It’s a good sign that Gerry Duggan and Brian Posehn are down with Deadpool for the long haul, because they’ve set about trying to define what his actual origin story is. Much like Wolverine pre-Origin, Wade Wilson is awash in conflicting continuities and false memory issues, and thanks to Deadpool #19, we now know why, and we have a better sense of what’s real and what ain’t.
For the uninitiated, there were some weird discrepancies in Wade’s past. In the truly definitive run that really established the character beyond the ’90s reject like Random or Garrison Kane he might’ve become if he hadn’t, Joe Kelly gave us a gut-punch of an issue in the Deadpool/Death Annual of 1998, which showed us the brutal goings-on after Wade bombed out of the Weapon X (or Weapon Plus)) project and found himself treated as human lab-rat trash in a hospice run by a guy named Dr. Killebrew. Incidentally, Killebrew is long dead, but he actually sacrificed himself to save Wade’s life when a more demented creation of his named Ajax was trying to kill him, but he still went to hell because of his holy-shit evil deeds. However, at the end of Kelly’s run, when he was forced to compress a 12-issue arc into 6 issues because of the constant threat of cancellation, he crafted a story where this black-magic albino dickhead named T-Ray, who sported a band-aid on his nose at all times for some reason, revealed to Deadpool that his real name was Jack, and T-Ray’s real name was Wade Wilson, and Deadpool hijacked that identity in his mercenary days pre-Weapon X after trying to kill the future T-Ray and accidentally killing T-Ray’s wife in the process. It seemed like a huge deal at the time, but really, the only thing that would’ve really changed was Deadpool’s real name.
After Kelly left the book, Christopher Priest came in and laid down the first version of Wade’s teenage years in Canada, where his father abandoned him and he lived with his bloated, abusive mother. Later on in that original series run, Frank Tieri came on board and tried to retcon that whole T-Ray thing away, but it made absolutely no sense. Then, when that run ended and the Cable & Deadpool book came in, original Deadpool co-creator Fabian Nicieza countermanded the Priest canon by depicting Wade as a teenager in Ohio whose sainted mother had died when he was young, and who was constantly in conflict with his military father – so much so that he accidentally killed his own dad in a pool hall. Or at least, that’s how memory served him when trading drunk histories with Cable in Intercourse, Pennsylvania. However, given that Deadpool is the weird, meta, fourth-wall smacking entity that he is, Nicieza even buttoned his run on that book up by having Deadpool himself say that his true origin comes down to whichever writer you like best. It was mighty kind of him to provide that release valve to uptight Deadpool nerds like myself, who were butthurt about the retcons.
Butthurt. Heh. That’s a fun word. Thanks, internet.
Anyway, I have no idea how Daniel Way might’ve tried to redefine Wade’s origin during his unfortunately lengthy run during The Overexposure Era, but now Duggan & Posehn are applying some rational thought to his whole backstory, and trying to bring some compelling drama back into the life of the Yuk Machine he’d become. In a story arc called “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly,” Deadpool has teamed up with Captain America and Wolverine to figure out what the hell’s been going on with a mysterious guy named Butler, a rogue ex-employee of Department K, the jokers who ran Weapon Plus. It turns out that Butler captured Wade right after he broke out of Killebrew’s hospice, but he’s also essentially been using him as a free-range organ factory, periodically knocking him out and harvesting body parts from him right there on the street – parts Wade grows back thanks to his messed-up healing factor given to him by Weapon Plus. Other times, they actually black-bagged Deadpool and jammed him into a simulator machine for more extended experimentation and research on his body’s function, and those simulators provided him memories of a past he didn’t really have. In Deadpool #19, Butler says that A.) he has no idea who T-Ray is and B.) the various simulations during the captive periods were confusing even to him, so he has no clue how Wade himself actually processed them. (Answer: He didn’t, as his mind is a jambalaya of messed up recollections.)
So from post-Deadpool/Death Annual 1998 to now, all bets are off on what’s real and what’s not in Wade’s past, although the whole Ohio bit of Nicieza’s seems right out, because Butler’s from Ohio, implying that it was all implanted. Of course, Butler doesn’t need to know who T-Ray is for T-Ray to be real, even if any real menace Kelly had built up for him has been neutered in all his subsequent appearances, but that’s another complaint entirely. As a longtime Deadpool fan who had fallen out of the habit until the current run, I approve of this version of events. Why? Let me count the ways.
1.) It preserves Deadpool/Death, which was absolutely crucial, as it was amazing, and it grounds a character who is very often depicted as ungroundable. It’s the cornerstone, heart and soul of the Kelly run, which remains the best run in the character’s history. Props do go to Nicieza for taking a Rob Liefeld drawing that ripped off Deathstroke The Terminator and making it a yukster, and to Mark Waid for his miniseries “Sins of the Past,” which gave him a bit of a soul, but Kelly actually defined the character, and was able to balance the madcap hijinks with some dark trauma.
2.) I enjoy the irony that the same confusing scheme that was used on Wolverine pre-Origin to keep his real history a mystery – implanted fake memories – is now being used to clarify rather than obfuscate Deadpool’s past.
3.) Duggan & Posehn are trying to get back to that proper balance of nutty funsterism and twisted emotional wrongness that are Deadpool’s hallmarks, and that’s an effort to be commended.
How are they doing that? Well, Butler’s motivation for trying to figure out the ways Deadpool cheats death was ostensibly trying to prolong the life of his dying sister. However, he’s also selling his work to North Korea for a creepy superhero-knockoff farm, which includes derivatives of other super-soldier types, hence the involvement of Cap and Logan. As a kicker, Butler has killed a woman Wade was once with, and (probably) the daughter Wade never knew he had, and the last couple of issues have seen Deadpool put the jokes on the shelf to go full-on broken-down vengeance on this guy.
In Deadpool #19, Captain America faces down the North Korean army while Wolverine wires Butler’s hideout to blow, and Deadpool confronts Butler in his high-tech panic room and gets the skinny on his memory issues and Butler’s history of tormenting him… something Butler blames on Wade for not being cooperative, which is the same reason he killed the girls. Wade’s boiling with the need to kill this guy, but he goes about it in such an eerily sedate way (especially compared to his usual whackjob antics) that it makes you feel his anger – and he enlists the aid of the dying sister, who hates Butler as much as anybody. The art from Declan Shalvey is striking as well. The antiseptic flashbacks that get gruesome and echo the contrast between the fluorescent panic room and the darkness outside it trying to get in – darkness that comes through in the fearsome look of Deadpool’s masked face.
The end of this big arc gives us a new lease on Deadpool going forward, and he’s actually in the good graces of both Wolverine and Captain America, who have borne witness to his emotional breakdown and can both recognize his potential as a legit good guy. Whether or not he’ll manage to follow that path is anyone’s guess, but with Duggan & Posehn at the helm (and editor Jordan D. White apparently protecting the best parts of Wade’s history, according to the letters page), it feels good to be able to call myself a Deadpool fan again with confidence. It’s inspired me to want to re-read their entire run from the beginning – including killing all those zombie presidents.
