Just when I thought I’d already read the best issue of Joe Kelly’s Deadpool run, he goes and creates Deadpool #27. It’s up there with Deadpool/Death ’98 and issue #11 (“With Great Power…).
In #26, Deadpool is hired to rescue a princess and then to commit an assassination. The job is interrupted by AIM. But at the end of the issue, we see that the whole comic was narrated by Wade himself, as he told the story to his new therapist…Dr. Bong!
Bong, last seen in Howard the Duck, diagnoses Wade Wilson as insane. At the beginning of #27, he says the treatment is that Wade has to kill a superhero. Why? No idea. But Deadpool is ready to oblige by giving Wolverine his “most gratuitous appearance ever” (see the cover, above). But not really. He’s actually relevant to the story.
Deadpool meets Wolverine and Kitty Pryde, who immediately knows she won’t like him.
Sure enough…
Deadpool clocks her on the very next page, just to piss off Logan, who then comes after Wade and they fighty fight. Deadpool wants to lose…
Wolverine claws Deadpool to pieces. But during the fight, Joe Kelly can’t help noting how silly comic fights can be…
As a result of getting mauled by Wolverine, Deadpool remembers a woman from his past, which means we have a new plot thread to follow and a new storyline about Deadpool’s past. She’s only seen as an hallucination, and will turn out to be Mercedes Wilson–Deadpool’s dead wife.
He and Wolverine have always been similar characters, both dealing with repressed memories and extreme violence, and this issue makes the parallel clear as day. It’s also a great example of how Kelly was at the top of his game with this series.