🤚 This newsletter contains a spoiler for Deadpool & Wolverine. If you haven’t seen the film yet, you’ve been warned, bub.
BTW: Did you get spoiled on the cameos just by happenstance? I sure was, and I saw the movie on the second weekend! There should be spoiler amnesty for at least the first week. Every day on Google News an article would pop up like, “Kelsey Grammer on his Deadpool & Wolverine Cameo: ‘You’ll Never Believe How Loudly I Farted on Set’” and I’d say to my phone, on the toilet, “Oh, come on!!” (Kelsey Grammer isn’t in Deadpool & Wolverine, but I wanted to spare you a potential spoiler by making a joke about spoilers. That said, I do have it on good authority that Kelsey Grammer farts very, very loudly.)
There’s a sequence in Deadpool & Wolverine where Deadpool travels through the multiverse, meeting and angering different versions of the beloved Canadian claw-meister. There’s Hulk-fighting Wolverine in his original brown costume. There’s Patch, Wolverine’s super-spy secret identity. (Logan cleans up well in a white suit!) There’s Old Man Logan, on whom the movie Logan takes its inspiration, but to be clear, this is not the old man Logan from the movie Logan, who does appear in the film. This is a comic accurate depiction of Old Man Logan, separate from Logan‘s Logan. Comic book movies are nonsense!
But the Wolverine who I had the biggest reaction to, by far, was a variant named Weapon X. This Wolverine has a wild mane of black hair, a black outfit with animalistic red stripes, and a metal stump for a hand. Deadpool locates him in a post-apocalyptic back alley, where they brawl almost immediately.
Weapon X is from the extremely dark and gritty Age of Apocalypse universe in X-Men. If you weren’t reading X-Men comics in the mid-90s – perhaps you had a clear complexion and lots of friends? – Age of Apocalypse is a timeline where Professor X is killed as a young man by his own son. (It’s complicated.) In this timeline, Magneto forms the X-Men in Charles Xavier’s honor, but without Xavier in the world, the immortal mutant Apocalypse rises to become North American dictator. He’s a genocidal overlord who oversees the killing of humans en masse in a genetic “culling.” It’s a brutal, bloody, grotesque world where beloved heroes die like flies, and X-Men characters we love have turned against humanity to support Apocalypse.
The moment I saw Weapon X on a giant screen, my heart raced a bit. I’ve never seen a comic-accurate adaptation of Age of Apocalypse on this scale. It’s the X-Men story I got most invested in as a young reader. Age of Apocalypse was a comic crossover event, meaning it didn’t just take place in one X-Men comic. The story took place across all eight monthly titles, so in order to know everything that was happening in this hideous universe, I had to read titles I normally wouldn’t, like X-Calibre and Cable. The story lived large in my head as a tween. So to see it blown up on the silver screen was surprising. Like a recurring dream I once had suddenly materialized before my eyes. No, actually, more like a recurring nightmare, given the source material.
X-Men: The Animated Series had its own version of Age of Apocalypse. The two parter “One Man’s Worth” imagines a post-apocalyptic world where Professor X is killed as a young man. The time-traveling heroes of the story, alternate universe Storm and Wolverine, wear costumes inspired by Age of Apocalypse, but the similarities pretty much end there. Compared to the comics, “One Man’s Worth” might as well be Disney On Ice. I remember being surprised to hear the animated series would tackle Age of Apocalypse, which had literally just come out, then being disappointed at how kiddie it felt. I was turning a sophisticated 13 at the time. I was recently Bar Mitzvah’d, a true man with a complete collection of Garfield treasuries. Saturday morning wasn’t aging with me. What? Couldn’t America’s children handle Wolverine tearing out one of Cyclops’ eyes, after the villainous Cyclops blows off one of his hands? (That’s how he got the stump!) I had to read Age of Apocalypse. Why did kids get a pass?
The emotions of seeing Age of Apocalypse on the big screen were bittersweet. Soon after the epic arc, I fell out of reading X-Men monthlies. I would pick up trade versions of the latest stories every so often, but I would never again be at my comic book store with rapt excitement, leaving with a handful of holo foil floppies. Maybe I was aging out of superhero stories, like I did Nintendo games, though I would find my way back to both eventually. Maybe I burned out after what felt like an explosion of spandex comics. I remember Marvel building up to another multi-book X-Men event the following year, centered around a new villain named Onslaught, only to feel like, “Ugh, do I really need to read X-Calibre again?”
Looking back, I think the thing that left a real bitter taste in my mouth with Age of Apocalypse was that it didn’t feel like X-Men tonally. Yes, bad things happen to the X-Men in the main continuity. All the time! I’ll never forget the panel where Magneto rips the adamantium metal off of Wolverine’s skeleton, and I was legitimately sad when Blink from the young mutant team Generation X was killed early in the run. But Wolverine survived with bone claws for a while, and Blink eventually found her way back to comics by way of the multiverse. In other words, these characters bounce back. There’s hope for them. Not only hope, but moments of joy, despite living in a world that hates and fears them. They play baseball together at Xavier’s Mansion and moonlight as swimsuit models.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read Age of Apocalypse, but I remember the event being utterly joyless. Granted, that was the dramatic exercise, but it felt like the authors were toying with my strong feelings for these heroes, and wiping them out one by one for “cheap heat,” as they say in pro wrestling. Or worse, taking my favorite X-Man – Beast – and turning him into the irredeemable Josef Mengele of this universe, experimenting on captured humans. The repercussions of this portrayal have echoed throughout X-Men comics and films, leading various writers to give the smart, friendly, Shakespeare-quoting Beast an underlying dark side. In recent comics, the writers apparently made him an outright villain in mainstream continuity. It never sat right with me. The appeal of Beast is that he has an initially frightening exterior, but when you get to know him, you quickly learn he has a kind heart. To me, that’s X-Men. Not an endless march of death and dispair, but a struggle for joy and equality.
I mean, did Ninja Turtles comics ever make Donatello a John Wayne Gacy-esque serial killer?! You know what, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.
In Deadpool & Wolverine, the scene with Weapon X is just a visual gag in a quick montage of comic book and movie references. Deadpool quickly gets his ass kicked by one of the most badass versions of Wolverine in the multiverse. After a rush of excitement seeing Weapon X again, in the days that followed, the memories of my final days as a regular X-Men reader kicked my ass a little, too.
🎲 Your Turn: Did you see Deadpool & Wolverine? What did you think? Reply to this email or hit the orange “Comment” button below to tell with world your take. Overall, I thought it was a fun and often hilarious ride for X-Men fans like myself, but I wouldn’t recommend it to folks with no connection to the source material. The movie isn’t so much a sundae with a cherry on top, as it is a bottle of maraschino cherries.
📩 Next Week: Amanda and I get notes back on our X-Men inspired visual novel. One. Hero. Will. Die. (Kinda.)
7 responses to “Deadpool & One Particular Wolverine”
Honestly, I was never that big on American comics and the only thing I’ve read from either Marvel or DC’s catalog is Batman: Year One, and I think the most I’ve consumed of the MCU is Doctor Strange’s origin story movie, Thor Ragnarok, and Spider-Man Homecoming, and I’m not sure if that last one is MCU or it’s own continuity. Most of what I know about the big name heroes comes from the old SuperFriends Cartoons, the old Fantastic Four cartoon, the 90s Spider-Man: The animated series, the DCAU, x-men Evolution, and the 2003 Teen Titans animated series. Only American comic book I’ve actually read is Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog, and then mostly via the Trade paperbacks they released around 2010-12… Most of my comics consumption has been of East Asian titles(I had a subscription to Viz’s version of Shonen Jump from around 2004 until they decided to give printed media fans the middle finger and discontinued a print monthly publication in favor of a digital service, I had asubscription to Shojo Beat for the entirety of it’s run, I own a couple hundred volumes of manga, and I’ve read some manhwa and manhua as well, though not many South Korean and CHinese titles got translated circa the lat 00s and early new 10s… and since going blind in 2012, I have no idea how the landscape has changed as far as translation of non-Japanese asian titles. I think some of the reasons I got into manga when I never really got into American Superhero comics include:
Most Manga having a single author whereas many American comics are collaborative and “depending on the writer”.
Most Manga being entirely self-contained instead of being part of a massive shared universe.
Tankobon being a much more convenient format for obtaining entire series runs.
Better genre variety.
Getting into Manga at a time when several high-profile series were just a few years into their runs or just first being translated into English when most of the big name Marvel and DC series had decades of history.
Plus, I was already a big anime fan and saw manga as an economical and time effiicient alternative to Anime DVDs.
I’ve probably spent more total hours watching superhero cartoons than reading superhero comics. The 90s Spider-Man cartoon is great!
I haven’t read that much manga. Not sure why, because I do enjoy anime. I don’t watch a ton of it, maybe one series a year? My partner and I recently enjoyed Delicious in Dungeon, and before that, Dirty Pair. Maybe the problem is that when I would impulse buy a manga at the bookstore, they rarely have the first book. It’s often 3, 5, and 17.
I remember back in high school I’d visit Suncoast during the weekly visits to the local mall the school allowed for older students(I attened a combined k-12 school for the blind and visually impaired where most students stayed in dorms during the week and went home on weekends) and I’d always be annoyed when they would have further volumes of a series I was reading, but have none of the next volume from the one I had read most recently or they would have the first and third of the next 3, but none of the second… Didn’t help that I grew up in a small, middle of nowhere town where a Wal-mart with poor selection had driven pretty much any store specializing in a specific class of product out of business… Things became so much easier once I turned 18 and could have my SSDI deposited into a checking account and I could just order stuff online with a debit card instead of having to keep my money in a custodial savings account that limited withdraws to 3 a month and having to pay cash for everything and keep more cash on me than I was comfortable with.
I dropped out of comics at roughly the same time you did, apparently. (Not coincidentally, that was about when I became a parent). But also… yeah. The hyperviolent, cynical grimdark tone probably encouraged my exit. I’ve been getting back into collecting floppies in the past year or two (again, not coincidentally, right after my youngest left home).
And the newer X-Men comics I’ve picked up have been great! But mostly in the sense that comics’ idea of “mature content” has … matured? Like, give me people wrestling with trauma, hope, identity, horniness, the complexity of life. What I do not need is the All Murder All The Time Xtreme X-Men. I do not need the Mountain Dew Live Wire version of “mature content.”
Anyway. Good luck to you and Amanda! Excited to see the game when it’s finished. 😀
Yay, it’s not just me! ^_^
I read two trades from the Krakoa Era and really enjoyed them. I should read more and encourage them to do more “mature” storytelling, as you’re defining it.
Thank you! Excited for you to play it!
I saw Deadpool & I really enjoyed it. I’m not a comic book guy. I wouldn’t know Marvel from DC. I’m only kinda sorta interested, and at this point the vastness of the MCU is barrier to entry… I wouldn’t know where to begin! But the hype and the box office inspired some FOMO, so we bought tickets. To be safe, we also watched the first two Deadpool movies. I enjoyed those as well. Clearly, Deadpool is popular with Marvel fans, but it also works for newbs like me. By way of example, I didn’t even know those alternate Wolverines came from the comic books.
What I really appreciate about Deadpool is that he’s the ultimate outsider. He is of the comic book world, but he is not exactly a part of it, although that’s his dream. That positioning along with the snarky fourth wall stuff makes him a good sherpa. In fact, more than any other comic book movies I’ve seen, the Deadpool franchise made me feel welcome. I think that’s something that’s often overlooked with comic book movies. They’re made for broad audiences, but they assume that everyone knows the source material. As you might imagine, it’s super annoying to see a movie, not really get key stuff, then have your friends explain it to you in detail with sentences that always end with “you gotta read the comics.”
Wow, this is the exact opposite reaction that I thought you – someone who doesn’t watch a lot of superhero movies – would have to Deadpool & Wolverine! I’m so glad you enjoyed it and vibed with Deadpool’s outsiderness. And certainly, the fight sequences are spectacular and stand-alone without needing prior knowledge of previous films and comics.
To me, so much of the appeal was how self-reflexive and cleverly referential the movie was, rewarding me for having watched so many FOX Marvel movies of varying degrees of quality. Of all the superhero movies I’ve ever seen, I’d think this one is the MOST “you gotta read the comics / watch the movies / read the internet.” Happy y’all thought otherwise!