Five Reasons Cable & Deadpool Fans (and everyone else) Should Check Out Joe Kelly's Deadpool Run
Started writing this post sometime last year back when I first finished reading the arc, and have finally found time to finish it off. And now I'm probably going to go back and read the whole thing again~
If you've ever read much of the hype about Deadpool around the web, there's a decent chance that you'll have heard Joe Kelly's run on Deadpool's solo series from the 90's being held up as what is widely considered to be THE definitive take on the character. Even Fabian Nicieza - co-creator of the character - has no shortage of praise for Kelly's work. It's not without good reason; Deadpool's early appearances in titles like X-Force and his first two limited series may have set up the idea behind his character, but Kelly was responsible for taking all that and running with it in some truly inpsired and unlikely directions. It took up to about issue eight for the series to reach the first point that really grabbed me, but after that the great moments just kept coming all the way to the end.
If you're like me, and heard about Deadpool mostly thanks to the promise of HoYay galore in the later Cable & Deadpool series, then you may not have as much interest in reading about his solo adventures. If you know him only through his recent appearances and Wolverine-level overexposure (I have recently seen even people on websites devoted to Deadpool groaning at the thought of him appearing in yet another title), you may well be sick of hearing about him. Honestly, I couldn't blame you for either. But if I can convince you it's still worth checking out his earlier years - long before the days of unusual team-ups and rare Deadpool variant covers - then I present you with, in no particular order, five very good reasons why the first 33 issues of his solo series are well worth checking out.
1. Awesome female characters
After sitting through a few years of discussion about women in comics and disturbing trends like refrigeration, it's increasingly difficult for me to read any comic without a little voice somewhere in the back of my mind taking note of how the treatment of the female cast shapes up. Let's face it, Deadpool is not the sort of series you expect to rate above average for its feminist leanings: the only way Deadpool the character could ever qualify as 'feminist' is by the logic that he'll go out of his way to abuse pretty much anyone equally. This is not the kind of series you expect to see passing the Bechdel Test (actually, the plot as a whole is so focused on Deadpool that there are probably only a handful off occasions when any two characters have spoken to each other about anything other than him).
So it was a really welcome surprise to discover that Kelly's run has a pretty damn awesome cast of supporting female characters - both of his own creation and those from existing Marvel canon. Starting with those latter category, these are the more important ones:
Vanessa: Wade's ex, Vanessa appears only once, during a flashback chapter. She's working as a prostitute, and doesn't seem to be aware of her powers yet (having reread it recently, the former comes directly from a scene in Nicieza's The Circle Chase, whereas it's a bit harder to see how the latter could have worked with the timeline). I'm not quite sure how I much I like the 'angry god' speech she makes about her clients, though the idea of her pressuring herself to be 'whatever they want her to be' does have some interesting implications for how her mutant ability works. But I did like how they presented her relationship with pre-Deadpool Wade - even in the space of the one issue she appeared in she evoked at lot more sympathy from me than just the usual 'oh, you silly girl' reaction, which is too often not true of characters who's main role is to pine over a relationship that so obviously was never going to make it.
Siryn: I have trouble investing much in the Siryn/Deadpool ship - she's just too nice and too normal for me to picture it going any further than it did (stalled at the starting line). But she's shown to be a driving influence in Wade's need to redeem himself - without the result ever devolving into romantic mush. Also, she has guts. When Deadpool tries to make her leave the room so he can kill Dr Kilbrew, she insists either he does it in front of her or not at all, and ultimately he backs down. And when he and a teammate practically wind up fighting over her later on, she makes it very clear she's taking none of this crap from either of them.
Typhoid Mary: This is where we get up to the big leagues. Yeah, she's the femme fatale - in the most literal sense. Deadpool finds her about as sexy as date rape (and I mean that in a disturblingly literal sense). I cannot, in good conscience, say I like Typhoid Mary herself, but I can say that the way she messes with Wade's head - especially when she decides she's going to personally 'help' him reach his goal of becoming a hero - was one of the most brain-breakingly effective scenes I've seen in comics in a long time. We're talking pretty much the exact moment I went from reading the series out of vague curiosity about the backstory to reading it because it was the most creatively and terribly awesome thing I had read in ages.
Zoe Culloden: Technically not created by Joe Kelly, though I suspect he did more with her than any other writer. It's a little hard to empathise with Zoe, given she gives the impression that most of her motivation for the Mithras Project has not so much to do with bringing an era of peace and enlightenment to the earth as it had with getting herself a promotion. But she grew on me - even more given the miserable, but believably human, mistake she made after the project went so spectacularly bust, and her subsequent redemption. Also, despite being a non-superpowered woman, she once beat up two armed guards without breaking a sweat. I like this sort of thing in a character. and I may kind of ship her and Monty kind of a lot
Death: I have to admit I had a lot of trouble buying this particular take on the Grim Reaper, especially one that goes around calling Wade 'babe' (the backstory she came with didn't quite mesh with the details we got in Deadpool's previous mini-series either, which bugged me a bit). Surely out of the whole Marvelverse, people stuck between life and death the way Wade was when they met would be a dime a dozen - what on earth made him stand out? But that said, she has a skull for a face, and Deadpool still thinks she's the sexiest thing ever - and somehow their relationship comes across as something more than pure folly or morbid obsession, and credit for that is definitely due.
Mercedes: As much of a mess as the whole T-Ray story arc was, I liked Mercedes. When brought back to life to the hell of discovering that her 'husband' is now a badly disfigured professional mercenary, and both their lives are in danger, what does she do? Why, she grabs the nearest automatic weapon and makes a darn good attempt deal with his new career direction by getting involved. Also, when T-Ray finally reveals how he's been manipulating both her and Deadpool for his own ends, hands her massive amounts of power and expects her to side with him, it backfires for exactly the reason you'd hope it would.
Ilaney: Liked her almost immediately in her first appearance, was thrilled when she was brought back for a stint as Deadpool's pilot, and am merely resigned that we'll probably never see her again. It's hard to explain exactly why I love Ilaney so much, but despite being fairly innocent at face value, she's a female character with an angsty past that has nothing whatsover to do with romance (or the tragic death of her family), gets into conversations which give us some great insight into Deadpool character, gets her life turned upside down by him - ultimately for the better, gets fridged and subsequently defrosted in the same issue, and later comes back to work for him for no more reason that because she likes him and likes the opportunity to see more of the world. When T-Ray gives her the option to either abandon Deadpool outright or face being trapped in a nightmare about the worst moment of her life until he's defeated, well, see top image for how she reacted.
Blind Al: BLIND AL! 'Nuff said.
Okay, I will say just a bit more, because it is just that fantastic that the main female character in a comic book is a mouthy old woman. And she didn't even have to be someone's mother or aunt to get the role.
The comic doesn't ever quite pass the Bechdel Test - there are a couple of scenes where the female characters get to interact with each other while Deadpool's off screen, but none of them have much in common without him. Still, women are competent, and as capable of dealing with danger as men are, and are rarely forced to deal with the indignity of the pointlessly revealing outfits that comics love so much, and that counts for a lot.
2. Deadpool gets to have friends
Deadpool is one of the whipping boys of the Marvel universe. The audience may love him, but the kind of violence and mayhem he specialises in just isn't as funny when you're watching it from the same side of the fourth wall. His appearance in any serious setting is going to be met with a chorus of groans, if not death threats. Other Marvel characters don't like characters like Deadpool. Recent writers (who I should probably restrain myself from saying too much more about) have even gone so far as to suggest that Deadpool is better off without having much of a regular supporting cast.
This is, of course, utter bullshit, because who reads a story hoping to see the obvious happen? Sure, it's easy to work up audience sympathy for the guy who laughs on the outside but hurts on the inside because he's so very alone. It's also lazy as hell.
Team books have always done a lot more for me than most titles that focus on individual superheros, and the sales figures on most of the various Avengers and X-Men titles would suggest a lot of people agree. What made Cable & Deadpool so great was that it gave us two lead characters in a really fascinating relationship that, by all logic, should never have worked half as well as it did - and a regular or semi-regular supporting cast of extras as well. When Cable left the series towards the end, Nicieza did the smart thing and wrote in Agency X to replace him. Deadpool was never expected to carry the story alone.
And though it may surprise people who know Kelly's run for its reputation as the series that gave Deadpool his aaangst, he's got a regular supporting cast all the way through - many of whom do count as real friends, as opposed to people who merely have to put up with him. Weasel likes him (despite the rocky period they go through later in the run). Siryn cares for him (despite being fully prepared to call him out on bad behaviour). Blind Al likes him (despite the fact he's keeping her prisoner). In one chapter he takes a skinless, psychic paraplegic on a trip to Vegas and winds up giving him the time of his life (even if it was entirely by unlikely accident). Ilaney becomes his official pilot for a period, simply because she likes having him around. Bullseye - psychotic villain for hire, who only even appears in a couple of chapters - once offers him a pile of free advice and justifies it in the panels to the left. None of them are blind to his faults, or see him only as a tortured woobie desperate for affection he would never openly ask for - and never is it suggested he's an easy guy to deal with. The story still splits its seams with characters who hate his guts, often for entirely valid reasons. Deadpool makes plenty of mistakes with the friends he's got, pays for them, and ultimately is usually forgiven. Even at his lowest ebb, he deals by going to track down Siryn, or Al, or by bringing his skinless buddy along. He may hate himself, he may be the kind of guy who's default way of dealing with people involves insulting them to their faces, but at a very fundamental level he likes having people around.
It's strange that this should feel so subversive, but keep in mind this is the same comic company that seems to think that the X-Men can save the world on live TV twice a week and people will still hate them, and that Spider-Man sales will tank if he ever gets a lucky break. It does take a fine balancing act to keep it plausible that these characters would hang around voluntarily without downplaying any of Deadpool's nastier characteristics, but Joe Kelly pulls it off.
3. Contains Cable & Deadpool issue 0
In one chapter - #22 to be exact - of Kelly's Deadpool run, Cable makes an appearance. It's not the first time they met (that was back in New Mutants #98), or the second (X-Force something-or-other), and you get the general impression they've encountered each other sometime in the interim too (unless Deadpool's been keeping up by reading Cable's comics, which is entirely plausible). But it is the first time they meet after Deadpool's promotion to a solo title character, and the first after his decision that he wanted to be a hero, and it's a very good candidate for the first time they ever made any kind of real connection.
(So, Cable & Deadpool fans, have I got your attention yet? ;)
The chapter doesn't stand too well alone, but to summarise events without spoiling every detail, the meeting comes at one of those points where Deadpool's struggle with whether or not he'll ever be able to be a real hero is getting the better of him. Needing reassurance, he goes looking for Siryn. He finds Cable instead. They get into the inevitable fight, which includes a lot of yelling at each other about their respective problems and the nature of destiny, etc - until Cable gives a little too much away, the fight comes to abrupt halt, and the two of them end up having a surprisingly genuine heart-to-heart (at least by their standards) before going their separate ways. By the start of the next scene, Deadpool's got his issues sorted out and is back on track.
On a related note, and to give this section a little more relevance for non-Cable fans, the comic generally does have a surprisingly good track record with how it treats its guest stars. We're talking about an industry known for having its characters fight whenever they meet up and act like complete dicks for no good reason, especially if it can be used to make the lead in which ever title look good in comparison - and we're also talking about Deadpool, who exists in a big part for his gag value and who's loathed by much of the rest of the Marvel Universe. What I'm saying here is that when, for example, Captain America appears, and it's not so that Deadpool can get the better of him and make him look dumb, or to act needlessly dickish, but rather to spend several appearances trying to find out who he can trust and what he needs to do to do his job in the middle of the current crisis, it's a nice surprise. (He's also there to get possessed by an evil entity for plot reasons, true, but he still gets to have some nice moments before and after.)
4. Oh yeah, they went there
There are some stories you can only tell with a character like Deadpool.
I'm not talking about forth-wall breaking gag stories, or stories where we all laugh aloud at the sight of a man getting shot in the head or 'Hi Weasel' being spelt out in Agent X's entrails. I'm talking about stories that question whether a guy who is sorta likeable despite a few big mental issues can be forgiven for imprisoning an old lady against her will. An old lady who genuinely likes him despite his faults and gives as good as she gets in the household pranks department, but who just as genuinely does not like being held prisoner.
It may be initially played for gag value, but that also means that when Deadpool finally crosses the line - and he does cross the line - the impact hits us that much harder. Nor is the fallout in any way sugar-coated. Blind Al finds ways to make it very clear to him exactly what he's become.
And this really is the kind of story you can't tell with any character but Deadpool, because for almost anyone else it would be unforgivable - no ifs or buts. The only thing that saves Deadpool is that he's canonically insane, and even if he usually manages to make the right decision when it counts (and the alternative won't be too hilarious for the writer to pass up), he's fundamentally a very damaged individual who's never had a functioning moral compass. He wants and tries to be better, but he makes mistakes - and big ones - and he's made to pay for them.
Even with a character like Deadpool, it's the kind of story that's much easier to get wrong than to get right. I'm still somewhat in awe that Kelly even attempted it, let alone that he pulled it off so well.
It's also worth mentioning - given the fuss on the web lately over a nasty incident in a recent Spider-Man issue in which one of the characters is (for almost all intents and purposes) raped by a shape-shifter who had her convinced he was someone she liked, and the fall-out is played for laughs - that much the same thing happened in Deadpool once. Only when it happened in Deadpool, the fallout was not treated as being in any way remotely funny.
There are some very dark themes in this run, and they get away with it at least in part because Deadpool's crazy enough to bounce back from almost anything (eventually) - but that's not to say that any of those themes are played as being any less dark than they so clearly are.
5. The woobieness factor
The most concise summary I've ever seen of what Deadpool as a character is all about came from a review of a recent Deadpool issue (can't seem to find the link anymore, unfortunately). What the reviewer suggested was that, in the same sort of way, for example, the fundamental theme of Spider-Man is, 'With great power comes great responsibility', the theme behind Deadpool is, 'Am I, or am I not a hero?' (Arguably, the theme in C&DP was more along the lines of, 'Am I, or am I not, on Cable's side? And if I am, should I be? And for that matter, is he a hero?' - but that's still pretty much just a more specific version of the same concept.) It's a classic essay question: the point is not to give a simple answer, it's to discuss the hell out of it at as much length as possible. As an idea this dates all the way back to Deadpool's first limited series, well before Kelly started his run, though I don't think it can be overstated how much Kelly did to establish that as the central theme it became. He wasn't the first to show us how much Deadpool's life sucks, or to make us feel sorry for him either - again, the first couple of limited series had that covered.
What he is known for doing - and rightly so - is taking all that angst and racheting it up to another level. Deadpool's first major solo run makes him hurt. The worst C&DP puts him through (and let's face it, he goes through a lot) can't hold a candle to the Kelly days. That's probably a good thing, because crushing angst on quite that level isn't as fundamental to Deadpool's character as the hero issue; nor should it be, because it does take a particular kind of approach to make it work. On the other hand, it is a defining part of Kelly's take on Deadpool, and he's got that particular approach down to an art.
We're not talking Anne Rice-level angst, or overdone fanfic hurt/comfort fantasy here. Deadpool's still the funnyman on the surface. He's still the funnyman several levels down too. It's just every now and then that the mask falls off and we're hit in the face with how very broken Wade is, or reminded that there still is a rational, intelligent human being somewhere in his make-up who's painfully aware of everything he's been through. Wade's character is a complicated mix of the good and the bad, the humourous and the tragic, and Kelly turns all those characteristics up to 11. But it's still the tragic part that people seem to remember as the defining feature, and Kelly makes us feel for Wade more than anyone else is ever likely to do again.
Bringing all this back to link up with my first point, it should be no surprise Wade's struggle to be a hero is right at the centre of all that angst more often than not - just as it should be. Ultimately though, while I don't want to spoil the end of the run, I will say he manages to find a suitably upbeat note to finish on, and comes as close to answering that central question as anyone ever should.
Like just about everything else in art or fiction, the series does still have its flaws. First and foremost, Joe Kelly's run does feature the infamous T-Ray arc in its last eight issues. I feel I ought to make some excuses for him on that count, since by that stage, after being teased for years on whether or not the series was about to be cancelled every other month he'd apparently gotten sick of the suspense, wrapped his last story arc up in a hurry and quit. The T-Ray arc also includes a number of my favourite scenes from the whole run, and T-Ray himself is a surprisingly effective villain when being written seriously. It's only when you stop and think for a moment about the premise that you realise that none of it makes any sense. The first half builds us up the idea that the 'real' Wade Wilson wasn't who we thought he was, the conclusion tells us... Deadpool's not the real Wade Wilson! This despite the fact that not even the intergalactic law firm who'd been tracking him for years and knew his personal history in fine detail had never found any indication that 'Wade Wilson' wasn't his original name. Since the name 'Wade Wilson' has no particular significance to Deadpool beyond being what he signs on forms (and even then when he's not signing them 'Buchanen Nekkid'), it's rather hard to see what the big deal over the whole identity crisis was meant to be in the first place. Not a very satisfying plot arc. Turning T-Ray into the joke he'd become by his appearance in C&DP was probably the only thing left that could be done with any of it.
Kelly's style is also a little wordier than what I prefer in comics (even allowing for the fact he's writing for Deadpool), and sometimes relies a bit too heavily on captions to let us know what's going on (yes, I know everyone did that in the 90's - it's still a style that bugs me). It did take me several issues to really get into things, and there are a few points when Deadpool launches into a crazy, new scheme at the start of the chapter that completely lost me until halfway through. Then there's the fact that Deadpool's crazy homeless friend only ever gets one scene with him and yet is supposed to be important enough that we're surprised by his role later on. However, these are ultimately little more than nitpicks at what is otherwise a thoroughly entertaining run. Even the art's mostly pretty decent (despite a variety of opinion on how Deadpool looks without his mask on, which no two artists ever seem to agree on).
Marvel's currently in the middle of releasing the whole series in trade paperback format under the 'Classic Deadpool' title. It's probably naïve of me to hope it sells anything like as well as more recent incarnation of the series, but I can't recommend it highly enough.
If you've ever read much of the hype about Deadpool around the web, there's a decent chance that you'll have heard Joe Kelly's run on Deadpool's solo series from the 90's being held up as what is widely considered to be THE definitive take on the character. Even Fabian Nicieza - co-creator of the character - has no shortage of praise for Kelly's work. It's not without good reason; Deadpool's early appearances in titles like X-Force and his first two limited series may have set up the idea behind his character, but Kelly was responsible for taking all that and running with it in some truly inpsired and unlikely directions. It took up to about issue eight for the series to reach the first point that really grabbed me, but after that the great moments just kept coming all the way to the end.
If you're like me, and heard about Deadpool mostly thanks to the promise of HoYay galore in the later Cable & Deadpool series, then you may not have as much interest in reading about his solo adventures. If you know him only through his recent appearances and Wolverine-level overexposure (I have recently seen even people on websites devoted to Deadpool groaning at the thought of him appearing in yet another title), you may well be sick of hearing about him. Honestly, I couldn't blame you for either. But if I can convince you it's still worth checking out his earlier years - long before the days of unusual team-ups and rare Deadpool variant covers - then I present you with, in no particular order, five very good reasons why the first 33 issues of his solo series are well worth checking out.
1. Awesome female characters
After sitting through a few years of discussion about women in comics and disturbing trends like refrigeration, it's increasingly difficult for me to read any comic without a little voice somewhere in the back of my mind taking note of how the treatment of the female cast shapes up. Let's face it, Deadpool is not the sort of series you expect to rate above average for its feminist leanings: the only way Deadpool the character could ever qualify as 'feminist' is by the logic that he'll go out of his way to abuse pretty much anyone equally. This is not the kind of series you expect to see passing the Bechdel Test (actually, the plot as a whole is so focused on Deadpool that there are probably only a handful off occasions when any two characters have spoken to each other about anything other than him).
So it was a really welcome surprise to discover that Kelly's run has a pretty damn awesome cast of supporting female characters - both of his own creation and those from existing Marvel canon. Starting with those latter category, these are the more important ones:
Vanessa: Wade's ex, Vanessa appears only once, during a flashback chapter. She's working as a prostitute, and doesn't seem to be aware of her powers yet (having reread it recently, the former comes directly from a scene in Nicieza's The Circle Chase, whereas it's a bit harder to see how the latter could have worked with the timeline). I'm not quite sure how I much I like the 'angry god' speech she makes about her clients, though the idea of her pressuring herself to be 'whatever they want her to be' does have some interesting implications for how her mutant ability works. But I did like how they presented her relationship with pre-Deadpool Wade - even in the space of the one issue she appeared in she evoked at lot more sympathy from me than just the usual 'oh, you silly girl' reaction, which is too often not true of characters who's main role is to pine over a relationship that so obviously was never going to make it.
Siryn: I have trouble investing much in the Siryn/Deadpool ship - she's just too nice and too normal for me to picture it going any further than it did (stalled at the starting line). But she's shown to be a driving influence in Wade's need to redeem himself - without the result ever devolving into romantic mush. Also, she has guts. When Deadpool tries to make her leave the room so he can kill Dr Kilbrew, she insists either he does it in front of her or not at all, and ultimately he backs down. And when he and a teammate practically wind up fighting over her later on, she makes it very clear she's taking none of this crap from either of them.
Typhoid Mary: This is where we get up to the big leagues. Yeah, she's the femme fatale - in the most literal sense. Deadpool finds her about as sexy as date rape (and I mean that in a disturblingly literal sense). I cannot, in good conscience, say I like Typhoid Mary herself, but I can say that the way she messes with Wade's head - especially when she decides she's going to personally 'help' him reach his goal of becoming a hero - was one of the most brain-breakingly effective scenes I've seen in comics in a long time. We're talking pretty much the exact moment I went from reading the series out of vague curiosity about the backstory to reading it because it was the most creatively and terribly awesome thing I had read in ages.
Zoe Culloden: Technically not created by Joe Kelly, though I suspect he did more with her than any other writer. It's a little hard to empathise with Zoe, given she gives the impression that most of her motivation for the Mithras Project has not so much to do with bringing an era of peace and enlightenment to the earth as it had with getting herself a promotion. But she grew on me - even more given the miserable, but believably human, mistake she made after the project went so spectacularly bust, and her subsequent redemption. Also, despite being a non-superpowered woman, she once beat up two armed guards without breaking a sweat. I like this sort of thing in a character. and I may kind of ship her and Monty kind of a lot
Death: I have to admit I had a lot of trouble buying this particular take on the Grim Reaper, especially one that goes around calling Wade 'babe' (the backstory she came with didn't quite mesh with the details we got in Deadpool's previous mini-series either, which bugged me a bit). Surely out of the whole Marvelverse, people stuck between life and death the way Wade was when they met would be a dime a dozen - what on earth made him stand out? But that said, she has a skull for a face, and Deadpool still thinks she's the sexiest thing ever - and somehow their relationship comes across as something more than pure folly or morbid obsession, and credit for that is definitely due.
Mercedes: As much of a mess as the whole T-Ray story arc was, I liked Mercedes. When brought back to life to the hell of discovering that her 'husband' is now a badly disfigured professional mercenary, and both their lives are in danger, what does she do? Why, she grabs the nearest automatic weapon and makes a darn good attempt deal with his new career direction by getting involved. Also, when T-Ray finally reveals how he's been manipulating both her and Deadpool for his own ends, hands her massive amounts of power and expects her to side with him, it backfires for exactly the reason you'd hope it would.
Ilaney: Liked her almost immediately in her first appearance, was thrilled when she was brought back for a stint as Deadpool's pilot, and am merely resigned that we'll probably never see her again. It's hard to explain exactly why I love Ilaney so much, but despite being fairly innocent at face value, she's a female character with an angsty past that has nothing whatsover to do with romance (or the tragic death of her family), gets into conversations which give us some great insight into Deadpool character, gets her life turned upside down by him - ultimately for the better, gets fridged and subsequently defrosted in the same issue, and later comes back to work for him for no more reason that because she likes him and likes the opportunity to see more of the world. When T-Ray gives her the option to either abandon Deadpool outright or face being trapped in a nightmare about the worst moment of her life until he's defeated, well, see top image for how she reacted.
Blind Al: BLIND AL! 'Nuff said.
Okay, I will say just a bit more, because it is just that fantastic that the main female character in a comic book is a mouthy old woman. And she didn't even have to be someone's mother or aunt to get the role.
The comic doesn't ever quite pass the Bechdel Test - there are a couple of scenes where the female characters get to interact with each other while Deadpool's off screen, but none of them have much in common without him. Still, women are competent, and as capable of dealing with danger as men are, and are rarely forced to deal with the indignity of the pointlessly revealing outfits that comics love so much, and that counts for a lot.
2. Deadpool gets to have friends
Deadpool is one of the whipping boys of the Marvel universe. The audience may love him, but the kind of violence and mayhem he specialises in just isn't as funny when you're watching it from the same side of the fourth wall. His appearance in any serious setting is going to be met with a chorus of groans, if not death threats. Other Marvel characters don't like characters like Deadpool. Recent writers (who I should probably restrain myself from saying too much more about) have even gone so far as to suggest that Deadpool is better off without having much of a regular supporting cast.
This is, of course, utter bullshit, because who reads a story hoping to see the obvious happen? Sure, it's easy to work up audience sympathy for the guy who laughs on the outside but hurts on the inside because he's so very alone. It's also lazy as hell.
Team books have always done a lot more for me than most titles that focus on individual superheros, and the sales figures on most of the various Avengers and X-Men titles would suggest a lot of people agree. What made Cable & Deadpool so great was that it gave us two lead characters in a really fascinating relationship that, by all logic, should never have worked half as well as it did - and a regular or semi-regular supporting cast of extras as well. When Cable left the series towards the end, Nicieza did the smart thing and wrote in Agency X to replace him. Deadpool was never expected to carry the story alone.
And though it may surprise people who know Kelly's run for its reputation as the series that gave Deadpool his aaangst, he's got a regular supporting cast all the way through - many of whom do count as real friends, as opposed to people who merely have to put up with him. Weasel likes him (despite the rocky period they go through later in the run). Siryn cares for him (despite being fully prepared to call him out on bad behaviour). Blind Al likes him (despite the fact he's keeping her prisoner). In one chapter he takes a skinless, psychic paraplegic on a trip to Vegas and winds up giving him the time of his life (even if it was entirely by unlikely accident). Ilaney becomes his official pilot for a period, simply because she likes having him around. Bullseye - psychotic villain for hire, who only even appears in a couple of chapters - once offers him a pile of free advice and justifies it in the panels to the left. None of them are blind to his faults, or see him only as a tortured woobie desperate for affection he would never openly ask for - and never is it suggested he's an easy guy to deal with. The story still splits its seams with characters who hate his guts, often for entirely valid reasons. Deadpool makes plenty of mistakes with the friends he's got, pays for them, and ultimately is usually forgiven. Even at his lowest ebb, he deals by going to track down Siryn, or Al, or by bringing his skinless buddy along. He may hate himself, he may be the kind of guy who's default way of dealing with people involves insulting them to their faces, but at a very fundamental level he likes having people around.
It's strange that this should feel so subversive, but keep in mind this is the same comic company that seems to think that the X-Men can save the world on live TV twice a week and people will still hate them, and that Spider-Man sales will tank if he ever gets a lucky break. It does take a fine balancing act to keep it plausible that these characters would hang around voluntarily without downplaying any of Deadpool's nastier characteristics, but Joe Kelly pulls it off.
3. Contains Cable & Deadpool issue 0
In one chapter - #22 to be exact - of Kelly's Deadpool run, Cable makes an appearance. It's not the first time they met (that was back in New Mutants #98), or the second (X-Force something-or-other), and you get the general impression they've encountered each other sometime in the interim too (unless Deadpool's been keeping up by reading Cable's comics, which is entirely plausible). But it is the first time they meet after Deadpool's promotion to a solo title character, and the first after his decision that he wanted to be a hero, and it's a very good candidate for the first time they ever made any kind of real connection.
(So, Cable & Deadpool fans, have I got your attention yet? ;)
The chapter doesn't stand too well alone, but to summarise events without spoiling every detail, the meeting comes at one of those points where Deadpool's struggle with whether or not he'll ever be able to be a real hero is getting the better of him. Needing reassurance, he goes looking for Siryn. He finds Cable instead. They get into the inevitable fight, which includes a lot of yelling at each other about their respective problems and the nature of destiny, etc - until Cable gives a little too much away, the fight comes to abrupt halt, and the two of them end up having a surprisingly genuine heart-to-heart (at least by their standards) before going their separate ways. By the start of the next scene, Deadpool's got his issues sorted out and is back on track.
On a related note, and to give this section a little more relevance for non-Cable fans, the comic generally does have a surprisingly good track record with how it treats its guest stars. We're talking about an industry known for having its characters fight whenever they meet up and act like complete dicks for no good reason, especially if it can be used to make the lead in which ever title look good in comparison - and we're also talking about Deadpool, who exists in a big part for his gag value and who's loathed by much of the rest of the Marvel Universe. What I'm saying here is that when, for example, Captain America appears, and it's not so that Deadpool can get the better of him and make him look dumb, or to act needlessly dickish, but rather to spend several appearances trying to find out who he can trust and what he needs to do to do his job in the middle of the current crisis, it's a nice surprise. (He's also there to get possessed by an evil entity for plot reasons, true, but he still gets to have some nice moments before and after.)
4. Oh yeah, they went there
There are some stories you can only tell with a character like Deadpool.
I'm not talking about forth-wall breaking gag stories, or stories where we all laugh aloud at the sight of a man getting shot in the head or 'Hi Weasel' being spelt out in Agent X's entrails. I'm talking about stories that question whether a guy who is sorta likeable despite a few big mental issues can be forgiven for imprisoning an old lady against her will. An old lady who genuinely likes him despite his faults and gives as good as she gets in the household pranks department, but who just as genuinely does not like being held prisoner.
It may be initially played for gag value, but that also means that when Deadpool finally crosses the line - and he does cross the line - the impact hits us that much harder. Nor is the fallout in any way sugar-coated. Blind Al finds ways to make it very clear to him exactly what he's become.
And this really is the kind of story you can't tell with any character but Deadpool, because for almost anyone else it would be unforgivable - no ifs or buts. The only thing that saves Deadpool is that he's canonically insane, and even if he usually manages to make the right decision when it counts (and the alternative won't be too hilarious for the writer to pass up), he's fundamentally a very damaged individual who's never had a functioning moral compass. He wants and tries to be better, but he makes mistakes - and big ones - and he's made to pay for them.
Even with a character like Deadpool, it's the kind of story that's much easier to get wrong than to get right. I'm still somewhat in awe that Kelly even attempted it, let alone that he pulled it off so well.
It's also worth mentioning - given the fuss on the web lately over a nasty incident in a recent Spider-Man issue in which one of the characters is (for almost all intents and purposes) raped by a shape-shifter who had her convinced he was someone she liked, and the fall-out is played for laughs - that much the same thing happened in Deadpool once. Only when it happened in Deadpool, the fallout was not treated as being in any way remotely funny.
There are some very dark themes in this run, and they get away with it at least in part because Deadpool's crazy enough to bounce back from almost anything (eventually) - but that's not to say that any of those themes are played as being any less dark than they so clearly are.
5. The woobieness factor
The most concise summary I've ever seen of what Deadpool as a character is all about came from a review of a recent Deadpool issue (can't seem to find the link anymore, unfortunately). What the reviewer suggested was that, in the same sort of way, for example, the fundamental theme of Spider-Man is, 'With great power comes great responsibility', the theme behind Deadpool is, 'Am I, or am I not a hero?' (Arguably, the theme in C&DP was more along the lines of, 'Am I, or am I not, on Cable's side? And if I am, should I be? And for that matter, is he a hero?' - but that's still pretty much just a more specific version of the same concept.) It's a classic essay question: the point is not to give a simple answer, it's to discuss the hell out of it at as much length as possible. As an idea this dates all the way back to Deadpool's first limited series, well before Kelly started his run, though I don't think it can be overstated how much Kelly did to establish that as the central theme it became. He wasn't the first to show us how much Deadpool's life sucks, or to make us feel sorry for him either - again, the first couple of limited series had that covered.
What he is known for doing - and rightly so - is taking all that angst and racheting it up to another level. Deadpool's first major solo run makes him hurt. The worst C&DP puts him through (and let's face it, he goes through a lot) can't hold a candle to the Kelly days. That's probably a good thing, because crushing angst on quite that level isn't as fundamental to Deadpool's character as the hero issue; nor should it be, because it does take a particular kind of approach to make it work. On the other hand, it is a defining part of Kelly's take on Deadpool, and he's got that particular approach down to an art.
We're not talking Anne Rice-level angst, or overdone fanfic hurt/comfort fantasy here. Deadpool's still the funnyman on the surface. He's still the funnyman several levels down too. It's just every now and then that the mask falls off and we're hit in the face with how very broken Wade is, or reminded that there still is a rational, intelligent human being somewhere in his make-up who's painfully aware of everything he's been through. Wade's character is a complicated mix of the good and the bad, the humourous and the tragic, and Kelly turns all those characteristics up to 11. But it's still the tragic part that people seem to remember as the defining feature, and Kelly makes us feel for Wade more than anyone else is ever likely to do again.
Bringing all this back to link up with my first point, it should be no surprise Wade's struggle to be a hero is right at the centre of all that angst more often than not - just as it should be. Ultimately though, while I don't want to spoil the end of the run, I will say he manages to find a suitably upbeat note to finish on, and comes as close to answering that central question as anyone ever should.
Like just about everything else in art or fiction, the series does still have its flaws. First and foremost, Joe Kelly's run does feature the infamous T-Ray arc in its last eight issues. I feel I ought to make some excuses for him on that count, since by that stage, after being teased for years on whether or not the series was about to be cancelled every other month he'd apparently gotten sick of the suspense, wrapped his last story arc up in a hurry and quit. The T-Ray arc also includes a number of my favourite scenes from the whole run, and T-Ray himself is a surprisingly effective villain when being written seriously. It's only when you stop and think for a moment about the premise that you realise that none of it makes any sense. The first half builds us up the idea that the 'real' Wade Wilson wasn't who we thought he was, the conclusion tells us... Deadpool's not the real Wade Wilson! This despite the fact that not even the intergalactic law firm who'd been tracking him for years and knew his personal history in fine detail had never found any indication that 'Wade Wilson' wasn't his original name. Since the name 'Wade Wilson' has no particular significance to Deadpool beyond being what he signs on forms (and even then when he's not signing them 'Buchanen Nekkid'), it's rather hard to see what the big deal over the whole identity crisis was meant to be in the first place. Not a very satisfying plot arc. Turning T-Ray into the joke he'd become by his appearance in C&DP was probably the only thing left that could be done with any of it.
Kelly's style is also a little wordier than what I prefer in comics (even allowing for the fact he's writing for Deadpool), and sometimes relies a bit too heavily on captions to let us know what's going on (yes, I know everyone did that in the 90's - it's still a style that bugs me). It did take me several issues to really get into things, and there are a few points when Deadpool launches into a crazy, new scheme at the start of the chapter that completely lost me until halfway through. Then there's the fact that Deadpool's crazy homeless friend only ever gets one scene with him and yet is supposed to be important enough that we're surprised by his role later on. However, these are ultimately little more than nitpicks at what is otherwise a thoroughly entertaining run. Even the art's mostly pretty decent (despite a variety of opinion on how Deadpool looks without his mask on, which no two artists ever seem to agree on).
Marvel's currently in the middle of releasing the whole series in trade paperback format under the 'Classic Deadpool' title. It's probably naïve of me to hope it sells anything like as well as more recent incarnation of the series, but I can't recommend it highly enough.