Hello and welcome to Comic Drake, where I talk about comic books and my name is Drake.
So I was making some tweets about Deadpool the other day and it turns out that a sizable
chunk of my audience wasn’t aware that he’s an LGBT character.
And I’m sure that a lot of you guys are going to go “UGH!
SJW Marvel’s back at it again trying to make all of their characters suddenly politically
correct!”, but that’s actually not the case.
In fact, this is nothing new for the character.
Deadpool has been LGBT pretty much since his creation and if you don’t believe me then
we can actually take a look at the comics themselves and from official statements from
Deadpool writers!
So let’s take a look at some of those, shall we?
Let’s get this out of the way upfront, this is a comic channel so I am going to mostly
be focusing on the comics.
Okay, we good?
Good.
There is no shortage of examples of Wade Wilson sleeping with women so I’m not going to
bother listing every single hookup.
Frankly, that’d be close to impossible.
However, Deadpool’s same sex attractions are a lot less common, but they’re still
worth mentioning.
Usually when Wade hits on men, it’s just done for comedic effect sort of like Bugs
Bunny.
However, some examples are a bit more explicit like this time when Deadpool admits that he’s
into Thor and then tries REALLY hard to claim that he’s heterosexual immediately afterwards.
Or how about when Black Mamba used the Darkforce to bring out Deadpool’s desire to give Cable
an erotic massage.
Something that REALLY embarrassed Wade once the vision passed.
When it comes to Deadpool’s same-sex attraction though, there is no bigger example than his
love for Spider-Man.
The Spider-Man/Deadpool series is especially ripe with this going so far as to have Wade
talking about Spidey sexually arousing him on literally the second page of the first
issue.
Well… technically the second and third pages since it was a double page art spread…
Whatever.
If that wasn’t enough though, at the time of this series, Deadpool was married to Shiklah
and included Spider-Man on his free-pass list of people that he could sleep with while being
married.
However, while both of those tidbits could simply be written of as jokes, Wade had a
spell cast on him to summon his one true love.
It was Spider-Man.
This confused even the spell casters so if Deadpool’s attraction to Spidey has been
a joke this whole time, it would be crazy if he managed to literally convince magic
as a whole to go along with it.
But hey, maybe the in continuity references are still too vague for you.
Thankfully, the writers of Deadpool have been pretty candid regarding Deadpool’s sexuality.
Gerry Duggan, who wrote most of the modern era of Deadpool comics said on Twitter “I
consider DP to be ready & willing to do anything with a pulse.”
This sentiment was backed up by Fabian Nicieza, the co-creator of the character as a whole
who described Deadpool as attracted to no sex and all sex.
That he is yours and everyone else’s.
He went on to say that because Deadpool’s brain is in constant flux, his sexuality constantly
is as well.
He also cleared up any misunderstandings by saying that this is how he envisioned Deadpool
from the very beginning of his creation.
All of that seems pretty concrete, but I know that despite this being a comic BOOK channel,
a lot of you guys only really seem to care about the movies which is fine…
I guess...
In that case though, the Deadpool movie director, Tim Miller, said in an interview with Collider,
“Pansexual!
I want that quoted.
Pansexual Deadpool.”
Well there you go Tim, you’ve been quoted.
Even Ryan Reynolds himself has gone on record to talk about Deadpool’s fluid sexuality,
but why don’t I let him tell it?
“I think Deadpool’s sort of somewhat fluid, you know?
Deadpool’s a guy that, there’s a lot of room in that he’s in love with Vanessa.
Vanessa’s the love of his life and that’s a key part of our story.
That’s the bedrock of everything that happens to Deadpool.
He sort of exhibits these qualities throughout the course of each film.
He’s a guy that’s sort of unpredictable and like I say, is a little bit fluid I think.”
So with all of that, I think we can safely say that the general agreement is that Deadpool
is pansexual.
When I mentioned this on my YouTube community page, a sizable chunk didn’t even know what
the term meant and I’m not really surprised.
The LGBT lexicon is really tricky, constantly changing, and different people seem to have
different definitions for some terms, but let me explain my understanding as best as
I can as a straight dude.
Pansexuality is being sexually attracted to all genders whereas bisexuality is attracted
to both the male and female sexes.
Sex and gender are two different things, but they’re often linked.
Even if you don’t believe that gender exists as a spectrum or that people can be transgender,
that doesn’t change what the word pansexual means and since that’s literally a term
used by official sources in regards to Deadpool’s sexuality, that’s why we’re focusing on
it.
Here’s the thing though, I’ve had some people bring up a very valid point.
Does Deadpool’s supposed LGBT sexuality really mean anything if it’s not really
shown to be acted upon in any meaningful way?
Well factually, some people that are attracted to both sexes have their preferences.
For example, I have two male friends that are bisexual.
One has a heavy preference towards men and the other has a preference towards women.
Even if they stick with their preferences, that doesn’t mean that they still aren’t
attracted to the other sex.
Bisexual and pansexual people can be in male-female relationships just as much as they can be
in homosexual ones.
That’s kind of the point.
At the same time though, it’s one thing to MAKE a pansexual character and another
thing to HAVE one.
It more or less feels like Marvel is trying to live on both sides of the fence, to try
and earn the praise of being inclusive, but not playing with this narrative opportunity
in any meaningful way.
I think that a big portion of this is because Deadpool is typically beloved by dudebros
and kids who hate quote unquote “gay stuff” so I strongly believe that if Wade was portrayed
a lot more explicitly as LGBT, they would leave in droves, most likely yelling “UGH,
SJW MARVEL CUCKS!” on the way out.
But (and this is a question that I was asked a lot) who cares?
Lots of people do.
Even if you don’t agree or it isn’t relevant to you, there are plenty of people out there
that believe representation matters and in my personal opinion, if it’s not hurting
anyone then there’s nothing wrong with making people feel a little bit more welcome in this
medium that we all love.
Comics are an art form just like movies, music, video games, etc. and they haven’t shied
away from talking about serious issues in the past.
In fact, some comics have done a really good job of diving deep into their characters and
exploring the human condition.
I know that a lot of people just want their books to be full of action “PEW!
PEW!”, but they can be so much more.
They’ve proven to be so in the past and THAT is why it matters.
But if you like this video, then why not consider subscribing or even watching another one?
And if you want to stick on the topic of romance then I did a really interesting video on some
strange alternate universe hookups in the Marvel multiverse.
So maybe give that a chance if you’re interested in it, but anyway, I hope you learned at least
a little something new and maybe I’ll see you next time!