A to Z Challenge Day 4: Deadpool (the Lunatic Assassin)

If you’ve been reading my challenge posts thus far, this entry may surprise you a bit. First we had a Disney Princess, then a female monster-hunter, and then a puppy-like angel (who also happens to kill monsters every now and then). And now we have a character named Deadpool who, despite being a comic book character, is definitely the most mature-themed character you will find amongst my list.

Deadpool is a Marvel character whose real name is Wade Wilson. He’s a horribly disfigured assassin who is extremely mentally unstable. An anti-hero of the highest order, Deadpool is a carnage-loving maniac who talks to himself in three different voices, one his own, one a moderately reasonable persona who occasionally tries to talk sense, and one who is so psychotic that the voice is usually depicted visually by a picture of a screw and a ball. He also, for all intents and purposes, cannot be killed. No matter the injury, he always manages to heal. This lunatic of a character has his own block of comic books in the Marvel roster, but he has also been known to show up in other story lines to torment the likes of Spiderman and the X-Men. Most of the time you can’t tell if Deadpool is even the good guy or the bad guy. He does good things, for sure, and has been known to save the entire planet, but there are also several comic lines that star him as a blood-mad sociopath with absolutely no conscience. In fact, there’s even one (non-cannon) series of comics in which Deadpool literally kills every other Marvel character he comes across, aptly known as “Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe”.

Does this sound like the kind of character that I would put on a list of my all-time favorite characters? If not, don’t worry…you’re probably right. But he is on my list for a number of reasons. For one thing, I am the kind of person who often finds herself preferring the villain of the piece over the hero, particularly if that villain is tormented in some way. For another thing, I enjoy foolishness, and there is no comic book character more foolish than Deadpool. Also, he’s like a crazy, gun-toting, ninja-like swordsman, and that’s just cool.

If violence and lunacy aren’t your thing, you probably wouldn’t much enjoy the Deadpool comics, but if you get a kick out of impossible-to-kill super-mercenary anti-heroes who have constant internal witty banter going on inside their heads in three different voices, you might just get a kick out of our Mr Wade Wilson.