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- Wade Wilson, AKA Deadpool, is a unique character
who has been growing in popularity for awhile now.
There is a question that I've always
wondered about him though.
Why does Deadpool talk in yellow speech bubbles?
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Welcome to a Tie-In video where
I wear a tie in videos.
I'm Scott, and comics often use
unique character-specific dialogue boxes
to indicate that a particular comic book character
speaks in a way that is abnormal.
The different designs are supposed to
help us, as readers, imagine more easily
what their voices would sound like to us.
Like Thanos, having a dark, squiggly border
makes me feel like he talks in a low,
possibly dark, rumbly voice.
When Tony Stark puts on his Iron Man
suit, his speech bubbles change from
normal to a more electronic, computer-y style,
which helps us imagine that the suit
alters his voice to sound kind of like a robot.
Sometimes you don't even need to change
the style of the balloon, but just the font,
to create a unique character voice.
Thor and other guardians are a good example of this.
They will often be shown with a more
archaic font as a way of making us,
as the readers, hear kind of a
Shakespearean voice that we've been
conditioned, for whatever reason,
to associate with that world.
It's a visual shorthand that makes
characters more distinct, allows for a contrast
between individuals, and can also help
flush out a character, giving us more detail
about others perceive them.
So how and why is Deadpool's voice different?
I grant you that a yellow speech bubble
isn't a lot of information to go off of when trying
to determine how we should hear his voice.
I'm so used to Nolan North that I
just imagine him speaking as Deadpool,
regardless of how it's actually supposed to sound.
- I can't believe it. I'm alive!
- However, we do get clues in the comics
about how it apparently sounds to other people.
Cable, for example, occasionally refers to
Wade's voice as sounding like a gravelly,
hollow, Demi Moore-sounding rumble.
- I have a husky voice to begin with, and it's getting
huskier because, you know, Dave got me into smoking cigars.
- His voice was also described slightly differently
by Blind Al, Deadpool's former prisoner
slash roommate slash mother figure?
It's complicated.
She describes Wade's voice as gasoline mixed with gravel.
Apparently it's supposed to sound
extremely unpleasant to the ear.
And there's actually a fairly good explanation for this too.
Remember, Wade's origin in the
Weapon X Program that gave him a healing factor
to hopefully fight off his extremely aggressive cancer,
but the healing factor actually bonded
to his cancerous cells.
This process caused horrible scarring all over his body.
But it wasn't just his outward appearance.
He scarred inside his body, as well.
And this is actually the cause of his abnormal voice.
When asked about why he sounds so weird,
Wade explains that he has scar tissue on his vocal cords.
So wait, does this mean that Deadpool
should only talk this way if he's scarred,
because we've seen him lose his healing factor,
which subsequently took away all his scarring,
returning to his normal, human-looking self,
yet he still talked in yellow speech
bubbles during that time.
Maybe that was done on purpose,
probably because it was just the standard
for the character at that point, and no one
felt it necessary to change it since that
design became fairly synonymous with Deadpool.
But you might not have known that
the design for Deadpool's speech bubbles
wasn't always that way.
It was always designed differently
to indicate that something was unique
in the way his voice sounded, but it went
through a few iterations.
In his debut in New Mutants #98 from 1991,
Deadpool's speech bubbles had a red outline around them.
In Deadpool's next appearance a few months later
in X-Force #2, he had a similar border
around his dialogue, but this time, it was yellow.
So, we're getting a little bit closer,
except that two issues later, the border
was now more of a lime green color.
The very next issue after that showed
that they really had no sense of consistency,
as it went right back to the red border.
Then it jumped back to yellow in X-Force #10,
where it seemed to finally be locked in
as Deadpool's default speech bubble design.
This was the norm for a few years,
even through both the 1993 and 1994 Deadpool mini series,
as well as a few more appearances in X-Force.
It wasn't until Deadpool Volume 1, Issue 1 from 1996
that he finally started talking in full, yellow balloons,
and it's been that way ever since.
Now if you want to know why he talks to himself
in different colored caption boxes, that
is a topic for another time.
Foreshadowing.
What do you guys think?
Do you think Deadpool's yellow speech bubbles
are a good visual representation
for how he's supposed to sound?
Who does your favorite Deadpool voice?
Let's talk about it all in the comments below.
And if you want more Deadpool,
check out some of our other videos
about the merc with a mouth.
Click there to see whether or not he truly was
a ripoff of Deathstroke, or right down
below it to learn my theory about why
he might actually be a mutant.
If this is your first time hanging out with us
here at NerdSync, consider subscribing to our channel.
We make new videos every week that ask questions
and make learning a little bit more accessible
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So, make sure you hit that big, sexy subscribe button
so you don't miss out on anything.
Once again, I'm Scott.
You can find me on Twitter and Instagram
and I will see you guys on Monday
for another episode of the NerdSync podcast
available on iTunes and SoundCloud.
See ya.