and misreading of Deadpool from here on. Without
Suicide King’s disdain for the reader,
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly allows Deadpool a clear canon no longer ruled by his fluctuating cellular structure.
As a result of this, it is Nicieza who has been overruled by more capable and ambitious writers. While Deadpool’s state of flux is maintained as the engine for his three dimensional personality and imperviousness to mind control, there is enough room made by his new consistency for him to have a definitive queer sexuality. Further, since The Good, The Bad and The Ugly began this unequivocal new canon, there have been a minimum of two close to unequivocal examples of Deadpool being far from straight:
The modern Deadpool: impervious to Dracula's mind control in Deadpool: The Gauntlet #2 by Gerry Duggan and Reilly Brown, smooching and impersonating Spider-Man - in a closet no less - in Deadpool Annual #2 by Chris Hastings and Jacobo Camagni and admitting his crush on Hawkeye in Secret Avengers #10 by Ales Kot and Michael Walsh
Now that we’ve seen Deadpool’s rise to fame for his uncertainty, irresponsibility, lack of consistency and all round whackiness, his popularity peaking among nerdy nihilists before developing into a somewhat responsible, guilt ridden, selfish but recognisable character, it’s about time for other creators to offer the same amount of appeal to wider audiences by developing Deadpool’s pansexuality. These changes in Deadpool now need to reflect changes in writers in acknowledging the varied sexualities of their readers. Embracing Deadpool’s tragic dimensions has now made it possible to begin catching up with DC’s new inclusiveness and fully develop a validating, complex queer character that many writers are and will continue to be enthusiastic to tell stories about.
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If you're interested in delving into the depths of Deadpool, I really can't recommend Cable and Deadpool enough as a starting point for what makes Deadpool so compelling and distinctive, even if it is tied up by a lot of preceding continuity.
Otherwise, the 30 issue run by Joe Kelly and Ed McGuiness is widely held to be the definitive version of the character and is available in omnibus form (a tasty £60) or in Deadpool Classic volume 2-4 (roughly £20 each, some variance on price). This run also looks to be the main inspiration for the Deadpool movie (5 months and 6 days left!!!!!!).
For non-mainstream continuity Deadpool, it doesn't get much better than Deadpool's adventures as the last 'superhero' on Earth after the zombie apocalypse in Night of the Living Deadpool written in rare form by Cullen Bunn and some arresting and Walking Dead homage-y art by Ramon Rosanas.
There's a lot of buzz around another of Bunn's non-continuity series, the Deadpool Killogy. Over 3 miniseries, Deadpool kills every superhero and super villain in the Marvel Universe in Deadpool Kills The Marvel Universe; the inspirations for them in the world of classic literature in Deadpool: Killustrated; and every alternate reality version of himself in Deadpool Kills Deadpool. While all well conceived, the execution is tepid at best. Your milage may vary.
