To those of you who are excited for the Deadpool movie, but have no idea who or what Marvel’s merc with the mouth is, allow me to explain a little bit. But before we get to what Deadpool is, a couple of things need to be explained. Deadpool is through-and-through a product of 1990s comics. Nineties comics were very, very different from what we see today. They were action packed, crazy, and previously established characters were severely changed. Common tropes for characters who appeared in the nineties were that they sported vests, LOTS of pouches, ridiculously huge guns (and swords), and really bad haircuts. Superman had a mullet, Spiderman was dealing with his own clone problems, and Thor looked like a rip-off of Super Saiyan Goku from Dragonball Z. Many new characters were created, most were never seen again but some survived this dark period of comic books. Spawn, Spider Man 2099, Bane, and Deadpool are still being written to this day.

So back to Deadpool. He first appeared in Marvel comics in The New Mutants #98 in the year 1991. He was created as a parody of DC comic’s premier assassin Deathstroke. Created by the infamous Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza, Deadpool quickly became one of Marvel’s top characters. Similar to Wolverine, Deadpool is in fact an amnesiac who has struggled with memory problems for years. Although pieces of his origin have been explained through the years, it has been established that his name is Wade Wilson (a parody of Deathstroke’s real name Slade Wilson) and he was in the Canadian military (that’s right, he’s Canadian). He was dishonorably discharged out of the Canadian military because of bad behavior. Soon after that he developed cancer. In an effort to try and cure his cancer he enlisted in the Weapon X program. The Weapon X program also gave Wolverine his metal skeleton, and Captain America his super powers. They experimented on him a lot and gave him Wolverine’s healing factor at the cost of his face – which was horribly disfigured. He was able to break out and lo and behold, Deadpool was born.

As Deadpool says in a trailer, his movie will be a different kind of superhero movie. Deadpool is not a superhero, he is an antihero. “What is an ‘antihero’” you ask, well an antihero is normally a hero with good intentions, but achieves their goals with more violent means. To give you an example, imagine two scenarios involving a bank robbery. In one scenario Spiderman saves the day, and in another Deadpool saves the day. Spiderman would not kill the robbers, he would simply tie them up and leave them for the cops. Deadpool would kill the robbers. Due to only having regenerative powers, (and like many of his nineties comic book counterparts,) Deadpool uses a series of guns and swords to achieve his “heroic” goals. Another thing you should know is Deadpool is, to quote Spiderman “Crazy town banana pants.” The experiments that were performed on Wade Wilson during his time in the Weapon X program drove him nuts. He is so crazy that he is aware that he is in a comic book. Because of this, he frequently breaks the fourth wall. He is so crazy that instead of having one internal monologue box, he has two -sometimes three! He is so crazy that he is literally in love with the physical manifestation of death, Mistress Death. Deadpool is so crazy that (in a non canonical story,) he once killed the Marvel universe and then killed the classic pieces of literature they were based on. So you can see, Deadpool is insane (but also funny).

So if you take nothing away from my babbling about Deadpool, Deadpool is like a combination of Spiderman’s humor (but worse), the skills of Snake Eyes, the powers of Wolverine (minus the claws and metal bones), and the brain of a 12 year-old.