Somebody asked the chief a rather loaded question about Lobo and Deadpool being “overplayed, really-limited-joke” characters. And frankly, I don’t think that’s fair to Deadpool.
Let’s set aside the tragic aspects of the character here–that Wade Wilson has a lot of emotional baggage that he can’t escape because he can’t die, that sort of thing. That’s all well and good, but I’m just talking about how the character works in pure farce. In that context, Deadpool’s problem isn’t that he’s limited as a joke character. It’s that people are limited in how they make jokes with the character.
This was already on my mind since I recently saw a gifset on Tumblr of Deadpool’s WACKY ADVENTURES at SDCC. It struck me that in each gif, somebody was doing something amusing with cosplay or props or whatever, and the sole contribution of “Deadpool” was to enter the scene and play along just like any other fun-loving convention-goer might. So you’ve got people cosplaying as Tetris blocks, which is kind of interesting I guess, and then OH MAN DEADPOOL IS WITH THEM NOW IT’S HA-HA-LARIOUS~!~!! XD XD
I get this same vibe from Deadpool’s appearances in comics–at least, the comics that are played for laughs. Deadpool is fighting ninja mimes because it’s funny, and it’s funny because it’s happening to Deadpool, and Deadpool is funny because it’s happening to him. It’s circular logic that only makes sense if you accept that Deadpool is some sort of humor-enhancer, who by his mere presence makes funny things funnier.
If humor were food, Deadpool would be the “bacon strips & bacon strips & bacon strips…” meme. Because let’s face it, bacon doesn’t actually make everything taste better, and even when it does there are diminishing returns as you add more. The first time I tried to make a sandwich with more than one layer of bacon, I ended up with a crispy-chewy mess that wasn’t at all what I hoped for. But the idea of extra bacon is indulgent and tempting. So we assume Epic Meal Time knows what they’re doing when they wrap a pork roast in a four-layer quilt of bacon, even when we should have the common sense to know better. Similarly, fandom seems to have been conditioned to assume that once anyone attempts to work Deadpool into something, it must be funny because Deadpool.
It’s not that bacon or Deadpool is bad, but the trick is in how you use them rather than simply using them at all or a lot. Wade is probably pretty versatile as a joke, but if Marvel and Deadpool fans forget to tell the joke, he is extremely limited as a punchline.
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Thank you for perfectly expressing why I don’t find Deadpool funny anymore.
The current Deadpool series is basically the exact opposite of this, which is why it’s awesome.
Deadpool @ cons…something I really like about Deadpool in cosplay is Deadpool as someone…Deadpool Thor..Deadpool Batman…Deadpool ponies..Deadpool Alice in wonderland.
I find something incredibly funny and neat that you can take the character (in real life costumes..not necessarily in books) and plug him into anything else.
So when are you starting your Why I should write Deadpool series?
I think Deadpool is only good when he’s playing off a great straight character. Hence why Cable and Deadpool is such a great team.
You used Epic Meal Time to perfectly explain how a Marvel Comics character is written. This is one of my new posts to refer people to when I explain why I love your blog.
This is a Jim Smith post, not MGK. And honestly, this can be a true and accurate assessment of why Deadpool’s not funny (and it is) and it can (and I say is) STILL the case that the character is overplayed. I really think they need to dial back his appearances for a year or so. Bring down the exposure.
1) I actually like the SDCC stuff – while the humor comes from interactions with other cosplayers, the guy being in an costume of his own helps it work, and because it isn’t drastically out of character it doesn’t feel jarring. If it was Dr Strange or something, it would basically be two jokes pulling in different directions and wouldn’t work. But you could replace him with a similar character(Ambush Bug? I’m not much of a DC guy) and it wouldn’t change anything.
2) @Ian Austin: I think that rather than Deadpool only being good with a straight man, it’s that a goofy character by himself without a straight man is a different type of comedy that is easier to get lazy with. Without a straight man, it’s easier to get lazy and fall into the ‘omg look how RANDOM he is’ type of humor which is objectively terrible.
This is why I felt Remender’s use of Wade in Uncanny X-Force was the best he’d been written in years.
Marvel recently released a trailer for their upcoming Deadpool video game, and the humor is so over the top as to be camp.
I realize a trailer for a video game is not canon, but it still speaks to the mindset of his creative talent.
“This is a Jim Smith post, not MGK. ”
Yeah I didn’t notice the name, on the other hand is there a reason why he can’t do it?
I don’t know about outside of his own book, but his current book is solid. It does help that it’s written by a comedian, and it isn’t relying on “it’s funny cause it’s Deadpool”. The series reminds me of Nextwave to some extent.
That was to clarify vis-a-vis the ‘reasons I love your blog’ comment, that’s all.
1 – What Dasz said. The comic-con Deadpool guy works because he gets everyone to have fun. His videos aren’t supposed to be him being funny, they’re supposed to highlight all the hard work and fun of all the other cosplayers and patrons, and it works better as Deapool than it would as a random guy or another character because it’s something we can see Deadpool doing.
2 – The best run of Deadpool comics ever was Gail Simone’s. Maybe now that she’s not DC exclusive any more, they’ll finally put out a trade.
Never read any Deadpool, but the cult of the “Deadpool is funny because Deadpool” always made me feel he’s essentially Marvel’s version of Ambush Bug, and unfortunatel that’s the problem.
The DC Universe Ambush Bug plays in has tons of absurd concepts to play off of due to decades worth of out-of-touch comics creators making misjudged remrkably straight-faced attempts at catering to young readers. Ambush Bug reacting in disbelief to them and playing formalistically with genre conventions (like the “fight” with Darkseid) is what makes him funny.
Marvel is guilty of this too, but the fact that they always had both a house style of writing that a little bit knowingly self-parodic means most of the really strange unintentionally funny ideas get filtered out or considerably watered down to fit into Marvel Universe in a way the pre-Crisis DCU never really gave a shit about, so trying to point how lame an old of Spider-Man is isn’t really any funnier inserting Jim Carrey into old reruns of some 60s sitcom.
@ The Eye is unfairly picking on Bob Haney and I for one won’t stand for it and neither will the late Carmine Infantino.
The last Deadpool story I read that was genuinely funny was Jeff Parker’s “Hulkpool” portions of World War Hulks. That story – which was mostly about a time traveling Hulked-out Wade “saving” people and thus interfering with most of the major superheroes’ origins – is probably the most blatant case of “Deadpool as Ambush Bug” I’ve even seen. Still, the story was funny enough that I can ignore that it isn’t really a Deadpool story and Marvel had already told a very similar story years before with Bug from the Micronauts as the Ambush Bug stand-in.
I wanted to like Deadpool Team-Up because I like some of the contributors and – as has been noted – Deadpool works well with a straight man but those stories always left me unsatisfied. Turning two or three issues worth of content into a six part arc is pretty common now but DTU is the only series I can think of that consistently “decompressed” eight or ten issues of story into a series one-shots.
Other than that I’ve avoided the multitude of Deadpool comics that have been popping up since Way – who I never cared for anyway – took over the core book.
“Deadpool’s problem isn’t that he’s limited as a joke character. It’s that people are limited in how they make jokes with the character.”
Particularly Daniel Way. MAN does he suck. At least the things I’ve read by him have sucked.