Laying Tacks On The Road To Respectability

I mentioned on Thursday that I was a little disappointed in Wade's mission in this week's Deadpool and Co. On the one hand, it was good to see Wade put aside his extreme distaste for T-Ray and help the goof come back to life, on the other hand, it was to save the universe, so you wonder how much internal conflict that creates. Granted, this is Deadpool, and he has an unusual perspective on things, so there may have been a strong part of him that felt the universe's end was a small price to pay to keep T-Ray from annoying him. But it still felt somewhat lopsided.

I think Fabian Nicieza has Wade trying to reform, live up to the faith Cable showed in him, and just generally change his life, his way of doing things. It's reminiscent of Claremont making Magneto Headmaster of Xavier's school, though Magneto was a more serious threat than Deadpool. What I remember about that, and Dave "Dave's Long Box" Campbell brought this up when he reviewed New Mutants #40 (it's part of his "Earth Mightiest Guest Stars Week") was how Magneto kept getting placed in situations where he wanted to do the right thing, but it was hard for him, usually because of his past.

In New Mutants #40, he wants to rescue the New Mutants from Emma Frost's school, but she knows he's coming, calls the cops, the cops call the Avengers, and Mags is fighting the Avengers now. And they aren't going to believe what he says because he's Magneto, and why would you believe Magneto? Magneto really wants to rescue those students, because Xavier left them in his care, and he feels he let them down by sending them to Frost's school. But he has to get through the Avengers to do it, and that's hard when he holds himself in check, because as he puts it to Captain America he 'learned a better way'. Even though it might come back to bite him in the butt, he actually saves their lives when Warlock tries to defend him, because it's still what he figures Xavier would do, and he's trying to justify Chuck's faith in him.

To a certain extent, Wade is dealing with those issues, because most of the heroes act as though they can barely tolerate his presence, and that's probably at least partially because of the fact he's a mercenary who's maimed and killed people, and that makes them squeamish. Of course, it's also partially because Wade probably gets a bit annoying after awhile, and they just want him to go somewhere else, but still I think his past deeds aren't doing him any favors, besides helping him get a job and a home base of sorts at Agency X, but that's a different matter.

I think it would be interesting to see Deadpool, trying to do the right thing, but he's set against some of the more established heroes, at least initially. He really is trying to do some good, but they either don't buy it, or can't see what he's trying to achieve. So far, he's been helping them out, such as this week with Dr. Strange, or they've been helping him, such as Cyclops warning Deadpool that Wolverine was going to attack the HYDRA base Weasel was at. I don't have any sort of good story suggestion for how to accomplish that, but I'm sure there's some way it could work.