Deadpool Classic - Volume 1

DEADPOOL CLASSIC: VOLUME 1
This volume collects Deadpool's debut appearance in New Mutants, his first two solo mini series titles, and the first issue of his ongoing series. Honestly, everything except that first issue is pretty bad. Deadpool was one of Rob Liefeld's creations during the period where he ruled the comic book landscape. As per the usual with Liefeld creations, he's actually just a shameless ripoff of another character (Deathstroke the Terminator from DC Comic) and really has no depth outside of his cool costume and assortment of weapons.

Everything about Deadpool's early appearances just reek of early '90s superheroic machismo. He spits out terrible one liners constantly, can't stop talking about how awesome his swords are and he solves all his problems through fighting. Of course, I found this all to be pretty awesome as a kid. Also, Deadpool's real name is Wade Wilson, so I just used that as another reason to totally dig him in my younger years.

For those unfamiliar with Deadpool, he's a mercenary that took part in the same Weapon X program that gave Wolverine his adamantium claws. However, Deadpool isn't a mutant. He contracted a fatal form of brain cancer and figuring that he was as good as dead anyway, he signed himself up for the Weapon X program. Through their experiments upon him, Deadpool received an incredibly strong healing factor that practically allows him to return from the dead over and over again. The catch is that the healing factor can't seem to get rid of his brain cancer. What happens is that the tumor continues to destroy cells and generally muck things up in his brain, but that his healing factor patches it up afterward. As a result, Deadpool has a ton of issues with his brain including memory loss, erratic behavior and generally acting like a complete loon. For some reason his face also looks like a rotting grape or a guy with some bad scabs, depending on who happens to be drawing him. I think the people at Marvel aren't quite straight on how cancer works.

I still dig Deadpool these days, mostly because of everything that came AFTER the comics in this volume. The thing about Deadpool is that he's actually a complex character that can be used in a lot of different ways. For example, the most recent Deadpool series written by Daniel Way really plays up the insane nature of the character to the point where he has split personalities and arguments between them. That's all good and fun, but I've always preferred the comics where Deadpool actually gets a chance at some semi-serious character development as opposed to the ones where he acts like a Looney Toons character. Whenever a writer can strike the perfect balance between humor and seriousness in Deadpool comics, the character really shines.

Unfortunately, this volume collects the earliest of Deadpool's solo adventures which fit squarely in the overly serious spectrum. Writing duties are performed by Fabian Nicieza (who is kind of a father to Deadpool in how much he has written him) and Mark Waid for the first two Deadpool mini-series stories. While Nicieza would eventually do a fantastic job writing the character in the Cable and Deadpool series, here he's just too wrapped up in explaining a plot that fails to get interesting. Both stories are way too entangled in past X-Men continuity and require a healthy knowledge of minor characters and their associates in order to really understand them. Deadpool has practically no personality in the stories and just exists as a bland C-list character interacting with a bunch of other C-list charcters.

The only attempt at development comes in Deadpool's relationship with Siryn, the daughter of Banshee from the X-Men. Deadpool has to work with her in order to track down her murderous uncle and in the process he forms a little bit of a crush on her. This relationship allows us to see that Deadpool does have some human sentimentality after all and also demonstrates his rather inconsistent feelings about his personal appearance. When Deadpool loses his mask during a fight, he goes rather crazy. He calls the mask his face and tries desperately to get it back, hoping that Siryn doesn't see what he really looks like without it. Deadpool relents and lets Siryn see what he really looks like and he's torn up about it, but she eventually touches his face in a nice little act of sympathy. The weird thing about it all is that Deadpool loses his mask a lot throughout his comics and most of the time he really doesn't care, even if there are people around to see it. That may be because the extent of his scarring was dramatically reduced in future comics, whereas he looks monstrous here.

Overall, the stories and art contained in this first volume are pretty bad and would not be worth reading unless one really needs to see Deadpool's first appearances. Any story points contained in these early stories are explained quickly within Deadpool's first ongoing series anyway, so it's better to just go ahead and skip to the Joe Kelly run on the title.