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Every character has a shtick, or some kind of identifying piece to let you know that he is not the same person that another is, and that he is his own person. Marvel, for all of the things I don’t like about it, is a great example this sort of thing– especially Stan Lee’s creations. Each character is expressly unique and represents itself in such a way that you know who this character is. You know who Spider-Man is, you know Daredevil, The Hulk, The Fantastic Four, all of the powerhouse characters that Kirby and Lee and Ditko and all of the others worked to create, ushering in an Age in comics that has yet to be passed, really.

For all of my bitching of the Silver Age, Stan Lee and his co-workers were brilliant and deserve my respect.

But, not everyone is Stan Lee, or Jack Kirby.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, people looked upon the works of Alan Moore and Frank Miller, seeing the dark worlds they created for their comic books– a stark, almost jarring contrast to the more optimistic-in-appearance Silver Age of the youth of readers and possibly some writers. This also brought along Rob Liefeld, who has been considered one of the worst artists in comic books. I’m not saying this to incite anything, however, I’ve seen more website AGAINST Liefeld and his art style than I have FOR them.

Good things, however, have come from Liefeld’s work, depending on who you are. He may have ushered in the Age of Pouches, he is also the creator of the main fellow I started this about: Deadpool.

Deadpool was created in Liefeld’s brain some time ago, and was brought about as a mercenary and antagonist to another of Liefeld’s creations, Cable. I’m not going to sit here and spend the entire time rambling on about how much I dislike Liefeld and the things he’s done, because these two characters are evidence that he obviously had a FEW good ideas. In that he created the characters.

The Deadpool of Liefeld was not the Deadpool we know today. The Deadpool was just an antagonist. It wasn’t until Deadpool’s first major series that we really got a feel for the character as he is today. The character established then, as what I was talking about earlier, with specific aspects. The character, then, became the funny, yet clearly emotionally disturbed and bothered man who had gone through an enormous amount of trauma in his life.

His humor, or, at least, the eccentricities that were the result of the horrors he experienced at Weapon X, became a staple of who he was. When you thought of Deadpool you thought of a “wise-cracking” mercenary who talked about as much as Spider-Man, but was more crude in what he talked about, and seemed to be rather skilled with all of the impossibly situated swords and guns on him.

The early books also featured another trait of Deadpool’s– that is his breaking of the fourth wall, though sometimes it was done in a manner that presented itself without being entirely too obvious. This was done in a particular manner, and the writers did not hinge the character on it. Instead they focused on how he was, and the problems that he had developed. There was an issue in particular where we learn that Deadpool’s problems arise from, as I said, the traumas induced in Weapon X.

Unlike Wolverine, and others, Deadpool’s healing factor is synthetic, and was created to combat the cancer that had infected him. However, the factor itself bonded with him, causing him to have the various blisters and perpetually scarred features that are also part of the character. This, combined with other things, snapped his mind and drove him to the point he was at.

This characteristic, perhaps because of the tragedy in an otherwise comical character, was shifted in the series “Cable and Deadpool”– which took place after “Agent X”.

“Cable and Deadpool” sought to re-invent Deadpool a little bit. He didn’t break the fourth wall as much, only doing, notably, in a battle with T-Ray where he points out how poor a particular sound effect appeared. Deadpool’s insanity was also redesigned, perhaps for to make it better. He was, still, a man with cancer who was given a healing factor to deal with that. However, it was now the healing factor itself that made him crazy, not the events that were a part of it. Deadpool had become crazy because his mind was in a constant state of flux, and he was not actually able to have a consistent thought.

This series wrote Deadpool in a nice way. The character didn’t focus on his own issues, though he was little more than a comic relief character and his own abilities not taken seriously by the majority of the people. But this has always been the case. However, the desire for the story to be mostly humorous was certainly part of the reason why this seemed to be exacerbated. The writing for Deadpool expressed a person who was, decidedly, off-kilter without being a complete joke. Yeah, he would kind of wander off, and be silly, but he could be serious and there were a few times where you genuinely felt sorry for the guy.

Of course, that was until he showed up in “Wolverine”. Truth be told, I try to avoid the “Wolverine” series because the guy is in every goddamn Marvel book as it is, and I don’t like the character that much. However, I had learned that Deadpool was going to be featured in an arc, so I decided to give it a shot.

In stark contrast to “Cable and Deadpool”, the story arc featured a Deadpool who seemed to be a little worse for wear. As opposed to audible first-person narrative which only happened sporadically. This Deadpool featured two different caption boxes that he would often argue with, one of them more aware of his existence as a comic book characters than the others.

I felt like this was a major step backward for the character, but that’s just me being critical.

This concept of two boxes was also brought in to Deadpool’s current series, which feels much like a continuation of the “Wolverine” arc instead of any kind of real evolution of the character. It’s almost like a step back.

I know I’m just being a picky little bastard when it comes to these things, considering each character changes even slightly when placed under a different writer, but, while I love Deadpool, I just feel like the character should move past winking at the camera and only occasionally remembering that he does things like kill people for money and has generally had a horrible horrible life. I’m not saying do away with the funny, no, I’m saying that it could at least be curbed a bit so the character doesn’t end more shallow (which is so clumsy to say) and become something of a background character that’s ultimately forgotten.

And don’t even get me started on Ultimate Deadpool.