Deadpool by Joe Kelly: The Complete Collection Vol. 1

Deadpool (1997) #0, 12-20

by Joe Kelly, Stan Lee (Contributor), Ed McGuinness (Illustrator)

Collects Deadpool (1997) #1-11, -1; Daredevil/Deadpool Annual '97; Amazing Spider-Man (1963) #47.

Joe Kelly’s hilarious, character-defining run on Deadpool begins here! Wade Wilson is a mercenary with a mouth, willing to work for whoever pays the bills. But the mysterious Landau, Luckman & Lake Corporation believes he can be a hero — though Blind Al, Deadpool’s elderly roommate-slash-prisoner, might not agree. Wade takes on the Taskmaster — but when his healing factor fails, the only thing that will juice it up is the Hulk’s blood! As Wade’s old rival T-Ray nurses a dangerous grudge, Deadpool falls in with Typhoid Mary — bringing him into conflict with Daredevil! And can Deadpool and Blind Al escape the past when they’re hurled backwards into the pages of a Silver Age Spider-Man story?!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Marvel, Comic Book, Science Fiction

417 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 6, 2019

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

Reviews

[Bradley]

Excepting Star Wars comics this is my first Marvel comic…Ever. I think.

Deadpool probably wasn’t the wisest choice. I enjoy the cartoony art style which matches Wades eccentric character. Reminds me of Bone. There’s not a lot to unpack. Silly, whacky in more ways than one. This collection is just that. It’s not a total narrative, more like snippets of Deadpool being Deadpool in various ways.

[Maryann · Rating 2 out of 5]

My 2nd DNF of the year. Loan ended and I could not be arsed to renew it. Hated the obscenely enormous muscles, was nowhere near as funny as expected. Not for me.

[Joe Bogue · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars. This 12 issue arc is the most quintessential 90s thing I've ever read.

[Edward Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joe Kelly really perfected Deadpool in these early stories which I haven't read for over twenty years!

[whimsicalmeerkat · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK, let's start with biases, so we can get that out of the way. I did not grow up reading comics. The first ones I read were Miracleman in my mid-twenties, and the first mainstream one I ever read was the issue in the original Marvel Civil War where Iron Man killed Captain America. I tore through Alan Moore's and Neil Gaiman's works. The Sandman is one of my favorite books, period. In fact, until the last year or so, the only mainstream comics I had read were the original Civil War. Enough about other comics though.

Prior to late last year, my only encounters with Deadpool were the movies, and the handful of issues in the Civil War arc. Then I was introduced to Spideypool (Spider-Man/Deadpool) fan fiction, tore through the team up comics, and decided I wanted more of Deadpool. Some perusing of the many lists on how to get into the character led me here, to Deadpool by Joe Kelly.

I have to say, I was not prepared for late nineties comics, because they are A Thing. I think it is one thing to know how much awareness and cultural discourse has changed over the course of the past 24 years, but seeing it spilled out over the colorful pages of comics is something else entirely. I knew Deadpool had moved from villain to anti-hero at the best of times to his current status as a flawed-but-trying sometimes hero over the 30 years of the character's existence, so I was expecting the violence and mayhem. I knew the humor was going to play less of a role. I knew the treatment of women in comics had changed over time. I still was not prepared.

Let's take Typhoid Mary. Vicious murderess, pretty straightforward villain, right? Except it's not straightforward, or at least it doesn't start out that way. Joe Kelly introduces her in a complicated way. She has dissociative identity disorder, not that it would have been called that even in a clinical setting at that time, and hires Deadpool to kill her and to break her out. Instead, through a somewhat hazy series of fumbles, he kills off two of her identities, leaving only the evil one, the Typhoid Mary one. After the beginning that's behind the spoiler tag, she becomes much less interesting than she could have been. The character essentially has one dimension. She wants to viciously and cruelly torture and murder every man who ever wronged her. I know, I know. Comics. A lot of people would say they aren't the place to go for character development. I would argue otherwise, especially because Deadpool does get developed. He is allowed to have complexity and layers, but Mary is not. Even at the point where we find out her origin story, it's framed in the context of Daredevil's involvement and the impact it had on him.

I don't have enough familiarity with Joe Kelly or the era to say how much of the women in this series being one-dimensional was the author or the time, but I definitely wanted more. I haven't decided yet if I am going to read the next volume of this collection. Kelly's part of SM/DP was excellent, so I might give it a go. Overall though? I don't think I would recommend this as a starting point for the current day reader.

Don't even get me started on the muscles and her spiky pauldron things.

[Alex Sarll]

Joe Kelly's run is generally taken as the point where Deadpool became the character we know today, moving from yet another Liefeld badass with too many pouches to a wisecracking, fourth-wall-breaking force of chaos. Certainly, there's stuff here that's in the films and which I hadn't realised was taken directly from the comics, like his bar buddy Weasel; his romance with Vanessa; and his blind flatmate Al (although it's worth noting that, as scabrous as the films may seem, in all three cases the relationship is much fluffier on screen than it is here). In places it can get pretty vicious, and not in the comedy violence way the character has generally been used recently; there's a whole Typhoid Mary plot in which Wade's attempt to rescue her leads to tons of innocents dead, and she's trying to use this to show he isn't a hero, but mainly it just reminds me of how much I hate the Batman/Joker dynamic, without that sort of parallel ever being played up fully enough to feel deliberate. In general, there's a lot of disjointed plotting which can't always be excused by the lead being bonkers, especially when it comes to a subplot running throughout with people from the future wanting him to be a messiah, which (at least in these issues) doesn't ever really cohere. Most of all, compared to what the character has since become, the fourth wall breaks here feel very much like prototypes when set against the Daniel Way run which reintroduced the character for the 21st century, or the more recent Spider-Man/Deadpool (some of which was written by Kelly too, of course). Don't get me wrong – it's not the purely historical interest of reading eg Stan Lee's creaking attempts at jokes for Spidey, and there were definitely smiles raised. Then too, I think a lot of the disconnect for me may have been because for the most part it's drawn by Es McGuiness, and I don't especially like his art, especially with this bright, flat colouring, which can often makes the story look like it's being acted out by He-Man toys. But there's plenty of stuff here which, with hindsight, was never going to last (ah, Deadpool's healing factor getting dialled back as a way to ensure some kind of jeopardy is possible? Good luck with that), or can clearly be seen as transitional from his X-Force days (a slightly halfhearted will-they-won't-they/redemption plot with Siryn), so I was already inclining to give this the benefit of the doubt and read another volume before I got to the last issue collected here. Which is the one that had got me sold on attempting this run in the first place, and is an absolute hoot, sending Deadpool and Al back in time to muck up a sixties Spidey comic by means of redrawn and re-captioned panels. This, finally, is the level of ridiculousness I expect from a Deadpool comic.

[Quill · Rating 2 out of 5]

This genuinely sucks for the vast majority of the collection. The jokes do not land, the references are incredibly dated, and the few times it seems like things might finally gel, the punches get pulled. Beyond that, it is misogynistic, transphobic, and generally offensive. The last two issues in the collection are certainly the highlights, involving a time travel/alternate dimension trip that is both really funny and actually enjoyable. Overall, the Deadpool character as presented here is annoying and grating and only works well against a straight man, such as Daredevil or Big Al.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read the individual Deadpool comics that are in this last year, or maybe even 2018. He's funny, but it's a bit dated and there's so much text they take two or three times as long as it does to read a modern comic.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a perfect intro to comic Deadpool in prep for the third movie. Interesting to see how it is way less joke filled and semi serious than I thought it would be. Some things did not age well. But this was comics in the 90s. Will gladly read the 2nd volume

[Jipi Perreault · Rating 3 out of 5]

The humour can be dated but it's groing on me. The Spider-man crossover is worth the while.

[kpolacik · Rating 4 out of 5]

7++

[Elizzabez · Rating 2 out of 5]

not my favorite dp. i liked a few moments in the typhoid mary issues but the storyline before that and the one coming after i didn’t care for. and overall wade felt too tame.

[Takeshi · Rating 2 out of 5]

No niego la importancia de esta etapa en su momento pero creo que no ha envejecido bien. Por momentos bastante sosa.

[Ron Maskell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious and great artwork.

[Donald Krage · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really cool Deadpool is awesome

[Mariah]

Fun reads and looking forward to reading more Deadpool comics!