Saturday Splash Page #179

"New Model," in Sentinel (vol. 2) #2, by Sean McKeever (writer), Joe Vriens (penciler/inker), Kevin Yan and Udon Coloring (colorists), Joe Caramagna (letterer)

The first Sentinel book had a few unanswered mysteries. One, and probably most important to the reader, what was a damaged Sentinel doing in rural Wisconsin? Two, and definitely more important to Justin Seyfert, what happened to his mother? He and his brother Chris live with their dad. Their mom is never seen, and never mentioned by anyone save his brother, who asks at one point if his unexplained headaches were the reason she went away.

So, borrowing a hairbrush his mother left behind, Juston's got the Sentinel scanning for DNA matches as he travels the countryside, ignoring the fact that the boy who "saved" his school from a giant robot attack suddenly vanishing without a word is going to create a news frenzy, not to mention a lot of panic among his friends and family.

But part of the reason he bailed is the guilt over all these people praising him for a heroic act that he orchestrated. At this point, Juston is just trying to fix something, because he doesn't know how to fix that mistake. Well, he does, but he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life in prison, which, fair enough.

There's a scene in the first issue when Juston, seemingly having decided he'll give up the Sentinel, is trying to figure out how much evidence there is of what he did. Turns out the Sentinel's been recording almost everything, so the answer is, "a lot." This continues the theme from the first series, that Juston really doesn't understand much about this machine, or what it can really do. It tells him it can't self-repair, but later on, it repairs its eyes when they've been damaged. He eventually gives it an order to protect him, and it seems to comply, but who knows how long that's going to last. 

Reviewing the recordings is a gut punch for Juston, as he's confronted with how close some of those attacks came to hurting his friends. Desperate to get away from the guilt, he stumbles onto a recording of the Sentinel dropping some guy into a lake. It's not anything Juston recognizes, so what's the deal?

The deal is, an officer involved with the Sentinel program did a favor for an old school chum-turned Senator. Kill his opposition, secure his election, get a nice promotion. The Sentinel was supposed to self-destruct, but it apparently didn't destruct entirely, because here we are, with those two trying to cover their tracks by unleashing an experimental Sentinel.

Juston, not getting the answers he hoped for, eventually returns home where he has to actually talk with his dad and protect his town from the other Sentinel (not necessarily in that order.) He's still hiding the Sentinel's existence from his family and friends, and any hard feelings his friends or little brother have about his vanishing act are not dealt with (although McKeever consistently wrote them as just worried about him, so that tracks.) There was also a subplot about Jessie, the cool older girl Juston had a crush on, getting annoyed with Ashleigh, who had latched onto Juston when he became a celebrity. It seems like there was a whole lot of history between the two of them that was only hinted at as well. But the book only had five issues to work with, so some stuff was just going to be cut out.

After this, I'm not sure Juston appeared until midway through Avengers Academy (right about the time I dropped the book.) Then he got killed in Avengers Arena, though I understand he was shown as alive again recently in some X-book. I think one issue for him being active in the Marvel Universe (besides Sentinel's history as genocide-abetting machines, which makes team-ups awkward) is he's not bad at mechanical things, but he's not an inventor on par with Tony Stark or Moon Girl, or probably even the Tinkerer.

The Sentinel is a pre-existing weapon Juston found, and it does a lot of repairs itself. Maybe if he had more resources than hand tools and a scrap yard he could do more, but up to the end of this mini-series, he hasn't exactly demonstrated the level of know-how non-powered scientist type characters need to survive in a super-powered world. He can make a Battlebot the size of a medium-sized dog, but an exo-suit or a giant robot seem like they're beyond his capabilities.

If he continues to rely on the Sentinel, you can use bigger threats, and maybe continue to expand (or develop) the Sentinel's personality, but you have to show what Juston is bringing to the partnership beyond just ordering the Sentinel around. If you ditch the Sentinel, you probably have to keep Juston facings smaller-scale threats he has the mechanical know-how to cobble together a counter for. Which you could probably do, if you left him in his hometown in its own little bubble. Which gives you the advantage of his supporting cast for non-crimefighting stuff, but that kind of stuff seems to have limited appeal among the Marvel comics' readers. They want BIG and IMPORTANT. And I don't think the occasional team-up with the Great Lakes Avengers (or maybe Alpha Flight if he's close enough to the border, although that could be trick given current tensions) would offer enough of a boost.

Random Back Issues #153 - Sentinel #4

Hey, we were just talking about you guys!

At this point, Juston's withdrawn and surly with everyone. He tried asking out Jessie, the cool upperclassman, to the dance, but she's got a boyfriend in college. Ouch. On the plus side, he kicked one of the varsity dickheads in the junk when the guy tried to stuff him in a locker.

Unfortunately, Josh is out for revenge beyond merely a beatdown, though it won't fully manifest for another issue. For now, though, one of his buddies notices Juston and Jessie talking it out and gets a troubling look on his face. Then Josh and his boys jump Alex, Juston's best friend, while he's out on a date, and give a message to pass along.

Seems like you could call the cops in at that point. Get them on hate crime charges, assault against a minor, something. This is, beyond being cruel, ill-advised. Juston is still working on getting the Sentinel up and running. He can't buy circuitry, or liquid nitrogen for the freeze ray, but he was able to make a new knee joint support in shop class! Which means the Sentinel can walk again. Which means it might leave, so Juston tells it to add a new prime directive: that it will not leave Juston, ever.

How well that's going to work, when the Sentinel is steadily restoring its memory banks while Juston's not around, is up in the air. For now, it's time for a test drive. Juston rigged a platform and some hand grips on the Sentinel's back, and they go tearing through the woods, eventually stopping at a cliff (as seen in last weekend's Saturday Splash Page!)  So it can run, and its repulsor rays, pulse blasts, whatever it's firing from its palms work, too. Let's hope some asshole jocks don't give Juston a reason to want to use those weapons on anybody. Like beating up his friend, or making the girl he likes think he's spreading stories about scoring with her. That could end badly. . .

{9th longbox, 156th comic. Sentinel (vol. 1) #4, by Sean McKeever (writer), Joe Vriens, Sacha Heilig, Scott Hepburn, Eric Vedder (artists), Andrew Hou, Kevin Yan, Simon Young (colorists), Cory Petit (letterer)}

Saturday Splash Page #178

"Non-ferrous Alloy Colossus," in Sentinel (vol. 1) #4, by Sean McKeever (writer), Joe Vriens, Sacha Heilig, Scott Hepburn, Eric Vedder (artists), Andrew Hou, Kevin Yan, Simon Young (colorists), Cory Petit (letterer)

A kid living with one parent in a small town in a rural, heavily wooded area finds a damaged giant robot whose origin he doesn't know, and decides to keep it. So, yeah, the concept behind 2003's Sentinel series sounds a lot like Iron Giant. In a later issue, a random bystander even comments on the similarity.

Series writer Sean McKeever changes the focus and structure somewhat. Juston Seyfert's a bit of a mechanical whiz, so he cobbles together a few replacement parts his robot needs, as the Sentinel can't pull all its parts back together. And Juston does (eventually) research what it actually is, and tries to tease apart its programming and add new commands. Unfortunately, both of those actions are limited to him asking it questions (which it typically doesn't or can't answer) and trying to give it new directives about not ever abandoning him.

At school, Juston's an undersized freshman with a couple of equally nerdy friends. All of them are targeted by the senior jocks, and McKeever uses the fear of school shootings that had really kicked into national attention a few years prior. This was a few years after the shootings at Columbine High School, back when the idea of kids bringing guns to school to enact revenge or nihilistic fantasies was still almost novel. So here's a kid, picked on and humiliated by the bigger, more popular kids, and now he's got a walking weapon of mass destruction at his command. And one of his best friends has been talking about wanting to get back at those guys.

Nothing comes of Matt's comments. As far as Juston's friends go, McKeever focuses on Alex, who has a girl he likes that he actually works up the nerve to ask out, and get beaten up by the jocks to send a message to Juston. But, after a particularly cruel and humiliating prank, Juston has the Sentinel attack the school. Nobody is physically harmed, because Juston uses it to look like a big hero, "defeating" "Balazar" by ramming it with a jeep. (He also wants to terrify his bullies, but doesn't seem intent on killing or injuring them. He does remark later that Greg, one of said bullies, is in, 'the loony bin,' so he fucked them up more than a little regardless.)

Juston feels guilty about being called a hero for something he staged, but too little, too late. People notice things like a giant robot attacking a little town in Wisconsin. Government-type people. Add in that Juston is, in an attempt at penance, or at least to deserve to be called a hero, using the Sentinel to help rescue people from car crashes and plane crashes, it's hard to keep a low profile.

The Udon team draw one of the survivors of the crash, named John, to look like Bruce Willis. I assume because John McClane hates flying.

The art sometimes makes the Sentinel look less threatening. It spends most of the early issues flat on its back in a shed, missing limbs. Even once it's up and moving, the repairs give it a cobbled together feel. Huge, rounded, shoulder pauldrons and hands don't exactly make it cuddly, but it definitely looks more like a supersized toy than a genocide weapon.

Of course, at other times, they use its bulk, height, and glowing eyes to good effect. Especially as Juston begins to realize how little he actually understands about how it works. When he orders it to help someone, and it instead begins attacking a perceived threat, or describes his commands as "supplemental protocols" and overrides them, the art tends to show the Sentinel from an extreme upward angle. Juston, barely coming up to the Sentinel's ankle, staring up at this thing he doesn't control. Its face is often in shadow at those points, if it can even really be seen. Sometimes we're looking up into two big palms with glowing energy about to erupt. Which are the times Juston starts to realize it may very well kill him if he's in the way.

Saturday Splash Page #96

 

"Working on Laundry Day," in Taskmaster (vol. 1) #2, by Ken Siu-Chong (writer), David Ahn, Omar Dogan, Alan Tam, Rob Ross, and Shane Law (artists), Jon Babcock (letterer)

In spring of 2002, Taskmaster got his own mini-series, and a Casual Friday costume redesign to go with it. The Udon team handled writing and art chores as Taskmaster gets stiffed on a job by Machine Man of 2020 enemy Sunset Bain. In response, Taskmaster tries to use the Triads to steal his payment for him. Which will also start a war between them and Bain, keeping her too busy to finish tying off the tracksuit-wearing loose end. Things, of course, do not go according to plan.

This version of Taskmaster will learn just about anything, whether it has practical work applications or not. He'll study the mannerisms of a Triad boss down to how he holds a cigarette for a job, but he'll also learn to cook or cut a radish into a flower to impress a lady. He'll take a high-paying, high risk job to wreck semiconductor specs Stark's cooking up, but also help a pal who owns a casino with a guy that's cheating somehow. He'll use a holographic disguise to make himself look classier, and learn a new accent to help convince clients he's more than some guy from the Bronx.

Curiously, he has perfect recall of all his memories, but it still takes seeing something a few times before he can copy it. But the total recall might help explain his unwillingness to let the double-cross go. Taskmaster says he thinks it would set a bad precedent, letting someone stiff him successfully, but I wonder if it's the fact he'd never forget it. Literally, he would never be able to forget she played him for a patsy. So he has to do something in response.

This mini-series also, introduces Sandi, a young woman Taskmaster meets after the casino job and asks out. Sandi and Taskmaster would both go on to appear in the Gail Simone and Udon's brief stint on the first volume of Deadpool, and then on Agent X. Sandi hung around in Deadpool's orbit, at least through Cable/Deadpool, although Outlaw definitely surpassed her in use and popularity. Taskmaster himself could almost be considered part of Deadpool's supporting cast, although he went back to the cloak and pirate boots look pretty much as soon as Agent X ended.

Sunday Splash Page #132

"Safe Word, Safe Word!", in Deadpool (vol. 1) #66, Gail Simone (writer), Alvin Lee, Rob Ross, Eric Vedder, A-Zero and LTRZ (art team), Dave Sharpe (letterer)

Welcome to the Deadpool neighborhood of the Sunday Splash Page town. We'll be here the next couple of months.

I didn't really become a fan of Deadpool until his "bromance with Cable" years. As far as his first volume, I read the first 8 issues of Joe Kelly's run a decade ago, and I think I bought the two-part Punisher guest appearance Jimmy Palmiotti wrote when it came out, because Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's "Welcome Bank, Frank" story had gotten me hyped for the Punisher? Maybe that's why. As likely a reason as any, considering we're talking about me here.

Anyway, none of that stuff is still in my collection. What is, is the five-issue run by Gail Simone and the Udon art team that concluded the volume. Where Deadpool has his mercenary business, with Sandi handling his administrative duties and a man with cognitive issues named Ratbag as his other employee. Taskmaster is also hanging around. Wade unwittingly takes credit for a career-making kill pulled off by an assassin named Black Swan, who puts a mind-whammy on Deadpool that will gradually erase his brain.

I know, how could Wade tell? That was kind of unimpressive as a revenge scheme, given I read this after years of Nicieza giving him constantly shifting amnesia, and Duggan revealing Wade was pumped full of memory-erasing drugs for years. Fucking with Deadpool's brain is like trying to make a toxic waste dump worse. What's the point?

Wade confronts Black Swan, although his goal is not what you might expect. He ends up dead, which they did like 10 issues earlier in his book, but hell, Wade dies a lot. It just never sticks. Shortly after that, Simone and the Udon team were working on Agent X, starring a mysterious amnesiac with scars and a healing factor.

It's only 5 issues, but Simone's brief stint on Deadpool establishes Sandi and Taskmaster as supporting characters, and at least introduced Outlaw, although she only briefly appears here and doesn't really become a recurring character until Agent X. Ratbag, fortunately for him, did not join the pantheon of Hapless Comedy Sidekicks Wade's had over the years (Weasel, Bob, maybe Michael the Necromancer and Agent Adsit.) It gives us Deadpool on a moped, Deadpool using Pym Particles to defeat the Rhino (Rhino would repay the favor in Cable/Deadpool), and Deadpool acting as a bodyguard for Dazzler.

A lot of memorable stuff for so few issues.

Alternate Favorite Marvel Characters #3 - Deadpool

Character: Deadpool (Wade Wilson)

Creators: Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza

First Appearance: New Mutants #98.

First encounter: X-Force #2. Deadpool fights and loses to Kane, who was only notable for being able to shoot his cybernetic hand at people and choke them with it remotely. Deadpool talks quite a bit, though less then you might think. Deadpool comments that's pretty gross, although one imagines he'd make a more innuendo-laced comment these days. But the issue establishes that he distracts people with talking, people find him annoying, and he has a personal teleportation device.

Two issues after that, he showed up at the tail end of a Spider-Man/X-Force team-up to abduct both Juggernaut and Black Tom Cassidy for "Tolliver". I have never known who Tolliver was or what he wanted those two for. That's not a hint for you to tell me, either. I'm fine not knowing.

Definitive writer: Either Fabian Nicieza or Gerry Duggan. I don't like Duggan's take on Wade and Cable, so that's a strike against him, but I thought he covered Wade's tendency to wreck every good thing he manages to cobble together extremely well. Not surprising, since he gave him more to lose than any other writer. I could see Nicieza's pop-culture reference heavy writing getting on someone's nerves, but I mostly enjoy it.

Definitive artist: Reilly Brown's pretty good, Shawn Crystal worked for the more zany adventures Daniel Way occasionally wrote, and Declan Shalvey drew more haggard, dangerous Wade that worked very well for that particular story. But I'd go Mike Hawthorne now. He's very good at giving Deadpool an expressive mask, he draws a good fight scene, his version of Wade's face is pretty messed up, rather than "relatively normal with some lines in odd places scribbled across it", which is what you get with some artists. If Deadpool's face looks less messed up than Jonah Hex', you're doing it wrong.

Favorite story or moment: Cable/Deadpool #41. Wade and Nate were on the outs, because Cable kept doing his "I'm from the future so I know what's best for you" bit and messing with Wade's life. They took opposite sides in Civil War, so Cable arranged to make Wade look bad enough the U.S. government fired him, even though being treated as a legitimate agent meant a lot to him. Wade agrees to help make Cable look bad in Rumekistan, kind of as payback, Cable reveals he knew it was coming all along and literally pantsed Wade on international TV. Then he hooked Wade's subconscious up to the Infonet, so all Wade's issues he tries to ignore would be able to taunt him 24/7 on every TV screen in New York City. You will not be surprised to learn Wade eventually snapped and started shooting up a bar. With that grasp of human emotions and psychology, it's clear Cable is Cyclops' kid.

So things are bad between them. X-Men stuff leads to Cable's island nation getting trashed and beginning to sink. Sabretooth was loose on the island, because the X-Men thought having him around was a good idea, and is holding Irene Merryweather hostage against Domino. Then who comes dropping out of the sky?

My favorite part of all this, besides how much Wade enjoyed shooting Sabretooth repeatedly, is when Irene and Domino reach the evac boat and tell Cable who showed up.

Look at that. Even old grump Cable, who think he knows everything, is not only surprised Deadpool showed up to help, but genuinely happy about it. He goes to finds Wade, and after launching Sabretooth into the Pacific, they set about trying to wipe any dangerous information before other parties get their hands on it. Cable ultimately teleports Wade to safety before the island explodes.

That is why I was disappointed by how Duggan handled their relationship in "Deadpool Kills Cable" last year. For all they're very different and stubborn people, and for all that Cable can't stop trying to manipulate a guy who has been used and abused by people for his entire life, and Wade can't stop making the worst possible choices to deal with problems, they do still look out for each other when it counts.

What I like about him: I've written a lot about Deadpool, not a surprise considering how often I've bought his various titles and how often Marvel ships his comics. I've used him as a recurring character on the blog, largely as an element of chaos. The panda is too sensible to think of most of Deadpool's plans, Calvin wouldn't have the nerve or the skill. Deadpool's an opportunity to let things get really silly, or violent, as the desire arises.

But what about when people with actual skill use him? Well, he can be funny, and funny in a lot of different ways depending on the writer and artist. Bizarre pop culture references and metaphors, bodily humor, ridiculous props. Meta references to the fact he's a fictional character. I love Deadpool's commitment to branding, whether it's having his logo on the soles of his boots, or brass knuckles that say "DEAD" and "POOL". Even his grenades have been known to have his logo. Just how much he annoys other characters or makes them uncomfortable can be hilarious.

Or there's general absurdist behavior. With Deadpool, any action or decision is within the realms of possibility. He'll fight a Skrull invasion dressed as a baseball team mascot. He famously tried to pick a fight with Wolverine by giving Kitty Pryde the ol' Shoryuken (not a euphemism). He'll dress as a pimp to shake down a bodega to draw out the gang that's already shaking down said bodega. He'll get a bunch of Iron Fist's students to fight a super-villain (sort of) because his body is too shattered to use. He could take a bunch of money and buy a crappy little boat so he can be a pirate. He can decide the best way to keep a succubus Queen from having to marry Dracula is to marry her himself. That didn't end well, but that's the danger of applying questionable decision-making to problems. And he enjoys his plans so much, most of the time, that it's easy to be carried along with his enthusiasm.

His healing factor means he can take a lot of punishment, so you can do something with that. Have Logan decapitate him, then let Weasel spend a couple pages scrambling around trying to pick up the head while Logan kills HYDRA agents. In that sense, he's a very malleable character to the strengths of whatever creative team is working with him at the moment.

That's all well and good, humor's great. The interesting bit is you can flip that on its head and use it to make him terrifying. Like when he brings down ULTIMATUM's helicarrier, and after Coulson congratulates him, Wade explains he just used his plan for bringing down SHIELD's helicarrier if they didn't give him the money he was owed. Coulson clears his throat and goes to a) update Wade's threat level in his file, and b) figure out where that money is.

For all his jokes and zany hijinks, Deadpool is still a highly trained and periodically ruthless killer who is nearly unkillable himself. That guy kills a room full of ULTIMATUM guys and paints the walls with their blood as some joke? That's frightening. You can do jokes about how he doesn't remember fighting Captain America with the Fixer in St. Louis and all of them getting hit with a diarrhea ray. Or you can have him trying to solve how someone killed a well-known terrorist leader, and he figures it out while actually thinking about chimichangas the whole time, because he's the one who killed him, but he doesn't remember doing it. And he can't figure why he did other than, he felt like it. It can be funny to see him running around with his severed arm tied to his body fighting goon squads, until you realize he chewed his own arm off to get free to kill these guys.

Deadpool is very human, in that he falls prey to the same flaws as a lot of us, just in more spectacular ways. Wade wants to be a good person most of the time, but he wants to do it on his terms, when it doesn't inconvenience him too much. He'll take the easy way out sometimes, avoid tough conversations with people he cares about. The reason that move Cable pulled worked so well is because Wade didn't want to deal with his inner conflicts. When he realizes he doesn't know how many people he's killed, then he starts thinking about why he not, and what he even hoped to accomplish with those deaths. And rather than answer that, he lashes out instead.

Deadpool's been victimized a lot in his life. Department K, or Weapon X, whoever, that used him as a guinea pig, then dumped him down a sluice gate into a pile of corpses when they thought he was of no use to them. When someone in charge decided that was a dumb idea, they sought him out to harvest his organs and tamper with his memories, even having him kill his parents just to test how effective their mind-wiping drug was. Logan let him on X-Force, but treated him as a soulless killer, a weapon. You'd think Logan would know what that's like, but he treated his "daughter" the same way, so let's just leave it that Logan's a shitty mentor figure. Cable would hire Deadpool for jobs without letting him know it was him doing it, to let Wade think he had some autonomy. True or not, Deadpool feels like Captain America used him as a gun because Cap himself was old and Logan was busy being dead.

And so Wade has a tendency, publicly anyway, to blame his problems on others. Privately, Wade will acknowledge his own hand in the trainwreck his life routinely becomes, but when he's around others, he'll blame them, or anyone else. Maybe because everybody seems to dismiss the crap he's been through. People always makes excuses for Logan after he murders up 40 guys, how he's been through a lot, suffered a lot. They look the other way for the shady shit the Black Widow continues to do. But Wade feels he doesn't get that acknowledgement. I'd say his consistent friends - Weasel, Blind Al, Outlaw, etc. - recognize it and allow for it, and that Wade ignores that, because it's convenient to him. It's not one of his better traits, but it's understandable, and like I said, Wade does internally acknowledge how he often ruins things himself.

Jamie Madrox mentioned he pulls practical jokes as way to get people to notice him, so he didn't feel alone. I wonder if Wade acts so irritating because it forces people to acknowledge him as a person. They can't just treat him as a weapon to use or destroy, because he's pissing them off too much for that. They have to yell at him to shut up, or tell him how disgusting he is. Which undoubtedly hurts, but at least they see him, the person. Or a version of him, at least, which may be better than nothing.

Deadpool is fully capable of compassion, but like a lot of people, he's selective about who receives. He's more likely to show compassion to those he sees as victims, as opposed to people he thinks have made their own bed. He tried to do a lot for the Kim and the rest of Butler's Korean test subjects, those X-Men he partially created using Wade's body. Wade got them out Korea, got them money, and when their health began to fail, he convinced the X-Men to help. When Beast needed some of Wade's organs to keep them alive, Wade gave them. When the X-Men went temporarily evil - thanks Axis! - Wade found his friends another sanctuary. He'll save a random kid riding by on a bike while he was in the middle of fighting a demon. Just because. When some kind of tampering is making him try to kill Cable, he'll shoot himself rather than let that happen.

On the other hand, when he was trying to deal with that demon, he killed his necromancer acquaintance Michael and sent the guy to Hell so he could bargain with Mephisto. From Wade's point of view, Michael already sold his soul and was doomed to Hell. Wade was just using Michael's bad decision to help the rest of them. Same with Madcap. He was trapped inside Wade's mind, Wade was in a bad place, he tormented Madcap. Later, he tries to make amends when he feels he can afford to, but it's too late. He'll punch random people or threaten them because he's got problems he can't deal with and they happen to be annoying him at the wrong moment. That's not unusual, to take out our other problems and frustrations on people who have nothing to do with them. Although I can also see how having to share your mind with Madcap would get irritating real fast. Wade didn't ask for him to be there.

Deadpool is a good friend. Sometimes. We discussed the efforts he went to trying to help Cable out, and that doesn't cover the time Wade jumped across multiple dimensions trying to find Cable's soul to bring him back to life. Or when he was sent through time to kill Cable, but kept saving his life. Or the time he fought Power Man and Iron Fist to protect Weasel. Gail Simone didn't write Deadpool for long, but when his brain was increasingly scrambled by Black Swan, he had Swan use his powers to help his friend Ratbag instead (also an example of Wade helping someone who was a victim of circumstances outside their control). He worked hard to help Evan believe the best of himself, that he wasn't going to become Apocalypse, and to protect him from Stryfe. He went to the wall for Kim and the others, and he fended off a lot of people trying to keep Agent Preston safe until they could figure out some way for her to have a body. He killed everyone in ULTIMATUM to try and keep his daughter and her new family safe. Which is extreme, but he'd already tried letting their boss live in such mortal terror of Deadpool that he wouldn't think of messing with him. It eventually stopped working, sooooo, new plan. Or old plan really.

And sometimes he's a terrible friend. He kept Blind Al locked up in his house, and kicked the shit out of Weasel when he dared to figure out where Wade lived. He's tried to kill Cable on multiple occasions, even after they became sort-of friends. When Preston came after him, he shut her down and left her mind trapped in a deactivated, trashed LMD until he could get around to telling Captain America to fix her. He treats Bob like his personal punching bag. (Though Bob is an agent of HYDRA, so he probably deserves it, he's been a loyal friend to Wade.) He killed Irene Merryweather for Stryfe to protect his daughter. Wade is leery of letting people close, because there's a lot of ugly stuff in his history, and once they see it, they might not want to be around him. Better to drive them off first, even if he's confirming all his worst fears about himself in the process. He sabotages himself a lot. He's had a good thing, then wrecked it somehow so many times he's convinced it's always going to happen, and then he ends up making it happen. He pushes them away before they can turn against him, which causes them to turn against him.

It's just all very interesting to me because I can't ever be sure which way Deadpool's going to go at a given moment. Even when he's at his lowest points, or things are starting to spiral out control, he can still do something good or kind. And other times, he can be completely cruel and indifferent to the suffering he's inflicting. It isn't as though he has no moral compass - it may be skewed, but it's there - but he'll either ignore it, or justify his actions in some way. Which again, isn't all that different from a lot of us. We may do something unkind, but there were reasons, you see, so we should get a pass. Wade may very well believe he should get a pass - during the fallout from HYDRA Cap, he's been constantly trying to "I was only following orders" line of defense - but I don't know that he really believes it. And I'm positive he knew he wasn't gonna get it.

How aware Wade is of the fact he's a comic book character varies from time-to-time. He's as aware as the writer needs him to be to make a joke. But again, you can flip that to make it terrifying and sad, like when he addresses the audience about their complicity in the hell his life regularly becomes, as his suffering is our entertainment. In those moments, he's also aware of how writers love to give him friends or family, only to pull them away. If not by that writer, like Gerry Duggan did with everyone he gave Deadpool, then the next writer, like when Daniel Way threw out everything Nicieza had established. That has to be exhausting, to know, even just some of the time, that he's stuck on a treadmill of gaining friends only to lose them, and it's ultimately going to be played as his fault. He'll be written to do something shitty and awful that turns these people away - help HYDRA, beat up his friend for crossing a line the friend didn't know existed, neglect his wife - so he can be alone and terrible again. Wade ends up being very good at regrets after the fact, but not so good at avoiding the actions he'll end up regretting in the first place.

Given that, it's not much of a surprise he tries to kill himself sometimes, even though he knows his healing factor (or Marvel) won't let it take. He's stuck in his own Groundhog Day, but he's not ever going to get the happy end where he finds true love and becomes a better person. Every time he does, it's pulled out from under him, and he wakes up back in the hotel bed with the alarm playing the same damn song. Maybe all his bizarre adventures are just a way for him to keep occupied. If he's stuck existing, there's no reason he has to be bored. After all, if he's bored, he might start thinking, maybe about how he's going to live for a really long time, and suffer setback after setback, loss after loss. Misfortune, isolation, hatred, scorn, there's truckload after truckload of that waiting ahead for him. Better just not to think about it. Find something to do today, kick the can down the road. He can always try killing himself tomorrow.

It's this push-pull where Deadpool can be hilarious, or sad, where he can frustrate by tearing his life down around his ears one money, and then do something stupid and ridiculous that almost makes it funny. Where I want to yell at him about his bad decisions, but defend him against any character in-story that tries to give him a hard time or look down on him. I know Wade shoots himself in the foot a lot, literally and figuratively, but I also know that he's done the right thing a lot when no one would have expected it and no one was willing to help. I root for him to get to have friends and good times, even knowing it's all eventually going to fall apart. He's an interesting character in his good and bad times.

Credits! Wade didn't make a great first impression in X-Force #2, by Fabian Nicieza (writer), Rob Liefeld (artist), Brad Vancata (colorist), and Chris Eliopoulos (letterer). Cable appreciates that Wade had himself shipped air mail for overnight delivery in Cable/Deadpool #41, by Nicieza (writer), Reilly Brown (penciler), Jeremy Freeman (inker), Gotham (colorist), Dave Sharpe (letterer). Deadpool unveils his new DLC alternate costume in Deadpool (volume 3) #13, by Gerry Duggan and Brian Posehn (writers), Scott Koblish (artist), Val Staples (colorist), and Joe Sabino (letterer). Deadpool's career as a physiotherapist was brief, in Deadpool (vol. 3) #19, by Duggan and Posehn (writers), Declan Shalvey (artist), Jordie Bellaire (color artist), and Joe Sabino (letterer). Everybody wants someone else to solve their problems, then they complain how you do it in Deadpool (vol. 3) #10, by Duggan and Posehn (writers), Mike Hawthorne (artist), Val Staples (colorist), and Joe Sabino (letterer). Wade does a nice thing for his friend, he tells him to get away in Deadpool (vol. 1) #69, by Gail Simone (writer), Arnold Tsang, Andrew Hou, Eric Vedder, Omar Dogan, and TheRealT! (artists), Dave Sharpe (letterer). Deadpool makes sure you can always tell where he's been in Deadpool (volume 3) #17, by Duggan and Posehn (writers), Shalvey (artist), Bellaire (colorist), and Sabino (letterer).

Sunday Splash Page #5

"Context won't help," from Agent X #7, by Gail Simone (writer), the Udon team (artists), and Cory Petit (letterer)

Deadpool's first ongoing series was canceled at 69 issues. Nice. Have to think he'd approve of that. Wade appeared to have been blown up in a fight with the telepath assassin Black Swan. The same month, Agent X #1 appeared, featuring a slighty wacky amnesiac with a healing factor.

Grant Morrison and Joe Casey had taken over the writing duties on New X-Men and Uncanny X-Men, respectively, the previous year, as part of an attempt to take the X-books in a different direction, and revive flagging interest. Cable became Soldier X, there was that Brotherhood book, written by "X" (did they ever reveal who that was?), some other revamps I couldn't tell you about..

I don't know if the switch from Deadpool to Agent X was specifically part of that. I assume so, although Deadpool occupies a peculiar adjacent space to the X-books. He loops in when it's beneficial to him. Gail Simone and the Udon art team handled the last 5 issues of Wade's book, then carried over to the new title for the first 7. Which dealt with the title character, Alex Hayden, trying to establish himself as a mercenary through mostly low-grade and embarrassing jobs, while most people are convinced he's Deadpool.

After Simone and Udon left, the book went through three creative teams in 5 issues, including two by Evan Dorkin involving his character Fight-Man, before Simone and the Udon guys came back for the final three issues to explain who Hayden is, and bring Deadpool back onto the field. The book ended, and six months after that, Cable/Deadpool was going. Hayden and a couple members of the supporting cast survived as occasional parts of Deadpool's supporting cast, but others vanished.

The Simone/Udon issues are the high point, as they took it as an opportunity to do stories about the kind of demeaning and dangerous work a merc would have to take in the Marvel Universe when they have no established rep. Like recovering zoo animals, or trying to kill the Punisher.