The Deadpoolsplosion is dying down and most others would say, “It’s about damn time.” Merc with a Mouth is long gone, Team-Up and Deadpool Corps are about to bite the dust and Deadpool MAX has been turned from an ongoing to a limited series. To compound my sadness, writer of the core series Daniel Way has lost his razzle dazzle and doesn’t appear certain of what he even wants to write. Still, that’s a ton of Deadpool in the last three years, not even counting the various guest appearances, miniseries and specials that have gone to his name.

And yet, despite all of that, it’s a scene in a team comic where he only appears for four pages that speaks to me as his best and truest moment of the Deadpoolsplosion. It comes in Uncanny X-Force #5, written by Rick Remender and drawn by Esad Ribic.

I always thought Deadpool would work better in a team setting. Years ago, people suggested that Peter David put Deadpool in X-Factor, mostly for the sake of being in a comic with Siryn again and I agreed with it. I didn’t think that Deadpool would drive up the wackiness level of the comic, but that the comic would ground Deadpool just a little bit more. He’s spent so much time playing off himself that there doesn’t seem to be much development left for him. That’s why Daniel Way’s written the same “Deadpool wants to be a hero” plotline that Joe Kelly and Fabian Nicieza have written before, only to write himself into a corner and make him purely a mercenary again.

X-Force is the perfect team for Deadpool. Naturally, you have a rich guy who will pay him to keep with Deadpool’s mercenary motivation. The team, especially with Deadpool, acts as a tribute to the dearly departed Cable. Then there’s Deadpool’s comedic and at times pitiful dream to be recognized as a member of the X-Men. I don’t know if they planned it, but Way’s recent storyline where Deadpool momentarily joins the X-Men and sacrifices his own reputation to make them look better works as a perfect prelude/explanation for what he’s doing here.

For those not up to date, the first four issues of Uncanny X-Force have featured the team of Wolverine, Archangel, Psylocke, Fantomex and Deadpool going to the moon in order to kill the recently-resurrected Apocalypse. While the X-Men members do this for the sake of saving mutantkind the headache of a fully-realized Apocalypse attack, Fantomex and Deadpool openly tell each other that they’re only there for the money.

The big twist is that Apocalypse isn’t like how we know him. He’s only a child, yet to grow up. His followers have been brainwashing him to be their leader, even though he doesn’t want to kill the weak. It’s a fantastic, action-packed story arc that ends with the team cornering the young Apocalypse and arguing over whether or not they should kill him. Wolverine decides that they’ll take him in and raise him right, since he’s only a kid. Arguments and scuffles ensue, only to be silenced when Fantomex coldly shoots the boy in the head. During all of this, Deadpool has been physically unable to speak, so we don’t know his take on this situation. He’s not the only one silent as the ride back to Earth is filled with awkward wordlessness.

That brings us to the issue at hand. Specifically, this scene.

There are four reasons this scene rings true to me.

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Back from Comic Con. I’d tell you all about it, but I’m tired as hell. Still better off than David, who’s probably completely unconscious as I type this and will remain so for the next 36 hours. Or he might be dead of a heart attack, considering he ate 5 Guys Burgers and Fries no less than three times in two days. Unlike me, he did NOT go there because Norman Osborn told him to.

While David is out, Was Taters is in. She included a Wonder Woman panel, even though that was last week. I won’t tell her if you won’t.

Avengers Academy #5
Christos Gage and Jorge Molina

Chaos War #1
Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, Khoi Pham and Reilly Brown

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You ever heard of that Mugen thing? It’s a program to make your own fighting game characters. While some people will just use it to make the usual Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat type of stuff using graphics and sprites that already exist, there are some people out there who go the extra mile and make an entire character from scratch. One such character is Deadpool, made to fit into the Marvel vs. Capcom style. Check out this video of him in use. Also, he has plenty of special intro animations.

The Bob/ninjas special move is inspired.

20) Telling off T-Ray
Deadpool #33 (1999)
Writer: Joe Kelly

With Joe Kelly’s run reaching the end, we’re given the big showdown between Deadpool and T-Ray. Using some magic mumbo jumbo, T-Ray is able to show his true past to Deadpool and Mercedes Wilson. T-Ray is the real Wade Wilson and made the mistake of saving the life of a no-good mercenary named Jack. Jack killed Wade in an attempt to take his identity and accidentally got Mercedes killed in the process. He went crazy and believed himself to be Wade Wilson.

T-Ray uses this revelation to show Deadpool how evil he truly is. He resurrected his wife as part of his plan to tear at Deadpool’s soul and make him suffer with guilt. Then he shows Deadpool all the people he’s ever killed. In one nice spread, we see a crowd of thousands, with many easy to recognize if you’ve been paying attention to his comic appearances. The absolute scale of what he’s done cripples Deadpool and causes him to question his own actions. T-Ray taunts Deadpool, asking him how it feels to see his whole attempt to redeem himself shattered by the knowledge that he never had any redeeming qualities in his past to begin with.

Deadpool then… starts laughing. He laughs hard. T-Ray is beside himself. How could he possibly react to his masterstroke with laughter? Wiping the tears from his eyes, Deadpool explains himself. Sure, T-Ray came close to breaking him, but then he had a moment of clarity about squirrels and coconuts.

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Holy… I can’t believe I never noticed that line before. That’s awesome!

And now, the countdown.

60) Zombie Double-Cross
Deadpool (v.2) #4-5 (2009)
Writer: Daniel Way

Deadpool is unfortunately running into an annoying habit of his writers doing the same story again and again. Between the story in question, the Game$ of Death one-shot and the current Suicide Kings miniseries (all within a couple months of each other), Deadpool has been tossed into stories where he’s hired to do a job for a million dollars, only it’s all one big set-up. Come on, guys. Mix it up every once and a while.

That said, I really dug the end of the first recent story to do this. As part of the new series by Daniel Way, Deadpool is hired to rescue a rich former mercenary’s wife from a corrupt plastic surgeon Dr. Lovosno and his faction of zombies. As it turns out, Deadpool himself is payment from the rich guy, as the zombies can feed off of him forever. In theory. In actuality, Deadpool takes horrible to cannibal types, so that idea’s in the crapper. He sets up a way for Lovosno’s zombies to feed on the traitorous merc and his henchmen, only he backstabs the zombies too by slipping out and blowing up the entire area.

Lovosno’s head lands near Deadpool, whining about how Wade betrayed them all.

“Duh!”

Maybe I just find something really funny about kicking disembodied heads that can still talk. Like in Waterboy.

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