Deadpool will soon be dead in his own series, much to the chagrin of comic shop owners.
Before we start, let me be clear on a couple of things. First of all, I don't believe it would be a good idea, nor do I want, Marvel Comics to match everything going on in the MCU. The films are their own thing, and that's fine. But I do believe that synergy between Marvel movies and comics isn't a bad thing. Why wouldn't you want people leaving a theater who might now have an interest in Marvel superheroes to come into a comic book shop and find books that at least resemble what they just saw on the silver screen?
Secondly, I realize that the hits at the box office have never translated to more comic book readers. However, I will make this argument: as a longtime comic book reader, I know that I will feel a sense of excitement after watching a good Marvel or DC film and want to head to my LCS to pick something up featuring whichever hero I just watched. I believe there are many comic book fans who feel similarly, and that even if the average person on the street might not rush out to by a copy of Captain America after watching The Avengers, I think that among existing comic book readers these films can and do drive engagement.
We can argue all day about how comic book companies suck at getting their products into the hands of readers, but my focus right now is on the two points above. And there's no greater example of Marvel Comics being painfully tone deaf than word that Ellie Comacho is going to be taking on the "mantle" of her father, Deadpool. I challenge anyone outside of the most dedicated of comic book nerds to even tell me who Ellie Comacho is without first googling her name. No one knows who this is, and worse, no one cares. I have zero interest in Deadpool's daughter. Worse, anyone leaving Deadpool & Wolverine for the third time doesn't care about Deadpool's daughter, either.
Also, can we stop pretending that every superhero identity is a "mantle" with a "legacy" to be carried on? The name Deadpool isn't some cool thing Wade came up with while sitting around in his Merc Mobile. It's a branding, of the red, hot metal variety. It's a name he earned when he escaped the Workshop after he killed Francis. It represents all of the other test subjects, including his friend Worm, that died there. That isn't a mantle. It's a scar, and scars don't transfer. It's no different than Wolverine, which isn't a mantle, either. In his case, the origin (no pun intended) has changed or been added to over time, but it's always borne from his long, colorful history. A history filled with tragedy, pain, and blood—hardly the sort of thing you happily pass on to someone else.
This latest Deadpool series by writer Cody Ziglar already isn't something most readers are eagerly anticipating each month in their LCS, but one would assume there to be at least a smidge of interest in checking it out after the character's latest movie crossed the billion dollar mark at the global box office. Instead, Marvel is offering fans a reboot that they didn't ask for, don't want, and won't read. If in six months time after issue seven of Deadpool hits comic book shops (which I promise, in fairness, to review) Ellie's run has become the stuff of legend and is selling like hotcakes, I will eat my words. But I legitimately don't believe it will make even a blip on the radar beyond that first issue, and that's if Marvel is lucky.
The tragedy is that as a consumer, I can walk away from this stuff when I see it on the stands. Comic book shop owners, however, don't have that luxury. They have no other choice but to sell what Marvel and DC publish, and since 2016 it's been a veritable wave of sewage month after month. Yes, there are some genuinely good comic books to be found during that stretch, but largely the past eight years has been a meltdown of epic proportions. Worse still, so-called mainstream comic book journalists work overtime to perpetuate false narratives about how poor sales are. If you say otherwise and don't toe the line, you're targeted with hit pieces or called every name under the sun.
I'm going to do a Longbox Review on this soon, but the facsimile issue of Deadpool #1 by Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness from 1997 recently came out. Flipping through it and giving it a read for the first time in a few years, I was struck by the mind-blowing quality of the thing. McGuinness's art is incredibly, and Joe Kelly basically made Wade his own with that seminal run. If this, today, was the first issue of the series instead of whatever Ziglar and Marvel produced for the character's latest relaunch, it would be a book that has fans talking and adding it to their pull lists.
Instead, fans are getting Ellie Comacho—well, all twelve of them will, at any rate. Everyone else will be dipping into back issues. These days. Marvel gives fans what it wants, not what the fans want, which seems like a pretty strange way to run a business.
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