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Today, we look at the time that it sure seemed like Deadpool was wielding Thor’s hammer!
In every installment of I Love Ya But You’re Strange I spotlight strange but ultimately endearing comic stories. Feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you have a suggestion for a future installment!
If you’re even a little bit up on Deadpool comic book history, you’ll know that Deadpool, as a character, took a significant change in his approach when he received his first ongoing series in 1997 from Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness. We shouldn’t downplay the importance of the original Rob Liefeld/Fabian Nicieza version of Deadpool, as the changes are obviously all based on the original concept of “What if Spider-Man was a sort of bad guy?,” as the “Merc With a Mouth” was doing Spidey-esque wise cracks right from the get go, but the more over-the-top sense of humor that we tend to think of with regards to Deadpool didn’t really come into focus until the Joe Kelly issues, but even there, people forget how much of what we think about modern Deadpool developed in the run AFTER Joe Kelly’s!
PRIEST WAS THE FIRST WRITER TO MAKE BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL A SOMEWHAT REGULAR THING FOR DEADPOOL
It was a long ways into Deadpool’s series before he first broke the fourth wall (unless you count his Wizard Deadpool #0 issue – that issue was all about breaking the fourth wall but it is unclear if that was intended to be part of Marvel continuity at the time or not).
The first notable time that Deadpool broke the fourth wall within established Marvel continuity was in Deadpool #28 (by Joe Kelly, Pete Woods and Walden Wong), where Deadpool runs into his old buddy, Bullseye, who is trying to kill a woman who Deadpool seems to find reeeeeeeeeally familiar. Earlier in Kelly’s run, there was a time when Deadpool was dealing with some serious life issues and so he spent an issue teaming up with Bullseye where they talked about life while killing people. It was a really good issue. So it was notable to see Bullseye in the book again. When they run into each other, Bullseye asks when they last saw each other and Deadpool breaks the fourth wall in answering that it was in Deadpool #16. It was a slight bit of breakage and Bullseye doesn’t react to it.
Okay, so Kelly leaves the series with Deadpool #33. The end of the issue shows Deadpool ostensibly dying and walking off into the sunset with Death herself (Kelly had to prepare for the book being canceled a couple of times and when #33 turned out to NOT be the last issue, Kelly was still done with the book by that point and treated it as a final issue regardless).
So new writer Christopher Priest plays with that idea by having Deadpool enter in the “hell” of comic book characters whose books had been written by Priest right before they were canceled…
Obviously, it turns out to be a dream as Deadpool works his way back to life and he finds himself in a tube being studied by a scientist (art by Paco Medina) and here, Deadpool breaks the fourth wall in obvious fashion, by far the most obvious fashion that he had ever done to that point in time…
That scientist turned out to be Loki in disguise and the Norse God of Mischief revealed that he was Deadpool’s FATHER! Loki also had a plan for Deadpool taking his proper place in the Asgardian pantheon by, well, by stealing Thor’s hammer!
IF DEADPOOL BE WORTHY?
It all went down in Deadpool #37 (by Priest, Jim Calafiore and Mark McKenna), when Loki took Death hostage and convinced Deadpool to put together a trap for Thor. At the time, Thor’s human identity was an EMT named Jake Olsen. Deadpool’s trap separated Thor from his hammer long enough that he turned back into Olsen and Deadpool then took advantage of the chaos to grab the hammer…
Deadpool then transformed into a version of Thor!
Being Deadpool, he then went flying around and taking advantage of his new powers to creep on women in high rise buildings (and ask for Gray Poupon, which was an old joke THEN, so imagine how old it is now over 20 years later!), get some Taco Bell and save Michael Jackson’s animals…
However, when Deadpool then tried to gain access to Avengers Mansion (and its bathroom) by virtue of being Thor, he was denied entry and Thor/Olsen showed up…
Note that Deadpool is maintaining his fourth wall deal by continuing to insist that this is all a story written by an outside writer.
Deadpool and Olsen were both transported to Loki’s headquarters where Olsen was kept captive in the same chamber that Deadpool was in the above pages and they all learned the charade, as Loki created a fake version of Mjolnir and disguised the real Mjolnir, thus making Olsen/Thor believe that the one that Deadpool picked up WAS the real one (and he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t able to wield it). After Deadpool turned on Loki and rescued both Olsen AND Lady Death, Olsen/Thor found the disguised original Mjolnir and transformed into the real Thor.
Deadpool was hoping that he could keep the fake hammer, but Thor responded by pounding him with BOTH hammers!
The issue then ended with Deadpool learning that his erstwhile “father,” Loki, had actually placed a curse on him that transformed Deadpool’s appearance underneath the mask but, well, we’ll talk about that incident in the future (suffice it to say that Deadpool suddenly had all of the right moves, if you know what I mean).
If anyone has a suggestion for a future I Love Ya But You’re Strange, please drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com
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