Deadpool (Marvel Comics)

About

Deadpool is the alter ego of Wade Wilson, a mentally unstable and disfigured anti-hero created by Marvel Comics writer Fabian Nicieza and penciller Rob Liefeld.

Backstory

Deadpool was a Canadian soldier and mercenary who joined the mysterious organization Weapon X after being diagnosed with cancer. He underwent different experiments which cured his cancer, gave him an extraordinarily fast healing-factor (faster than Wolverine’s), but cost him his sanity and left his entire body horribly disfigured. He was captive of Weapon X for many years until he managed to escape. He decided to return to the mercenary business using his healing powers as an advantage over competition, creating his own costume similar to those of the superheroes in comic books.^[2]

Personality

In his first appearances, Deadpool’s character was framed as unflappable and wise-cracking, always expecting violence, with money as his main motivation in life. Over the years, he has been depicted as insane with extreme moments of angst, bitterness and self-loathing. He has an extremely characteristic voice, and it is said to be very annoying by many characters, which along his wise-cracking personality makes him a very irritating person to be with.^[3] He developed an absurd sense of humor and an awareness of being a comic book character, often breaking the “fourth wall” and talking directly to the reader.

History

Comics

Deadpool made his first appearance in The New Mutants #98 as a mercenary hired to attack the protagonists of the series. Deadpool’s creator Rob Liefeld has stated that the Teen Titan villain Deathstroke served as an inspiration for the character.^[1] Deadpool started appearing as a recurrent character in the series X-Force and as his popularity raised he appeared in other Marvel series. In 1993, the first Deadpool mini series launched titled “Deadpool: The Circle Chase”.

In January 1997, the ongoing series “Deadpool” was released, written by Joe Kelly and penned by artist Ed McGuinness, in which Deadpool’s allies and rogues gallery were firmly established. The series ran until September 2002. In November 2008, Deadpool Vol. 2 was released, which ran for 63 issues until December 2012. In January 2013, Deadpool Vol. 3 was launched.

Other Media

Deadpool has been featured over the years in various video games, including X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Super Hero Squad Online, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimension, Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds and Marvel: Avengers Alliance, he made a guest appearance in the animated movie Hulk and in an episode of X-Men: Anime.

Deadpool the Video Game

Activision, Marvel, and High Noon Studios announced a Deadpool video game^[21] live at San Diego Comic-Con 2012. The Deadpool video game was released on June 25, 2013 and received mixed reviews, with some praising the humor and original story but criticizing the repetitive gameplay, controls and combat. On July 5th, 2013, YouTuber Pewdiepie uploaded footage of himself playing the game, which received upwards of 8.8 million views and 60,000 comments (shown below, right).

Film

On February 1st, 2010, YouTuber silverlightsaber uploaded a fan made trailer for the Deadpool film, using scenes featuring Ryan Reynolds from various films (shown below). In four years, the video garnered more than 5 million views and 6,700 comments. In July 2014, leaked test footage from a 21st Century Fox film about Deadpool was leaked online, in which the anti-hero attacks an SUV full of armed men (shown below, right).

On September 18th, 2014, FOX officially announced that the Deadpool film will get a release date^[21] at February 12th, 2016, after hearing a massive amount of positive reviews and feedback.

Online Presence

Deadpool has been referenced in media on various different websites, including Memebase^[5][6] and 9gag.^[7] Images of Deadpool are often present in the comments section of Know Your Meme entries due to the “deadpool” category reserved for rejected entries. A Facebook^[8] page dedicated to Deadpool has received more than 115.000 fans. The tag “#deadpool” is fairly active on sites like Tumblr and Twitter.^[11] There is an official Deadpool Twitter account^[12] and more than 51,000 pieces of fan art on deviantArt^[14][15][16].

His popularity over the Internet inspired Marvel Comics to create various variants covers of Deadpool mashups with memes for many #1s of their “Marvel NOW!” revamp including Deadpool Call me Maybe for “Uncanny Avengers” #1, Gangnam Stlye Deadpool for “The Avengers” (Vol. 5) #1 and “Deadpool is unimpressed” for “All-New X-Men” #1.

On June 29th, 2013, the batinthesun YouTube channel uploaded an episode of the web series “Super Power Beatdown,” in which Deadpool battles the DC Comics superhero Batman (shown below). In the next year, that video gained over 7.3 million views and 28,000 comments.

D-Piddy

D-Piddy is one of Deadpool’s most famous cosplayers. On October 7th, 2012, he launched a YouTube^[16] channel that gained over 180,000 subscribers in the following two years. He is often featured in pictures from events such as Comic Con and created a music video parody of the song “Gangnam Style”, reaching more than 2,300,000 views.^[18]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References