True to the spirit of everyone's favorite regenerating degenerate, Deadpool 2 doesn't
hold back on the violence, profanity, and fourth-wall-breaks, taking everything great
about the first movie and turning it up to 11.
In that vein, Deadpool 2 also introduced a ton of new characters, and then...well, let's
just say there are plenty of spoilers ahead.
Some of those new characters carry a lot of weight in the comics...and a few have even
saved the world once or twice.
Let's take a look at all the characters in Deadpool 2 who mean more than you realized.
Zeitgeist
A lot of hype was given to all the new mutants debuting in Deadpool 2.
Then the movie came out and dispatched them all in horrible ways before they even got
to their first mission.
Which is a shame, because some of those characters have insane stories in the comics.
Take Zeitgeist, played in the film by Bill Skarsgard.
Once upon a time, he was actually the leader of one incarnation of the X-Force.
And boy, were they weird.
After 115 generally solid issues of X-Force, the series took a bizarre left turn.
As issue #116 opens, a drunk 14-year-old vomits acid all over a girl's face when he tries
to kiss her.
Flash forward in time, and he's Zeitgeist, the leader of a new X-Force.
They all seem to be drunk most of the time, at least when they're not groping each other
or doing drugs.
Figuring the team needs a little good press, Zeitgeist hires a group of terrorists to kidnap
a pop band called Boyz R Us.
X-Force teleports to the scene and obliterates all the bad guys, and then Zeitgeist and most
of the team get cut to pieces and die.
The end.
Is it a weird chapter in X-Force's history books?
Oh, you bet.
But somehow, Zeitgeist feels exactly like the right type of person to add to a Deadpool
movie - and technically, they followed his story pretty closely, all the way to the woodchipper
end.
Bedlam
Ever since his official introduction as Bedlam in the pages of X-Force #82, Jesse Aaronson
has been one of the core members of the crime-fighting team.
As a mutant with the ability to influence electronics through his own bioelectric field,
Bedlam definitely played a pivotal role in several missions.
And like he says in the movie, he really can directly affect people's brains, which came
in handy when the citizens of San Francisco were turned into brainwashed zombies and Bedlam
was able to reverse the brainwashing without destroying them all.
But once upon a time, Bedlam almost destroyed the planet.
In X-Force #87, Bedlam left the X-Force to join up with his long lost brother, Christopher,
on a team called the New Hellions.
Bedlam later finds out that, in a series of jerk moves, Christopher had killed their parents
14 years earlier and was now planning to revive a mutant named Armageddon Man with the power
to sweep the world with natural disasters.
In other words, it was a bad family reunion.
Realizing the error of his ways, Bedlam rejoins X-Force to put a stop to Armageddon Man, and
they all learn a valuable lesson about friendship.
Vanisher
You don't see a lot of Vanisher in Deadpool 2, which makes Brad Pitt's eventual cameo
all the more shocking.
The Vanisher of the comics is much different than the one we see - or rather, don't see
- in the movie.
First gracing the pages of Uncanny X-Men #2, the Vanisher was one of the OG X-Men foes,
a teleporting mutant who liked to rob banks and steal government secrets.
Decades later, Vanisher was still living a life of crime when X-Force tracked him down,
gave him a brain tumor, and forced him to teleport them around to their battles, essentially
turning him into their indentured slave.
In a long career filled with dark moments, this was definitely one of the X-Force's darkest,
and it proved that they were willing to go to any lengths to get a job done.
No wonder Deadpool likes them so much.
Black Tom Cassidy
Black Tom Cassidy's biggest contribution in Deadpool 2 is giving Deadpool an excuse to
grief Cable over who he chooses to shoot.
But in the comics, he has a much bigger role.
Black Tom is a mutant infected with the same techno-organic virus that affects Cable.
Just like in the movie, Black Tom was incarcerated at the same prison as Juggernaut, and he was
also shot by Cable.
Here's where the two paths diverge, however - in the comics, after Cable shoots him, Black
Tom gets healed and gains the ability to control plants - because why not? - and also gains
Deadpool's healing factor.
That's exactly the kind of villain that could come back to haunt Deadpool, especially if
another Deadpool movie takes up the recent Avengers theme of "everything we do has consequences."
But maybe without the plant thing.
That might be too weird, even by Deadpool standards.
Russell
Since Deadpool 2 basically served as the origin story for Russell Collins, AKA Firefist, it
made sure to hit some of the character's notes from the comics.
Firefist's origin story saw him as a Navy recruit who suddenly discovers his fiery powers,
gets locked up, and breaks free.
X-Factor shows up to fight him, then lets him join the team.
And then, in the events leading up to X-Force #24, Russell is imprisoned by a mutant-hating
group called the Friends of Humanity, leading the X-Force to mount a rescue operation while
he's in transit - pretty much what happened in Deadpool 2, but with fewer crotches landing
on Cable's face.
But his biggest contributions to X-Force have been, well, giving them something to fight.
Not once, but twice has he been brainwashed and turned to the dark side in the comics
- once for every finger he can give.
We're not sure where his character will go in any upcoming films, but one thing's for
sure - they sure picked a hell of a kid to rescue.
Domino
When you break it right down, Domino has some of the most useful powers in the whole film,
and she's used them plenty of times in the comics to get both Deadpool and Cable out
of tight spots.
She also gets one of the coolest sequences in the movie.
When she wants to, she can even get the best of Deadpool with just a few well-timed words,
which makes her one of the most formidable mutants on the team.
Any future Deadpool film is bound to feature a ton of Domino showing off how powerful she
really is.
And despite what Deadpool may say about it, that's a pretty useful ability.
"Yes it is."
"Let's meet in the middle and say no it isn't."
Hope Summers
Leave it to Deadpool to introduce one of the most powerful mutants in the world and then
end her brief story so tragically.
We're talking about Hope Summers, of course - Cable's daughter and the whole reason he
traveled back in time in the first place.
In the comics, Hope is what's known as an Omega-level mutant - basically just unstoppably
powerful.
After Cyclops becomes Dark Phoenix in Avengers vs. X-Men #11, Hope harnesses the Phoenix
Force to become an even more powerful Phoenix and stop him.
And in Uncanny X-Men #541, Hope absorbs all of the X-Men's powers to put a stop to an
out-of-control Juggernaut.
Where does it end?
Well, in X-Men Legacy #263, she admits that she's never seen the true limits of her powers.
Now that Cable successfully stopped her death, Hope Summers could have a big role to play
in whatever on-screen form the X-Force takes next.
Yukio and Shatterstar
In the film, Shatterstar is a sword-wielding mutant from Mojoworld.
In the comics, he's also a sword-wielding mutant from Mojoworld, along with some extra
weirdness that made him his own dad's father, but that's not where we're going here.
After a long history in the comics, X-Factor #45 had Shatterstar come out as gay and featured
a panel of him and fellow male mutant Rictor locking lips.
The internet was quick to praise the writers of Deadpool 2 for featuring a gay superhero.
But now that the movie is out and the only thing Shatterstar shattered were some helicopter
blades, all the attention in that arena falls on Yukio, who is now in an onscreen relationship
with Negasonic Teenage Warhead.
While Marvel movies have technically featured LGBTQ characters before, Deadpool 2 puts that
representation right in the forefront, but only after making everyone think it was going
to come from somewhere else.
That's pure Deadpool.
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