According to Wiki, when he signed on to follow Joe Kelly’s fan-favorite (albeit not super-top-selling) run, Priest said the main lessons he’d taken from Kelly were that “it was okay to make Deadpool look stupid” and that the run was “complex and a little hostile to new readers like me.” He began with a groundbreaking look at what happens to poor-selling charcters…
Yeah. Those are all guys whose books got changed radically, rebooted, retooled, cancelled, etc. And they’re not all Marvel. (Quantum and Woody are there!)
Priest takes busting the fourth wall to a new level here. He’s now talking directly at us, the readers, without having the characters face the panel and speak to us. In fact, Deadpool’s back is to us.
Brilliant.
This begins some of Priest’s best work at Marvel.
Storywise, it explores Deadpool’s early days–starting with him in a tube. He has a bag that is labeled “Everything that made this book work,” and he throws it away. Clearly, he’s supposed to be the new creative team.
But he then enters a room and finds all the cancelled characters (above) and decides he’s going to save his own comic book by getting that bag back.
Deadpool is still in the tube during these hallucinations, and the scientist who has him also has captured Death.
Given Deadpool’s recent positive interactions with Dead, this makes him mad.
He decides to save her. But first, flashbacks.
That was a job where Kingpin hired Deadpool to kill a Santa and where he fought Bullseye.
When Deadpool confronts Kingpin, we see the first example of his bisexuality. (Or pansexuality, really.)
That’s the theme of these issues: Deadpool is in a tube, reminiscing. He remembers, for example, another adventure versus the Frightful Four.
He remembers how he almost became Batman…
…And how he got his costume.
The randomness of Deadpool is one of the most fun parts of his series, so all of this is most excellent.
Another element of great Deadpool is darkness, and Priest does explore DP’s violent childhood and abuse at the hands of the Weapon X project.
Eventually, Deadpool busts out of the tube and tries to free Death and kill the scientist, only to learn that the evil doc is really Loki. Yes, Loki.
And the master of mischief does a truly Godlike thing to Deadpool: Live Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden, Loki makes Deadpool aware of his true nature…
First, he turns him into Thor for a bit.
Thorpool uses that power to visit Michael Jackson.
Thorpool. That’s just awesome.
If you don’t like this story, you don’t like comics.
It ends when Loki curses Deadpool by making him handsome.