Deadpool

I’m often asked if I am a fan of Deadpool. In fact most people seem to just assume I am. Kind of like everyone assumed I was a fan of the TV show Heroes.

A wacky anti-hero parody, seems up my alley, right? He seems a lot like a combo of Black Snow and the Lone Wolf.

Much like the aforementioned Heroes, it may surprise you to find out that I am not a fan. I’ve never seen an episode of Heroes and I’ve never read a Deadpool comic.

So I’m not overly familiar with the character. I know his basics though. He was created in ’91 and was basically an admitted rip-off of Deathstroke from Teen Titans. He wasn’t an immediate breakout character and didn’t exactly light the world on fire.

In ’97 he got his own title which wasn’t overly popular, so the writers and artists decided to play around with the format and shifted things more towards parody. The started including more and more meta humor with the character consistently breaking the fourth wall, and the comic readers went crazy. The character blew up from there, and has pretty much maintained that popularity ever since.

That’s all well and good, but I think the key thing to loving Deadpool is that you are already a dedicated fan of the traditional superhero comics put out by Marvel and DC. Like most parody material, it helps if you really love what they are making fun of.

As my regular readers already know, I didn’t grow up on comic books. I got into them in late high school, when I wanted to make them. I was never a big reader of them. So seeing someone parody them or a character generally shaking things up just didn’t have a strong appeal to me.

I’ve always found the character’s strong resemblance to Spider-man to be a turn off. If there is one traditional Marvel superhero I was always into, it was Spider-man, and Deadpool came off to my casual perusal of comics as a cheap Spider-man rip-off.

In a medium like comics, visuals and personal preference are very important, so my distaste for his look was a pretty big part of preventing me from wanting to read the comics.

Now when I go to a comic book store it is invariably stocked with a plethora of different Deadpool titles. The character has an incredible amount of spinoffs. Occasionally I’ll flip through them, but they just don’t really grab me. Maybe they’re too silly for me.  I’m more into things like Hellboy, The Walking Dead or The Watchmen.

When a fan at a convention asked me to sketch Deadpool for him I had to look at what other people had drawn in his book because it is not something I sit around reading or drawing. I don’t emulate it. It just isn’t my cup of tea.

If you’re into Deadpool, good for you. You certainly aren’t alone. I’m shocked he hasn’t gotten his own movie yet. I know there was a lot of clamoring after his screwed up portrayal in that Wolverine prequel.

So now you don’t have to ask or assume. No, I am not a fan of Deadpool.