Deadpool Kills Deadpool #4 (Marvel)

(via Comic Book Data Base)

writer: Cullen Bunn

artist: Salva Espin

I don't get Deadpool.  There, I said it.

I mean, I get Deadpool.  He's Marvel's officially sanctioned representative of irreverence.  If you want to read a comic that takes superheroes about as seriously as every other scene in The Avengers, then this is your guy.  He's been a cult star in the making for years.  He even showed up in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and was long rumored to have a spin-off of his own in the works.  

It never materialized.  

I'm going to argue that the reason was pretty clear: Deadpool means absolutely nothing except to comic book geeks, and he only means something to comic book geeks who apparently love a character who has no point except to be a complete lunatic.  In an X-Men context, he makes the least sense of all.  Tellingly, the last time the comics tried to make that happen was a long time ago, when he was inexplicably paired with Cable for years.

He would make much more sense in an Avengers context, especially one that, like a lot of recent Avengers comics, seems like it was written directly for fans of the movie.  I would read the Deadpool out of a Brian Michael Bendis Deadpool comic.  That's probably the only way I'd deliberately read a Deadpool comic.  This was, along with a number of other comics I've been writing about here recently, part of a grab bag.  I did not knowingly purchase a Deadpool comic.  Why would I?

This comic is a good reason to ask that question.  Even if I had read the three previous issues, I'm certain I still would not know the answer.  In the mind of Deadpool fans, the character is a legend.  There have been so many random Deadpool adventures in the past few years, you'd think Marvel thought so, too, but I would assume it's more a case of striking while the brand is hot.  Because once it cools, this guy will once again slip into obscurity.  Can't we just Howard the Duck him already?

Basically, like a lot of those other comics, Deadpool only exists in this story to play off other stories, because there's no story potential any writer has found yet in the character otherwise.  This is like the event book of all meaningless event books, Deadpool battling countless alternate versions of himself.  Countless Deadpools spouting countless versions of the same gibberish.

If it's supposed to be funny, I don't see the humor.

The writer is Cullen Bunn, who has for a few years now been one of the indy writers with the biggest buzz around him, thanks to his Oni series The Sixth Gun.  I haven't read it.  I never really found a compelling reason to, other than that there is constant buzz around it, and thus more work for Bunn elsewhere, like in this comic.  But if Deadpool Kills Deadpool is any indication, I don't think I've been missing anything.