Subject: Deadpool
Culture: American comics fandom
Setting: Marvel Comics
Context (Event Photos, Primary Sources, Secondary Sources, Field Notes)
* Misiroglu/Eury eds. 2006 p90
"Presumably Marvel Comics' anti-hero Deadpool derived his name from Clint Eastwood's final Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool (1988). But Eastwood's Harry Callahan is a police officer who harshly metes out justice and is a man of severe demeanor and few words. Deadpool, on the other hand, is a mercenary who operates outside the law and has a manic personality, continually rattling off stream-of-consciousness repartee. In this respect Deadpool is like an outlaw Spider-Man on speed, and they even wear similar costumes. Deadpool is often called 'the Merc with a Mouth."
"Created by artist Rob Liefeld and scripter Fabian Nicienza in New Mutants #98 (1991), Deadpool was originally presented as a villain who battled Cable, the original X-Force, and Wolverine. Probably due to his wild sense of humor and panache, Deadpool became so popular that he starred in his own comics miniseries (Deadpool: The Circle Chase, 1993, and Deadpool, 1994), and graduated to his own villain who evolves into a hero, or, in his case, anti-hero with emotional depth beneath his banter. Though he remained an outlaw, Deadpool's stories pit him against considerably more evil opponents."
"For over 25 years, Deadpool has been a morally ambiguous character in Marvel Comics. Sometimes he's desperate to be a hero rather than the killing machine others think he is, but he's never opposed to a shooting spree for what he considers to be a good cause. He won't kill innocent people and doesn't want to see Earth in danger, but he will shoot a person for defending the Star Wars prequels. He'll show concern for those he deems friends, but has also been known to assault and imprison them if he thinks they intend betrayal. He's been married a few times, and nearly every love interest has fought him or tried to kill him at some point. He's just, you know, a complicated person like you and me, folks.
* Abad-Santos 2-16-02-12 online
"The key to understanding Deadpool is to understand the era in which he was created. Deadpool makes his first comic appearance in 1991's New Mutants No. 98, by writer Fabian Nicieza and artist-writer Rob Liefeld. When we first meet him, he's ready to 'frost' Cable's 'mechanical butt':
Liefeld's Deadpool looks like a red fire ant on growth hormones; I'm not sure what's going on with the undulating sack of "muscles" in his legs. Eventually, we would learn of Deadpool's participation in a complicated plot involving a former girlfriend who had infiltrated X-Force, an offshoot of mutants and the X-Men franchise. But right here, in this debut moment, we understand that he's a mercenary who isn't afraid to kill people. And that already reveals a lot.
"Because when it comes to superheroes, violence is personal.
"Whether a superhero is willing to kill people is one of the biggest tells in comics. The concept is simple: Villains are expected to kill with reckless abandon, and heroes are not. Showing restraint and not killing someone, even though that person may have done a lot of fucked-up stuff, is what defines a hero. Those are the goalposts.
"And the stories where heroes do kill — like when Wonder Woman kills Maxwell Lord in Wonder Woman No. 219 or Fantomex kills a reincarnation of Apocalypse in Uncanny X-Force No. 4 — are major turning points in terms of those heroes' morality.
"Right off the bat, Deadpool seemingly has no conscience, which sets off all the alarms that he's a villain. But there's something else in play here, and it's that Deadpool is a reflection of his era's major comic book trends.
"Like a tween who has just discovered Slayer or Megadeth, in the '90s comics began to shift toward edgier, more violent, and more sexualized stories. At the time, there was also a shift toward graphic violence in other pockets of culture, including video games (think Mortal Kombat) and movies (like Natural Born Killers).
"But the shift in comics was seen as a response to the years of stories published under the Comics Code, a set of editorial standards — good always triumphs over evil, nothing overtly sexual, no gore — the industry imposed on itself to keep comics clean and parents happy. It allowed for a continuation of the themes in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's The Watchmen — two darker, edgier stories that dissected the idea of the superhero.
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