Examining Daniel Way's Deadpool Up To Now

Which means I had best get to it, since Deadpool #16 comes out this Wednesday and I don't want to fall behind. For a while, I was torn regarding the current Deadpool series. I found the hallucinations funny (sometimes hilarious), but it seemed slight. While the stories were all fairly short and sweet, there wasn't much to them, plotwise. Deadpool didn't have any sort of supporting cast to bounce off, unless one counts the voices in his head. I couldn't figure if Way had any sort of point to what he was doing.

Then Gavok at 4th Letter did a week long rundown of Deadpool's top 70 moments, as nominated by the readers. When he reached 11-20, there was one that caught my eye. Number 13, from a story Way wrote for Wolverine: Origins, where Gavok made what I thought were some very good points about Deadpool and Wolverine, made me think maybe Way does have something he's aiming for with Deadpool. So I figured we could take a look at the book through its first 15 issues, and see what we find. Or, I will and you can read along if you'd prefer, but audience participation is fun! I thought we'd start with the basic outline of each story.

Issues 1-3 involved Deadpool apparently defecting to the Skrulls, allowing them to clone his cellular structure to make Super-Skrulls, then teaching those Pool-Skrulls to think like him, meaning insanely, giving him an opportunity to locate and transmit some important data to Nick Fury. Data which Norman Osborn intercepted. Issues 4 & 5 saw Deadpool, flat broke, accepting a job from Zeke to retrieve Zeke's wife from an Eastern European surgeon who's made her into a zombie who maintains her youth by consuming living flesh. Turns out Zeke was using Deadpool as payment to get his wife back, rather than as her rescuer. Issues 6 & 7 have Tiger Shark trying to kill Deadpool for reasons Wade doesn't learn until after Bob, Agent of HYDRA makes a sudden appearance. Turns out Norman Osborn is trying to tie up loose ends, and thus Wade learns why Fury didn't get the data, and knows who to blame for his not getting paid. Issues 8 & 9 tie-in with Thunderbolts #130 & 131 as Wade tries to attack Avengers' Tower, and fights the Thunderbolts. He develops a crush on Black Widow, and learns Osborn may be crazier than he is. The story ends with Osborn believing Wade is dead of decapitation. Issues 10-12 have Osborn learn that's false and send Dark Hawkeye (Bullseye) after Deadpool, and they engage in a series of abusrd fights until Bullseye pays off Deadpool himself, and tells him to lay low. Issues 13 & 14 have Wade, bored with laying low, trying his hand at piracy, with Bob along as his parrot. Except Deadpool finds himself saving the island resorts he planned to raid from other pirates. Issue 15 finds Deadpool on his boat alone in the middle of the ocean, trying to decide what he wants, and what he should be doing to achieve those desires. His answer by the end of the issue is to join the X-Men.

Which brings us up to now. So what do we see? Well, Wade seems to be used a lot by people that don't really care about him. Fury sent him into the Skrull base for that data, but doesn't seem terribly concerned about Wilson. When Deadpool asks for a little credit for taking all those Skrulls out (not to mention the men and material he cost them with their attempts to duplicate him) Fury simply says that wasn't the mission. Maybe not, but it still helps the resistance effort, so how about a little appreciation? Heck, Fury won't even tell Deadpool what the data he's sending to Fury is until 'Pool acts as though he can't remember the code he needs. Then Fury enlightens Wade, but only because the Merc with a Mouth has him over a barrel, so it's done grudgingly, not out of respect.

The Skrulls don't really care about Deadpool, except for the potential benefit his healing factor might provide their warriors. Deadpool has to keep coming up with reasons they still need him, just to keep them from exterminating him. Then you have Zeke, using Wade to buy back his wife (who doesn't even want to go back to him), and the surgeon who plans to take advantage of Wade's healing factor to use him as a constantly replenishing food source for himself and his staff. Norman Osborn certainly doesn't care, or he would have paid Deadpool himself, maybe even thanked him publicly for his assistance on such a dangerous mission*. And when Deadpool proves to be more of a problem than Norman anticipated, he besmirches Deadpool's name, leaking footage of Wade allying with the Skrulls, of course, leaving out the part where Wade was a double agent**. Taskmaster works with Deadpool, but only because he's promised a silly amount of money to do so. It's not because he likes him. He lets Deadpool use his stuff, but 'Pool is gonna have to pay him back for all of it. Heck, Taskmaster knows Wade's sweet on Black Widow, and still tried to hit on her while disguised as Deadpool. So you have people using Wade for his skills, and people using Wade for his unique biology (the Skrulls and that surgeon), but he keeps being rejected. Like I said, the Skrulls don't really want him around, and it turns out the Weapon X process makes him taste so foul even Zombies won't eat him. Which is a good thing, but it's just one more rejection in a list of them.

Another thing, as part of the whole "being used and disrespected" theme, is how much Deadpool hates it, though being used clearly bothers him more. He killed the lead Skrull scientist in part because the guy treated him like an experiment, even after Deadpool had described how lousy his life as a lab rat in Weapon X had been. Fury disrespects him, Wade merely acts a bit childish, pretending to forget the code. When he learned Zeke used him as a patsy, he suckered Zeke into a trap, where Zeke and his small merc army would serve as food for the surgeon and his staff (and Zeke's wife). When Osborn steals all the glory, Deadpool sends him a mocking fax telling him to pay up or else, then proceeds to make several hair jokes once he actually attacks. After Osborn thinks the problems been dealt with, how does Wade choose to disabuse Osborn of that notion. By briefly teleporting behind Norman during a televised interview with a sign reading "Respawn LOL". If he'd wanted, he could have shot Norman in the head***, payback for stiffing him, beating him, and having him decapitated, but he chooses mockery. Maybe it relates to his comments in #15 about how he'd be glad to be paid for jobs in attention. If he kills Osborn, he can't get any more attention from him. Is Norman Osborn someone he wants attention from?

Way has set Deadpool up as a man alone, no one close to him, living in warehouses, subsisting on cheap tacos, with hardly anything of real value around him. Granted, Way basically tossed out Cable/Deadpool to achieve this status****, but that title hardly gets referenced these days anyway, so he's not the only one. And that's the nature of things with Marvel and DC, a character achieves something they've been striving for, the next writer undoes it and starts the trek again. Way may have been referring to this in #15 when Deadpool mentions the boredom of immortality, and wonders how many times he's put himself in dangerous situations for no gain. Deadpool can't die, at least not permanently. Even if he does lose popularity, and gets killed off, someone will come along, bring him back, and start the whole thing over again. So Deadpool will continue to end in ridiculous situations for one reason or another (or for no reason) for as long as people want to go on writing stories about him. Which means that, in a sense, Deadpool is getting paid in attention. He doesn't see any money for being in all these comics, what with being fictional and all, but people are reading about him, because they care about him (or the characters around him, and he's just a nuisance). Again, though, there's the question of whether that's attention Deadpool wants.

The only person we've seen in the series so far who actually wants Deadpool around is Bob, and I can't figure out why. His life is endangered when he's around Deadpool, not just by people after Wade, but by Wade (Deadpool shoots him in the hand after he learns Bob was working with Tiger Shark), so it doesn't seem as though it would be for protection. Bob seems too much a coward (or too sensible) to be an action junkie who enjoys being around Wade because he attracts danger, so I don't know. Wade doesn't treat Bob well. He makes him buy food, dress as a parrot, beats him with a stick when he forgets to talk like a parrot, shoots him in the hand, and when Bob's in the grip of Tiger Shark, Wade ignores him to grab a gun, and generally doesn't show much concern for Bob's well being.

It's strange, in #15, Deadpool is arguing with himself about wanting acceptance, but the one person in the series who provides that, he treats like dirt. Maybe part of Deadpool realizes it isn't safe for Bob, and that he'll have to drive Bob away, since Bob apparently can't keep himself away from Deadpool. Perhaps it's how Bob treats Deadpool. Bob seems to hero worship Deadpool, and that might make Deadpool uncomfortable. Even if helping protect the island of Jallarka made him feel good, Deadpool doesn't think of himself as a hero. He's a mercenary, he kills people for money. He might not always like doing it, they might be scumbags who deserve it, but that's what occupies most of his time. It's not all he's capable of, as pretty much every writer he's had for any significant piece of time has pointed out, but it seems to be inevitably what things come back to for him. It might be too painful to be around someone who treats you like the coolest big brother ever.

Here's where I think Deadpool's at. He wants respect, and probably love, but he wants it from people who a) matter to him, and b) see him for who he really is. So the people who hire him, like the guy we see in flashback in #2 when Deadpool's running down his history for the Skrulls? They don't matter. They're people who would hire a mercenary to kill people for them, so who cares if they respect him? Besides, they'd only respect his abilities, rather than care about him as a person. Someone like Bob? Well again, if Bob could see more clearly who Wade is, I think he would work, but I think Bob chooses to ignore the aspects of Deadpool that don't line up with the image he has of him, and Deadpool knows it. So even if Wade was himself around Bob, it wouldn't matter, because Bob wouldn't really see him that way.

So that leads to the question: Whose respect and compassion/affection/friendship would Deadpool want, and will they give it to him if they see his true self? For that matter, who is Deadpool's true self? I don't think it was that short shorts wearing, roller-skater with the visor we saw the last half of #15. That was Deadpool's attempt to be normal, which honestly, I don't think is gonna work. He said it himself (to himself, though he was talking to a dead shark): He is original, there's nobody like him, so if he wants true acceptance, trying to be like other people isn't the way to be. He has to be himself, and hope his positives shine through. And now he's gonna see if the X-Men will have him. Well, he ought to be able to be himself around them, considering the number of people with mental issues or criminal pasts they've accepted over they years.

Of course, he's probably got to get past Cyclops to get in, and Cyclops is, well I'd call him various expletives, so that could be tricky, but come on Cyke, you know it's what Cable would want. Do this one for your son that's older than you and lost in the future with the hope of mutantkind (or whatever it is Hope is supposed to be)!

* Granted, as completely as he has the public eating out of his hands, Norman has no incentive to do so, but I think he could possibly have scored some points going that route. Look, Osborn's such a great leader he was even able to appeal to that crazy mercenary to risk his life for the country! Of course, you'd have to keep the payment under the table, but that's not that difficult.

** It's never directly stated that Osborn leaked the footage, but all the statements the news report makes about the footage having just been uncovered, and parts having been damaged and lost due to explosions, but not the part that makes Deadpool look bad, and that it shows up right as Bullseye is zeroing in on Deadpool? Too much coincidence. Still, I can't figure why Norman bothered. Surely he expected Bullseye to kill Wade, so why bother releasing it? To ruin his reputation? To turn more people against him, so he wouldn't be able to find any work, 'cause if he's got no money, he can't get munitions?

*** Repeatedly. Then tossed a grenade or seven on him. I would have been ecstatic.

**** Or at least explain how Wade went from where he was there, to where he is now. At the end of that series, Deadpool had his own apartment, he had at least a half0dozen friends, he seemed to have earned the respect of various "respectable" heroes. The Thing even invited him to a poker game. I can only assume it has something to do with Wade being nuts, and he did something to alienate them.