Review: This comic is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, Deadpool telling his origin story. The twist is that Pool is telling his origin story to a screenwriter in order to get his life story on the big screen. According to Deadpool, his father left the family early on and his mother became a raging alcoholic, which led Pool to join the army once he was of age. After spending some time in the military, Pool went solo and became a mercenary, but he'd only take jobs that he felt strongly about. Eventually Pool discovers he has incurable cancer and learns of a secret program up in Canada. Pool joins the program, gets his healing abilities, but becomes horribly deformed as a result of the procedure. Since he was considered a failure, the scientists lock Pool up. Eventually Pool escapes the prison and Deadpool is born. After several months, Pool goes to the world premiere of the Deadpool movie, and is horrified to learn that the director took WAY too many liberties with his life story, turning it into something unrecognizable. After killing everybody in the movie theater and destroying the director's car, Pool decides to pay his father a visit for the first time since he was a child.
What I Thought: For what it's worth, I enjoyed this comic. The problem with this issue though was the fact that Pool's origin has been told, retold and then re-retold! I was under the impression that Pool's father was in the army, and that little Wade was a punk. According to this, that's not the case. Then of course there was the whole T-Ray debacle, where T-Ray was supposedly the real Wade Wilson and Pool had stolen his identity... So yeah, it's hard to take anything I read here seriously. The way I looked at this was that maybe Pool was telling the truth, and maybe he wasn't. Who knows...
Score: 7 1/2 out of 10.
What's a Deadpool comic without the obligatory fight with Cable?
I figured out why I didn't give this a perfect score in my head and you just reminded me. The stuff you mentioned about Wade's dad, as well as, wasn't he Canadian? Because they made it seem like he went to Canada but I could've sworn both he and Wolvie were Canadians. Manybe I'm mistaken. But I loved pretty much everything else, and the horrible movie.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'd always thought Wade was a Canuck too. But it was obvious in this comic that he was American when he joined the army. I kind of think of this comic like the whole Magneto thing... Magneto was a Holocaust survivor, but it was never set in stone what he was, it was always assumed that he was Jewish. Well, in the 90's, Marvel did a whole big Magneto back story thing and revealed that his real name was Erik Lehnsherr, and that he was actually a gypsy. So okay, since that's the Magneto I grew up with, that's how I always see Mags. Well, later on, Marvel decides to retcon that version of Mags history and give him a DIFFERENT real name as well as changing him from a gypsy to a Jew. As far as I'm concerned, Magneto is a gypsy named Erik Lehnsherr. That's what I grew up believing, and nothing is gonna change that. Same applies for Pool. I'll take bits of this comic, and mix them up with what I already knew, and that's how I see Deadpool.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I don't see why they change certain origins. Certain things should always be the same and if it's a well cemented character like Magneto, Prof. X, Spidey, the Fantastic Four than it should be left alone. Sure you can toy with it and change little things but nothing big.
ReplyDeleteThe X-writers actually wanted to definitively reveal Magneto as being Jewish in the '90s, but editorial wouldn't let them. They made them say that he was a gypsy instead, but everyone basically knew what they really meant. I suspect they were trying to avoid any controversy that saying he was Jewish would have caused, but as always in cases like these, trying to avoid it only made the controversy bigger.
ReplyDeleteI seem to recall Deadpool being Canadian as well. Sounds like Swierczynski may not have done all his homework!
Also, I didn't know that stuff about T-Ray. All I knew was that he was basically Deadpool's biggest enemy, and now that makes much more sense.
Yeah, like I said, Magneto being Jewish was kind of always understood without being said. I think Chris Claremont may have actually said something like that in an interview. BUT, the way I feel is that if you give a character like Mags an origin, STICK WITH IT!!! They made him a gypsy, for good or for bad. That's it, end of story. Did it make sense? No, but that's what they did! Being a continuity nut, it's little things like that which can drive me insane!!!
ReplyDeleteOkay then, so if all three of us recall DP as Canadian, then he must have been. I doubt we'd all remember that fact incorrectly. As for T-Ray, it was revealed in the Deadpool series from the mid-late 90's that T-Ray was actually Wade Wilson, and that Wade was named... Jack I want to say, and that he tried to kill T-Ray and steal his identity... I could be a bit off on that though, it's been a while since I read those comics... What I SHOULD do is dig out those comics and glance through 'em quickly to find out. Irregardless though, I think Fabian Nicieza retconned most of(if not all of)the T-Ray/Wade Wilson stuff in Cable/Deadpool.
Well I'll probably be reading some more of those Deadpool Classic books at some point, so hopefully I'll find out a little more about T-Ray, as well as where Deadpool came from originally.
ReplyDeleteI don't mind them changing Magneto's origin around that much. Wasn't the way it was originally presented through some report on TV? I think it was pretty clear that the reporter was just going on conjecture of Magneto's "supposed" past. So either the reporter was wrong (my guess), or Magneto could have theoretically advanced some story about himself at some point that simply wasn't true. Besides, it's not at all unlike comic book characters to be misleading about their past or their origins, so I don't see why that couldn't have been the case here.
Well, I completely forgot to look through those Deadpool books, so the confusion can continue at least one more day! :P
ReplyDeleteI KNOW it happened in X-Men Unlimited #2(I can distinctly recall the cover), but I don't THINK it was a reporter... I think it was a professor or something... Then again, maybe it WAS a reporter! I do know that they undid the Erik Lehnsherr origin by stating in an issue of X-Men(towards the latter half of the 90's)that Mags had paid a forger to create the Lehnsherr story for some reason... Although for the life of me I can't imagine why he'd do that! See, like I said, it that sort of weird and uncalled for tweak to a character that drives me crazy... I mean, how long before a new creative team decides to undo Magneto's current origin and give him yet another one?!
There's probably less chance of that happening now that his origin was explicitly told in Magneto: Testament. Although I actually wish they wouldn't have done that miniseries...I liked it better when his past was left more to the imagination
ReplyDelete"I liked it better when his past was left more to the imagination" I couldn't agree more Marc. I hate that most of the mystery has gone out of so many characters in the past 10 years or so... Growing up Wolverine was like the ultimate mystery character, but even he has had a definitive origin story... Although Marvel getting the Wolvie origin out of the way did make some sense since somebody(I want to say Quesada, but I can't remember)said they would rather have Wolvie's origin done in the comics before it was told on the big screen.
ReplyDeleteYeah, and the Wolverine thing also isn't so bad since even though he has all of his memories back, neither he nor the reader knows which ones are real.
ReplyDeleteI really loved this issue. I thought the whole premise with the movie was a really clever way to tell the origin story. As a new reader, not being to familiar with Wade's origin, I thought this issue was amazing.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, thanks for reading/commenting X-23! I have to agree that the addition of the movie was a novel way to tell an origin story, as opposed to some plot device that was done to death already(like DP telling his origin during a battle or something like that). If I knew less about DP's origin, I probably would have enjoyed this comic WAY more, but it contradicted a lot of stuff that had already been established. Still, this comic was better then I expected it to be.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to point out that the story was told by Deadpool, and that the man he talks to in the end didn't acknowledge him as his son. Conflicting memories aren't exactly new for Deadpool.
ReplyDeleteI'd also like to point out that everything in here has been told before. DS probably went through and molded it into something as cohesive as possible. I think it's harsh to call it inaccurate. How things are and how you think they are can be two different things.