Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe

When I was younger (we won’t get into the age of things here) I read more of the main stream super hero comics than I do now. This was a time before the birth of Darkhorse comics and a number of the others that have come around now. But then back then it was pretty much what our choices were, Marvel and their heroes or DC and their heroes. Unless you were a dweeb that read Archie Comics. And of course there were the newspaper comics, but now I am getting side tracked so back to the thoughts for today…

So yeah, back when I was reading about super heroes there was a line from Marvel that come out every now and then called What If. In those comics the writers and artists would pose questions about various decisions the characters made or the whims of the artists themselves. It was in these comics that we were given the greatness that was Spiderham and Peter Porker, among a number of other fun things. I don’t know when exactly they stopped with this line of comics but every now and then they bring back the idea of it all.

Which brings us to the thoughts of today. I picked up the graphic novel of Deadpool Kills the Marvel universe (Marvel 2012, Cullen Bunn and Dalibor Talajic). This story is an homage to the fun and oddity of those old What If comics. Overall, the story is exactly what the title predicts. Through a bit of story trickery Deadpool goes through and slaughters the entire Marvel universe. And yet it is so much more than that.

Through many of the deaths we see moments that make no sense and would be highly improbable. Especially, the moments where Deadpool is killed in ways he would not be able to regenerate from. But it fits because he is the anti-hero of the story and he is on a larger mission.

The part that stood out for me though, was the moments where they broke the fourth wall. The first of course, came with the use of Uatu the Watcher. In the old what if comics this character had often been used in an homage to Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone. Of course, it became a layer of odd breaks in the fourth wall when he was killed while talking to the reader and Deadpool questioned who he had been talking too, all the while Deadpool is also talking to the reader.

That becomes part of the charm of this absurd storyline. The entirety of it is a bit of the storytellers completely losing control of the character and the world itself paying the price for it.

Essentially, this was a nice romp through a bizarre storyline. For those who have grown up through the different lives of Marvel heroes and the changes in the comics it is a step through some nostalgia and an opportunity to just see a bunch of impossible destruction. It is worth an afternoon of light reading.

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