Voices In His Head Not His Own

It seems like ever since Daniel Way gave Deadpool the yellow and white competing caption boxes, that they've served as his supporting cast. I haven't seen any sort of pattern as far as what the white ones tend to say, versus the yellow, so it's not as though they're different parts of his personality, or different personalities entirely. It's more like they represent thoughts he simply doesn't have time to say, only to think.

But Charlie Huston and Kyle Baker went with something a little different in the "One Down" story for Deadpool #900. In that, Huston's the white caption box, and the yellow box is Deadpool's inner thoughts. Which doesn't mean it always agrees with Deadpool, or even is in the loop on what he's been up to. It didn't know, for example, that Deadpool's been robbing people, then cutting off their hand as they hold out their wallets, and it said it had seen a guy puke in his mouth* before, when Deadpool said that was a new experience. On the whole though, Yellow Caption Box is in agreement with Deadpool.

It's an odd story. White Caption Box seems to want to find some human aspect to mine for a story, which might be desire by comic writers to take that well-worn character and find a new spin on them, the fresh new take that makes the character a big name, and gets a writer the plaudits. The Yellow Caption Box seems more interested in action. It wants to kill something, anything really, but killing fans will do just fine. Deadpool just wants to die, which is why he's going to kill all his fans.

It makes sense, if a fictional character is trapped in a serialized story, and knows it, that they wouldn't have patience for yet another writer wanting to find some new angle on them. Those new angles so often seem to involve death or loss, and being forced to relive that crap, or experience new occasions of it, would have to be maddening. The story can't end, not as long as there's money to be made, it must go on, so any progress the character makes is inevitably undone, and they have to crawl up from the bottom allover again. Just staying at the bottom isn't any option, because the writers want to bring them up, and the fans want to see it (even if we've seen it already, I'm guilty). So Huston's using himself as the White Caption Box as a way for Deadpool to speak more directly and openly to us, since we're here in the real world with Huston.

I wonder if the story would have worked as well with the more common use of the caption boxes. Probably not, since having White Caption Box question the plan would undercut just how serious Deadpool was about his plan. Though Huston and Baker could perhaps have worked it as the White Caption Box arguing against it, but having its arguments in favor of existence shot down**, until by the end, it has to agree. No, I think their way works better. It's more effective at including the reader in the whole thing than if it was just Deadpool arguing with himself.

* OK, why do people describe it as "puke in their mouth", or "threw up in their mouth a little"? Where the hell else do you throw up but in your mouth?! If it isn't coming out through there, it's not puke, right?!

** Which wouldn't be hard. Anything good thing about Deadpool's existence they could bring up could easily be shot down on the grounds that some writer will eventually take it away. Wade had friends and an apartment at the end of Cable/Deadpool, and currently he lives in an abandoned gym/YMCA/something, and appears close to no one.