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Op/Ed: The Deadpool Discussion 2 – Electric Boogaloo

By | July 27th, 2011
Posted in Longform | % Comments

I was talking to my friend Kristin (artist of Control, new page out today! /shameless plug) about comics coming out today, and the conversation came to “characters we love whose books we hate.” I mentioned Deadpool – who has a one-shot I’m remotely interested in reading – and the conversation turned to why I don’t enjoy his ongoing book. In justifying my claims, I created an explanation that I found fairly interesting (because I’m oh so smart, obvs), and decided that this was a Multiversity post in the making.

So today brings a new op/ed, my second on the character and the subject (this time with no mention of over-saturation and only comments on quality), and a chance to talk about one of my favorite things in the world: The Marx Brothers.

I’m a HUGE fan of the Marx Brothers. Their films are arguably some of the funniest of all time, and are definitely more funny than some of the things that pass as comedy today. The reason for this (outside of people just not being that funny today) is that the three original Marx Brothers – Groucho, Harpo, and Chico – had such an excellent dichotomy between the characters that they could all inhabit roles that complimented one another. Given Deadpool’s “multiple personality” shtick, it’s easy to find connections between the Marx Brothers and Wade Wilson.

For posterity, watch this clip (it gets great at about a minute in:


What makes this scene so funny is that Groucho can play the “serious” man who is still absurd and a fool but can point out the low IQs of Chico and Harpo, while Harpo can portray a relatable character who is smart/clever/talented in his own way – without saying a word, mind you! – and Chico can be the “simple/stupid” character who offers counter-balance to both with moments, albeit brief, of intelligence.

When I was a kid and read Deadpool in the 90s, Deadpool was Groucho. Written by Joe Kelly, he was a witty character and positively hilarious, but he was also strong, a leader, and emotional when he needed to be. I’ll never forget buying Deadpool #14 in a gas station and reading an entire issue dedicated to Blind Alfred stuck in a closet/torture chamber for pissing off Wade. He also had his own mini-event called Dead Reckoning, in which he and Captain America “teamed up” to defeat Tiamat and save the world. The whole book, from Kelly’s run through Priest’s and eventually to Frank Tieri and Gail Simone, was about balancing the insane with the typical Marvel drama, being a “comedy action” that you ended up really caring about. The way that Simone writes Secret Six today is how she wrote Deadpool then – sassy and funny, but with enough characterization that when Deadpool died (and he did, briefly, “die”), it mattered. (And the issue given to his funeral, Deadpool #61, was a silent and surrealist nightmare of an issue that really pulled the curtain back on what makes the character human enough to care about – absolutely wonderful stuff by Tieri.)

But Deadpool is not written that way today anymore. Daniel Way helms the title, and while Way originally brought some interesting ideas to the table – an additional head voice, Deadpool-vision (which he quickly abandoned, despite Benson’s attempt to revive) – the character became stale and barely a “character” at all. Now Deadpool is written like Chico: absolute parody all the time with only a moment here or there of anything other than humor to remind you, yeah, he’s human a little bit. There’s no balance for the character, and it just becomes absolutely boring to the point of migraines being caused by reading. Way is not completely unable to give the character definition or even a soul, but after the first few arcs chose to abandon that element to make Deadpool – a character who started as a “bad-ass” and became a satire – into a parody of, well, himself.

This isn’t to say it’s impossible to write a “good” Deadpool today. Rick Remender manages to write Deadpool in the only salvagable way in Uncanny X-Force, but even then Deadpool is Harpo – absurdist and insane, but with a few touching moments here or there to remind you that he’s not entirely mental. In the same way that Harpo will come across a harp in the middle of the movie and play a beautiful tune, Deadpool will tell the rest of Uncanny X-Force – a group of assassins – that killing a child is wrong. It’s telling that Remender tries to bring back that balance to a Groucho mentality, but he favors the humor aspect of the character over the darker and more brooding elements Deadpool has had in the past, thus resulting in having Deadpool be a lighter element against the dark, dark, dark places that the group is currently being brought to (Apocalypse, Shadow King, and assassins from the future – oh my!).

Continued below

Granted, my Marx Brothers comparison could be lost on some. Not everyone has box sets of the Marx Brothers like I do, and I would guess those of you that do probably don’t watch them as frequently as I do. However, the key difference between the trinity created by the brothers and Deadpool is that there is always balance. While I’d argue that Groucho was still hilarious on his own (because he was a comic genius), it was the combination of Groucho, Harpo, and Chico that really made the Marx Brothers a memorable comedy trio. Films like Animal Crackers, Horse Feathers and Duck Soup are all noteworthy because the three of them work together to enhance the ridiculous aspects of their relationship. It’s not the Three Stooges where someone gets bonked on the head and makes a funny noise, and it’s not Charlie Chaplin’s silent but often poignant films where Chaplin never fails to make a statement. The Marx Brothers are somewhere in between, with fairly intelligent and snappy comedy that works as satire in the same vein that it does slapstick. That’s what Deadpool needs.

What Deadpool needs most of all, though, is a true cast. If we are to resound to the fact that Deadpool is forever going to be a chance for writers to just come in for a story or an arc and write a character being stupid for 22 pages, then he needs the cast to back him up and balance it out. Kelly had a full cast for Wade, with Weasel and Blind Alfred balancing out Wade’s more insane moments (and back then, when I say insane I mean “mental breakdown” as opposed to “taco fantasy sequence”), but both characters went missing from the book only to reappear recently in order to beat Wade up for being a jerk and a loser (or so I’m told, anyway – I stopped reading a while ago). Deadpool remains the solo star of his title with no recurring characters to make up a cast for him. It’s an odd scenario when you have a character with a group of “friends” – Hydra Bob, Cable, “Crazy” Inez, Taskmaster, etcetera – who can be devolved to the point of having no friends and getting no respect from anyone. If that’s not character/story regression, I suppose I don’t quite know what is.

Deadpool can be written as an absurdist daydream in which it’s ok for superheroes to be inane caricatures of themselves, but it works so much better as a title that offers up humorous counter-points to the serious soap opera that is the average comic book. Fear Itself is ravaging the Marvel Universe and Fear Itself: Deadpool was the perfect opportunity to make light of what is otherwise supposed to be a serious tragedy (seige of our capital, death of a cultural icon, etcetera). Instead, it is werewolves, sledgehammers, and the Walrus running around like an idiot. It rather defines wasted opportunity. Between this book, DeadpoolMAX, and the finished Deadpool Corps saga, opportunities for intelligent humor have been thrown out the window and replaced with bottom-of-the-barrel humor from otherwise talented creators (seriously – Christopher Hastings, David Lapham, and Victor Gischler can all do better than what they did with the character). Obviously Deadpool sells because there are people who enjoy this, but people like me who are rather picky with their comedy, especially given the average Hollywood film in theaters is a paint-by-numbers endeavor where you take “funny overweight/bearded pot-smoker” and give him “average straight-man” to play off of, where only hilarity can ensue!

No thanks. We need more Marx Brothers.

Of course, this is all assuming that you are like me and don’t care for the title. From what I’ve heard, Deadpool is still selling well – at least well enough to continue to warrant the continuing “quality” of the title. If this book is what gets you to the shop weekly, then far be it from me to tell you to stop buying what you love. I personally just hope he really does “die” in 2012, because perhaps a death/resurrection is what he needs to become readable again in my library.

Either way, have another Marx Brothers clip because it never fails to make me laugh:


Matthew Meylikhov

Once upon a time, Matthew Meylikhov became the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Multiversity Comics, where he was known for his beard and fondness for cats. Then he became only one of those things. Now, if you listen really carefully at night, you may still hear from whispers on the wind a faint voice saying, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not as bad as everyone says it issss."

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