Deadpool

Deadpool is a fictional antihero appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by Rob Liefield and Fabian Nicieza and first appeared in The New Mutants #98(Feb. 1991).

Deadpool is a disfigured and mentally unstable mercenary with the superhuman ability of an accelerated healing factor and physical prowess. He is known as the "Merc with a Mouth" because of his talkative nature and tendency to break the fourth wall, which is used by writers for humorous effect and running gags.(1)

Fictional Character Biography

Wade Wilson's early life is mostly unknown. His mother died of cancer while he was young and his father (who was in the military) was physically abusive. Wade was a deliquent in his teenage years, possibly to spite his father. However one night while drinking with his friends his father attempt to take him out of the club one of his friends stole Wade's Fathers handgun and killed him. Following a brief stint of military service, Wade began his mercenary career while still in his late teens. Accepting assassination jobs only against those whom he felt deserved death, he made a habit of using plastic surgery and technology to take on a new identity whenever he failed an assignment. Many years later Deadpool's nemesis T-Ray accused Deadpool of killing his wife and stealing his identity after a failed mission, but Deadpool's restored memories revealed this to be a lie; in T-Ray's account Wade was wearing his Deadpool costume, which he didn't have in till after he joined Weapon X.

Little is known of Wilson’s subsequent mercenary activities. At one point he was active in Tangier, Morocco, where he romanced a woman named Francie. When this relationship soured, he traveled throughout Asia, and was hired in Japan by a crimelord, the Boss, to infiltrate a sumo-wrestling ring owned by a rival criminal, the Oyakata. Wilson spent three years as a wrestler under the Oyakata’s tutelage and became romantically involved with his mentor’s daughter, Sazae. When the Boss finally ordered the Oyakata’s murder, Wilson refused to complete his assignment, allegedly the first time he had ever done so, and relocated to the United States.

In America, Wilson met and fell in love with teenage prostitute Vanessa Carlysle, with whom he shared dreams of a better life. Wilson was subsequently hired by Middle Eastern interests to assassinate a blind British government operative named Althea, also known as Blind Al, but upon arrival at the Zaire base where she was stationed, he killed everyone except for Al who had fled. Wilson’s employers sought vengeance for his failure by targeting Vanessa, who was rescued by Zoe Culloden, an employee of the interdimensional firm Landau, Luckman, Lake, and LeQuare. Culloden was keeping Wilson under surveillance, believing he was destined to play a vital part in a potential threat to the world.

Learning that he had contracted cancer, Wilson broke up with Vanessa rather than force her to remain with a terminally ill man. In Canada, he was offered hope in the form of Department K, a special weapons development branch of the Canadian government. Wilson became a test subject in Department K’s branch of the joint U.S./Canadian superhuman enhancement project, the Weapon X Program; his cancer was temporarily arrested via the implantation of a healing factor derived from another Department K agent, the mutant adventurer Wolverine. Wilson was active in a covert field unit alongside the near-invulnerable Sluggo and the cyborgs Kane and Slayback. Vanessa herself was later affiliated with the team after having manifested mutant shapeshifting abilities, calling herself Copycat.

During one mission, Wilson killed his teammate Slayback. As a result, he was rejected from the Weapon X Program and sent to the Hospice, allegedly a government facility where failed superhuman operatives were treated. However, unknown to the Canadian government, the Hospice’s patients served as experimental subjects for Doctor Killebrew and his sadistic assistant Ajax, with the patients placing bets in a "deadpool" as to how long each subject would live. Killebrew subjected Wilson to various torturous experiments for his own deranged satisfaction. In due course, Wilson formed a semi-romantic relationship with the cosmic entity Death, who regarded him as a kindred spirit. Wilson’s emotional strength during his trials earned him the respect of his fellow Hospice patients. Then Ajax, angered by Wilson’s taunts, lobotomized one of Wilson’s friends. At Death’s prompting, Wilson killed his friend to end his suffering. However, under Killebrew’s rules any patient who killed another was to be executed; Ajax subsequently tore out Wilson’s heart and left him for dead, but Wilson’s thirst for vengeance was so strong that it jumpstarted his healing factor, regenerating his heart, although not curing his scarred body. Wilson then attacked Ajax, leaving him for dead in turn, and, taking the name Deadpool, escaped from the Hospice with his fellow patients.(3)

Powers and Abilities

Deadpool has a number of abilities including a regenerative healing factor and extended longevity, he is a master martial artist, swordsman and marksman.

Deadpool's healing factor is strong enough that he has survived complete incineration and decapitation more than once.^[ Although his head normally has to be reunited with his body to heal a decapitation wound, he was able to regrow his head after having it pulverized by the Hulk in the graphic novel Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe.

Deadpool's brain cells are similarly affected, with dying neurons being rejuvenated at a super accelerated rate. This allows Deadpool to recover from any head wounds, and it renders him nearly invulnerable to psychic and telepathic powers, although this ability is inconsistent.

Deadpool's body is highly resistant to most drugs and toxins, due to his enhanced cell regeneration. For example, it is extremely difficult for him to become intoxicated. He can be affected by certain drugs, such as tranquilizers, if he is exposed to a large enough dosage.

Deadpool is effectively immortal, although he has died several times. He is still alive 800 years in the future when the new X-Force encounters him. In addition, Thanos once declared that Deadpool should "consider yourself cursed ... with life!" out of jealousy over Deadpool's status as Lady Death's love interest. His enemy T-Ray later resurrected him, under Thanos' instruction, using an artifact he had given him. Later, Deadpool was informed that Thanos had placed a curse on him, and tracked Thanos down. He revealed that the only thing keeping Wade alive was his "spell of darkest necromancy". Although Thanos removed this curse in order to kill Deadpool, he felt forced to immediately bring him back using "a fusion of necromancy and science" in order to request his aid in tracking down Mistress Death, who had gone missing.

Over the years, Deadpool has owned a number of personal teleportation devices. Also, during Deadpool's first ongoing comic, he possesses a device which projected holographic disguises, allowing him to go undercover or conceal his appearance. He also has a magic satchel containing all of his unlimited weaponry and ammo. Deadpool is multilingual, with the ability to speak fluently in German, Spanish, ASL and Japanese, in addition to his native English.

Since Deadpool is aware that he is a fictional character, he uses this knowledge to his advantage to deal with opponents or gain knowledge to which he should not normally have access, such as reading past issues of his and others' comics. Deadpool knows he has a Wikipedia article and hopes his fans keep his page updated.(4)

Publication History

Created by artist/writer Rob Liefeld and writer Fabian Nicieza, Deadpool made his first appearance in the pages of The New Mutants #98, cover dated February 1991.According to Nicieza, Liefeld came up with the character's visual design and name, and Nicieza himself came up with the character's speech mannerisms. Liefeld, a fan of the Teen Titans comics, showed his new character to then-writer Fabian Nicieza. Upon seeing the costume and noting his characteristics (killer with super agility), Nicieza contacted Liefeld, saying "this is Deathstroke from Teen Titans". Nicieza gave Deadpool the real name of "Wade Wilson" as an inside-joke to being "related" to "Slade Wilson", Deathstroke.

Other inspirations were Spider-Man and Wolverine. Liefeld states: "Wolverine and Spider-Man were the two properties I was competing with at all times. I didn’t have those, I didn’t have access to those. I had to make my own Spider-Man and Wolverine. That’s what Cable and Deadpool were meant to be, my own Spider-Man and my own Wolverine." Both Deadpool and Cable were also meant to be tied into Wolverine’s history already from the start, as Liefeld describes: "Wolverine was my guy. If I could tie anything into Wolverine, I was winning." What Danny DeVito's character was to Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in Twins, Deadpool was intended to be to Wolverine.

After subsequently appearing in X-Force as a recurring character, Deadpool began making guest appearances in a number of different Marvel Comics titles such as The Avengers, Daredevil, and Heroes for Hire. In 1993, the character received his own miniseries, titled The Circle Chase, written by Fabian Nicieza and pencilled by Joe Madureira. It was a relative success and Deadpool starred in a second, self-titled miniseries written in 1994 by Mark Waid, pencilled by Ian Churchill, and inked by Jason Temujin Minor and Bud LaRosa. Waid later commented, "Frankly, if I'd known Deadpool was such a creep when I agreed to write the mini-series, I wouldn't have done it. Someone who hasn't paid for their crimes presents a problem for me."

In 1997, Deadpool was given his own ongoing title, initially written by Joe Kelly, with then-newcomer Ed McGuinness as an artist. Deadpool became an action comedy parody of the cosmic drama, antihero-heavy comics of the time. The series firmly established his supporting cast, including his prisoner/den mother Blind Al and his best friend Weasel. The ongoing series gained cult popularity for its unorthodox main character and its balance of angst and pop culture slapstick and the character became less of a villain, though the element of his moral ambiguity remained. The writer Joe Kelly noted, "With Deadpool, we could do anything we wanted because everybody just expected the book to be cancelled every five seconds, so nobody was paying attention. And we could get away with it." Reportedly Kelly introduced the fourth wall breaking gimmick.

The series was taken over by Christopher Priest who noted that he found Kelly's issues to be "complex and a little hostile to new readers like me" and that by issue 37, he realized that "it was okay to make Deadpool look stupid." Kelly may have introduced Deadpool to breaking the fourth wall, but Priest "could be credited for establishing it as an essential part of the character’s personality and worldview." Priest left the series after only one year at issue #45.(2)

Supporting Characters

Allies

Deadpool has worked with many superheroes in the past including Wolverine, Spider-man, Daredevil and most common of all Cable. He has also worked with many superhero teams such as X-Men, X-Force, The Avengers and Deadpool's Mercs For Money.

He is also allies with other versions of himself from different universes such as Headpool, Lady Deadpool, Kidpool, Dogpool and Hulkpool. They call themselves the Deadpool Corps.

Enemies

Deadpol hasa number of enemies including T-Ray, Ajax, Doctor Killebrew, Administrator, Agent-X, Balck Swan and many more.

Movies

X-Men Origins: Wolverine(2009)

Wade Wilson appeared in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The character was portrayed by Ryan Reynolds. The movie did not perform well both critically and at the box office. Ryan Reynolds' performance was frowned upon.

You can check out the trailer below

Deadpool(2016)

Deadpool was an R-rated movie which was directed by Tim Miller. The movie featured Ryan Reynolds reprising his role as Wade Wilson/Deadpool. Ryan Reynolds is a huge fan of Deadpool, he wanted to play the character since 11 years before this movie's release. He signed on for X-Men Origins: Wolverine because the producers and the studios assured him a stand-alone Deadpool movie, but it got cancelled because of the movie's bad performance. In 2010 they wrote the script and made a test footage, which was not accepted by the studio and it sat on the shelf for 4 years. In 2014, someone leaked the test footage online and many of the fans loved it and started writing letters to Fox Studios to make the movie and within 24 hours, Fox gave a Greenlight to make the movie. The movie was a huge hit and performed well critically and performed very well in the box office for an R-rated movie.

You can check out the trailer below.

Notable Comics(5)

You can check out our Deadpool products here

Sources

1.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadpool

2.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadpool#Publication_history

3.http://marvel.com/universe/Deadpool_%28Wade_Wilson%29

4.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadpool#Powers_and_abilities

5.http://www.ranker.com/list/best-deadpool-comics/ranker-comics