Deadpool's first ongoing series was canceled at 69 issues. Nice. Have to think he'd approve of that. Wade appeared to have been blown up in a fight with the telepath assassin Black Swan. The same month, Agent X #1 appeared, featuring a slighty wacky amnesiac with a healing factor.
Grant Morrison and Joe Casey had taken over the writing duties on New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men, respectively, the previous year, as part of an attempt to take the X-books in a different direction, and revive flagging interest. Cable became Soldier X, there was that Brotherhood book, written by "X" (did they ever reveal who that was?), some other revamps I couldn't tell you about..
I don't know if the switch from Deadpool to Agent X was specifically part of that. I assume so, although Deadpool occupies a peculiar adjacent space to the X-books. He loops in when it's beneficial to him. Gail Simone and the Udon art team handled the last 5 issues of Wade's book, then carried over to the new title for the first 7. Which dealt with the title character, Alex Hayden, trying to establish himself as a mercenary through mostly low-grade and embarrassing jobs, while most people are convinced he's Deadpool.
After Simone and Udon left, the book went through three creative teams in 5 issues, including two by Evan Dorkin involving his character Fight-Man, before Simone and the Udon guys came back for the final three issues to explain who Hayden is, and bring Deadpool back onto the field. The book ended, and six months after that, Cable/Deadpool was going. Hayden and a couple members of the supporting cast survived as occasional parts of Deadpool's supporting cast, but others vanished.
The Simone/Udon issues are the high point, as they took it as an opportunity to do stories about the kind of demeaning and dangerous work a merc would have to take in the Marvel Universe when they have no established rep. Like recovering zoo animals, or trying to kill the Punisher.
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