Saul Bas

Deadpool (Wade Winston Wilson) is a fictional character, a mercenary and anti-hero appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by artist Rob Liefeld and writer Fabian Nicieza, Deadpool first appeared in The New Mutants #98 (Feb. 1991).

A disfigured and mentally unstable mercenary, Deadpool originally appeared as a villain in an issue of New Mutants, and later in issues of X-Force. The character has since starred in several ongoing series, and shares titles with other characters such as Cable. The character, known as the "Merc with a Mouth", is famous for his talkative nature and his tendency to "break the fourth wall", which is used by writers for humorous effect.

Deadpool was ranked 182nd on Wizard magazine's list of the Top 200 Comic Book Characters of All Time,[2] ranked 45th on Empire magazine's list of The 50 Greatest Comic Book Characters,[3] and placed 31st on IGN's list of the Top 100 Comic Book Heroes.[4]

Contents

1 Publication history

1.1 1990s

1.2 2000s

1.3 2010s

2 Powers and abilities

3 Identity

4 Other versions

4.1 Ultimate Marvel

4.2 Age of Apocalypse

4.3 Marvel Zombies

4.4 Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth

4.5 Deadpool Corps

4.6 Marvel 2997

4.7 Weapon X: Days of Future Present

4.8 Hulked-Out Heroes

4.9 Captain America: Who Won't Wield the Shield

4.10 Deadpool Pulp

4.11 House of M

4.12 Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe

4.13 Deadpool Killustrated

4.14 Deadpool Kills Deadpool

5 In other media

5.1 Television

5.2 Film

5.3 Video games

6 Collected editions

7 References

8 External links

Publication history

1990s

Created by artist Rob Liefeld and writer Fabian Nicieza, Deadpool made his first appearance in the pages of New Mutants #98 published in February 1991. Rob 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 in-joke to being "related" to "Slade Wilson", Deathstroke.[5] In his first appearance, Deadpool was hired by Tolliver to attack Cable and the New Mutants. 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.

Cover to the Harvey Award-nominated Deadpool #11.

Art by Pete Woods, in homage to cover of Amazing Fantasy #15 featuring Spider-Man.

In 1997, Deadpool was given his own ongoing title, initially written by Joe Kelly, with then-newcomer Ed McGuinness as an artist. The series firmly established his supporting cast, including his prisoner/den mother Blind Al and his best friend Weasel. Deadpool became an action comedy parody of the cosmic drama, antihero-heavy comics of the time. 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."[6]

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".[7]

2000s

Deadpool lasted until issue #69, at which point it was relaunched as a new title by Gail Simone with a similar character called Agent X in 2002. This occurred during a line wide revamp of X-Men related comics, with Cable becoming Soldier X and X-Force becoming X-Statix. Simone notes that 'When I took the Deadpool job, the revamp hadn't been planned, so it was a complete surprise. Thankfully, we heard about it in time to make adjustments to the early scripts'.[8] It appeared that Deadpool was killed in an explosion fighting the aristocratic (and telepathic) villain known as the Black Swan. Weeks later, a mysterious figure showed up at the apartment of Deadpool's manager, Sandi Brandenberg. The man took the name Alex Hayden and together they started "Agency X," with Hayden dubbed Agent X after the company. Most believed that Hayden was Deadpool suffering from amnesia. The title character of Agent X was eventually revealed not to be Deadpool and the climax of that series saw the original character restored. Simone left the title after seven issues due to creative differences with the series editor, but then returned to conclude with issues 13-15.[9]

Deadpool's next starring appearance came in 2004 with the launch of Cable & Deadpool written by Fabian Nicieza, where Deadpool became partnered with his former enemy, Cable, teaming up in various adventures. This title