Oh My God... I’m doing a comic book review.

Hello kids and welcome back to Das Hat’s little corner of the interwebs. Today we will be talking about a fun little four issue romp entitled Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe.

I do so love alternate reality one-offs because they allow writers to really cut loose with established characters. The thought of the day with these four issues was: “What if Deadpool finally snapped?” Now let’s face it, Wade’s always been a bit off his rocker but when we say ‘snapped’ we mean really gone off the deep end. Checked into a ‘new style’ mental institution by the X-men, of course not all is as it seems and so the doctor begins torturing our hero and his text boxes in a bid to break down his psyche into something he can easily control for his own gain. After a great page of Wade’s text boxes screaming in pain as those parts of his fractured psyche are killed a new voice comes to the fore. Without the enabling jokester personalities of his usual boxes, and a new, far more bloodthirsty voice in his cranium, Deadpool takes it on himself to butcher his way through every main hero and villain he can get his hands on.

In all honesty, the first two issues are kind of boring. Sure watching heroes like Spiderman and the whole of the Avengers get trumped by the Merc with a Mouth is fun as are his somewhat inventive ways of doing away with troublesome heroes like Luke Cage or getting the drop on the whole of them; lot of bang but not much in terms of substance. The choice of the fallen heroes loved ones to hire Taskmaster to take out Wade makes sense since Taskmaster has the fighting skills of nearly every hero rolled into one; he just lacks their superhuman abilities.

Then you hit issue three.

Oh. My. God.

Basically Wade has Charles Xavier tied to a chair and being tortured until he calls for the X-men. They of course fall into Wade’s trap and again its very interesting to see how he deals with the most problematic members of the team (Kitty Pryde was especially good) but we finally see exactly what the new voice in his head is all about. As an audience we know that Deadpool knows that he is a comic book character. He breaks the fourth wall regularly in his books and his games but consider what things would be like if you were the only one in the world who knew definitively that god created all of mankind just to be his personal gag reel, that all our achievements, trials, heartaches, joys and fury were just to entertain something bigger than us. Seriously mull this over for a minute or so and try to think what it would be like to live in a world where you are the only one who knows that cancer and AIDS is cosmically akin to “Knock, Knock”

Sounds pretty horrible right? Well that is Deadpool’s reality. The new voice in his head is essentially the level of pissed off one would be given that situation and it’s pushing Deadpool to break the cycle. With his X-men dead Wade lets Xavier read his thoughts and Xavier realizes the truth about their world. That Wade is right and that his lifelong struggle to unite Mutants and Humans, the pain he’s endured, the people he has loved, the losses he has suffered, the friends he’s had to fight and bury... all of it was to make five bucks an issue. He promptly goes brain dead.

Really the only thing I hold against this comic is the way it deals with the alpha and omega level threats. Deadpool kills literally EVERYONE and in panels we see beings of cosmic power like Silver Surfer and Thanos floating dead in space. These are beings that have taken on teams like the Fantastic Four and the whole of the Avengers and won. It feels a step too far.

While a good bit darker and less funny than the standard fare from the land of the Merc with a Mouth, Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe is nonetheless an enjoyable and entertaining read.