One of the most interesting things about the superhero genre is that it doesn’t exist
in a vacuum.
These characters have appeared in comics, cartoons, TV shows, movies, video games, and
so much more.
And these adaptations outside of the original source material have a powerful impact on
not just the public perception of the superheroes they portray, but they also often influence
the source material itself.
Now, Marvel and DC have existed for almost a century, and because of that the entertainment
mediums that influenced these characters have kind of come and gone.
Like, Superman was highly influenced by that old radio show and Batman was heavily influenced
by the Adam West TV show, but one character in particular is very much crafted by the
Internet, Deadpool, and today we’re going to talk about exactly how he changed from
a pretty mundane character to something a lot more crazy and wacky simply because of
the internet and meme culture.
But, before we get too far into things, I want to give a big thank you to our sponsor
for today’s video, Manscaped.
Now, on Manscaped’s website they have an article on 10 Superheroes That Probably Manscape,
and uh…
Yeah, Deadpool’s on there, which makes a lot of sense given his character.
I’m a big fan of these products, like the Lawnmower 2.0 trimmer, the Plow 2.0 safety
razor, they have some awesome shears that goes in their package, and also various sprays,
like the Crop Preserver ball-deodorant, which I’m a massive fan of with how sweaty it
is in Texas.
I know that watching sponsored stuff like this really isn’t all that fun, but it’s
companies like Manscaped that allow me to continue making videos like this and not only
am I a fan of the product, but also the staff working behind the scenes have been very awesome,
which I can’t say that about every single brand that I’ve worked with on Comic Drake.
So, if you want to support the channel, make sure you go to Manscaped.com and use the code
“COMICD20” at checkout for 20% off AND free shipping.
Thank you guys very much, and now back to the video.
In order to better understand Deadpool, we need to look at Marvel’s history with characters
who broke the fourth wall prior to his creation.
Oh yeah, Wade Wilson wasn’t the first.
Now I know it’s surprising to some people given the reaction to the announcement for
her show on Disney+, but Jennifer Walters A.K.A.
She-Hulk has been in Marvel comics for decades and in an era before Deadpool, she was Marvel’s
most prominent fourth wall breaker, and she did it all the time in her ongoing series.
We see this style of humor from the very first cover of Sensational She-Hulk #1 where she
threatens to rip up the reader’s X-Men comics if they don’t buy her book.
And at the end of the series, she actually tried to follow through on that threat.
She tears through the paper of her own comic, she kills a villain by pointing out the continuity
of him already being dead, she teases the reader with this jump roping censorship bit
while also discussing the absurdity of sex appeal in the comic industry, and so much
more!
Now She-Hulk has transitioned from a gag character to a more serious one and the amount that
she breaks the fourth wall comes and goes as a result.
But, it was prevalent in Dan Slott and Peter David’s run on her from 2005 to 2009.
This was, coincidentally, around the same time that another Marvel character started
stealing her spotlight for similar antics.
But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves because the Deadpool of that era is very different
from how he started out.
Deadpool made his first appearance in New Mutants #98 in 1991.
And his creator, Rob Liefeld, made him as a sort of Spider-Man character for the book
with a dash of Deathstroke from DC Comics’s thrown in for good measure.
I mean, come on, they have similar costumes, and Deadpool is named Wade Wilson while Deathstroke
is named Slade Wilson.
It’s pretty obvious that there was some design similarities, intentional or otherwise,
but just don’t tell Rob Liefeld that.
“Black and red!
Black and red do not equal blue and orange!
I’m not sure.
People ask me “Do you see the similarities?”
I don’t!”
So Spider-Man.
How would you describe his personality?
I would say that he’s lighthearted and quippy almost to a fault.
I mean one of the biggest reasons why Spidey villains hate him so much is that not only
is he punching them with inhuman levels of strength, but he’s insulting them all the
while and NEVER shuts up.
He’s the hero with a mouth.
For comparison, here’s the first page we ever see of Deadpool.
“You’re Nathan, right?
I’m Deadpool.
Pleased to meet you.
Mr. Tolliver hired me to find you.”
“And you have.”
“Yup.
Well, Mr. Tolliver also hired me to kill you.
You know how fastidious Mr. Tolliver is about these things, right?
So when I frost your sorry old mechanical butt, don’t take it personally, okay?”
Yeah, if you told me that this was just an evil version of Spider-Man, I would totally
believe you.
OG Deadpool was full of quips, one-liners, and non sequiturs in his early appearances,
but he was still a far cry from most modern interpretations of him.
Back then, Wade was Spider-Man style comedian with killer skills to back him up.
It makes a lot of sense why Deadpool got the title of the merc with a mouth.
Since his first appearance, Deadpool has gone on to, without a doubt, become the most successful
superhero to be introduced within the last 30 years.
He became a supporting character in the X-Force series before spinning out into an ongoing
solo run in 1997 and he only skyrocketed in popularity from there.
Yet, with the internet making its way into more and more homes, the comic book community
grew from local shops and conventions to forums and sites like CBR, 4chan, Cheezburger, and
9gag.
On a lot of these sites, memes and image macros were the default ways that users communicated
with each other, and a zany character like Deadpool was ripe for being used in this fashion.
I mean hell, Know Your Meme even named their rejected entries category after him!
As She-Hulk’s series (which was one of Marvel’s biggest comedy books at the time) was winding
down, Deadpool was the perfect character to take over, and with writer Daniel Way’s
Deadpool series hitting the scene, the character’s already large popularity blew up to unseen
heights.
Way’s run embraced the comedic side of Deadpool more than probably any other writer prior,
and pretty much every issue was a meme and reaction image gold mine for the internet,
like this iconic pancake shot.
Stills from this series were being shared online every single time that a new issue
was dropped and, like clockwork, they would go viral every single time, breaking into
sites and communities outside of the comic fandom like Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr.
Also around this time, breaking the fourth wall was becoming a huge trope in media that
was produced for the internet, but superhero comics only did it on occasion, and were generally
done in more serious meta ways like in Grant Morrison’s run on Animal Man.
While Wade Wilson had slightly broken the fourth wall in the past, both the Deadpool
solo series leaned into it a LOT more heavily to the point where now, it’s become one
of Deadpool’s most defining characteristics.
With a unique blend of lolrandom humor and fourth wall breaking, Way’s series hit the
scene at just the right time and Deadpool quickly became a fan favorite among people
who had never even read a comic before.
Noticing this, Marvel started merchandising the hell out Deadpool, especially in stores
like Hot Topic, and anybody attending conventions in the mid-2000s can attest, there were Deadpool
cosplayers EVERYWHERE.
And heck, even the comics got a sales boost with some of these non-readers deciding to
give the series a shot.
Wade’s book sales absolutely eclipsed She-Hulk’s, and when her run ended in 2009, Deadpool was
cemented as THE comedy character at Marvel Comics.
This sales success would balloon to the point where Deadpool was headlining four separate
Marvel titles at one time, a feat that usually would only be achieved by long standing icons
like Wolverine and Batman.
This would hit its peak around 2009 to 2010, and ironically, some of that success could
be argued to have come from X-Men Origins: Wolverine butchering the character so much.
For those of you that are somehow out of the loop, while X-Men Origins: Wolverine had plenty
of other faults as a movie, Deadpool ended up looking like this, literally getting rid
of the mouth of a character who is known as the Merc With a Mouth.
Needless to say, there was backlash, but for general audiences who had never heard of Deadpool
prior, the outrage against X-Men Origins was definitely there to educate them.
Vocal fans were quick to rage and rant about the character that they were robbed of on
mainstream sites, explaining what made Deadpool such a great character in their eyes.
And of course, they shared those viral stills from Daniel Way’s run.
As a result, Deadpool in his purest form was getting seen by a whole new potential fanbase,
making him even more famous and popular.
The downside though is that this backlash against the live action portrayal kind of
led the comics to overcompensate for the on screen injustice.
Deadpool became more crazy, more random, more comedy focused, and of course more... memey.
This is “Flanderization”, a fan term that was named after the Simpon’s character Ned
Flanders where a more complex character becomes more and more one note as time goes on.
Now, Flanderization is not ALWAYS a bad thing, but this even more over the top Deadpool became
somewhat divisive for Deadpool fans, myself included.
“Memepool” as he was starting to be known as, didn’t resonate with everyone.
A contingent of fans thought that Deadpool’s character was getting lost in the situations
and plots that he was put into.
Wade had become more famous than ever, sure, but to some he had also lost the edge which
made him so popular to begin with.
Of course, fan praise and criticism really don’t mean a whole lot to corporations,
it’s money that talks and there’s no denying that the Deadpool comic and merch sales were
going through the roof.
This second wave of Deadpool fame is also why we got the 2013 Deadpool video game.
After X-Men Origins, this was the largest non-comic project that the character was at
the forefront of and fans absolutely loved how the character was portrayed!
This was the character that fans wanted, not the no-mouth Baraka from the movie.
And what came out of the video game?
More memes, more popularity with non-comic readers, and of course A LOT more sales in
merchandise.
The meme culture that Deadpool ferociously led would translate into merch and marketing
campaigns based on these very memes.
I mean good god, there are so many Deadpool taco shirt and they all somehow sell, despite
being the same joke.
It was only a matter of time until a character this popular got a solo movie.
And, you’d think that after the backlash of X-Men Origins, Fox would want to try as
hard as they could to make fans forget that it ever happened.
That’s why it’s so surprising that Ryan Reynolds (the actor that played him) was being
brought back for a potential Deadpool solo movie.
But… here’s the thing.
Ryan Reynolds and Deadpool are, like, cosmically made for eachother.
The comics kind of predicted that he would get the role, and Reynolds has been a huge
fan of Deadpool from the get-go.
And his clear passion for the character is one of the main reasons why the solo movie
was being made in the first place!
Although test footage was created, the movie wasn’t officially greenlit until it was
purposely leaked by someone close to the project onto the very sites where Deadpool became
memeified in the first place.
And let’s be real, it was most likely Reynolds himself that did the leaking.
“It was me, Rhett Reese, Paul Wenick, and Tim Miller, the director.
One of us did it.
We all sorta said at the beginning ‘Someone should leak it!’
‘Someone should leak it!’.
The idea was played around with, but I’m 70% sure it wasn’t me.”
Ryan Reynolds spent eleven years trying to get this project off the ground and when the
leaked footage sparked major fan interest, the movie was practically greenlit overnight.
This was a move that could only have really been done by a true fan that GETS where the
character comes from and completely sums up the power that Deadpool gets from the internet.
Of course, memes can’t successfully sell a movie by themselves and it’s the quality
writing that really made it a smash success.
It also helps that it was released at the perfect time when superhero movies were saturating
the market to the point of audience fatigue.
Deadpool became the perfect outlet to vent some of those frustrations with the genre
while also breathing fresh life into it by doing something bold and daring.
With two mega successful movies under the franchise’s belt, the comics have kind of
been playing catch-up.
I mean, the movies struck a much better balance between Memepool and the character at his
best and thankfully, the books have been trying to adopt this approach.
They’re walking the character back, they’re de-Flanderizing him, and as a result, we’re
ending up with what is considered to be some of the best Deadpool stories ever written.
Writer Gerry Duggen especially has worked at balancing the more tragic elements of Deadpool
with his comedic side and the storyline “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” is consistently
cited as one of, if not THE best all time Deadpool work of all time.
It’s no real surprise that Deadpool, the first character to really latch onto internet
culture, became such a huge success, and he really showed the comic industry how to properly
use the wild west that is the internet.
He walked, so that modern characters with all of their Twitter love could run, and I
think they owe a little something to this avocado-looking ass ancestor.
This video would not have been possible without a little bit of help behind the scenes.
Since you guys probably know that I’m really not a huge Deadpool fan, this was co-written
by my buddy Chris, and I want to have him on in future videos to help out as well for
things that I have a little bit of less expertise in.
And also, a big thank you to my voice cast, Jordan Cruz and Rummy.
You guys were awesome for getting that Cable and Deadpool dynamic down, but anyway, I hope
you guys learned at least a little something new, and hopefully, I’ll see you next time.