‘Deadpool’ lively and likeable

PERHAPS even more impressive than mutant regenerative abilities or ninja-level skills with katana blades, Deadpool has one superpower that now seems to stand above the rest:

The “Merc with a mouth” somehow survived the 1990s.

This from a character who is so connected to one of that decade’s best moments: his co-creator, Rob Liefeld, was a crucial factor in the founding of Image Comics.

So surely few might have guessed that when Deadpool debuted on Marvel’s New Mutants No 98 back in 1991, sharing a cover with Cable (arguably one of the most popular X-Men/Force characters of the 1990s), this red- and black- clad mercenary would be poised today for a movie franchise.

Yet just days from the highly anticipated release of Deadpool, you can look closely and see that not much has changed when comparing the superbad/not-really-agood-guy suit that Ryan Reynolds now flaunts with the suit first spotted in the comics a quarter-century ago.

Ah, comics in the 1990s. Red and Blue Superman. Batman gets his back broken (and unlike Christian Bale’s version, he doesn’t come back in time and is replaced with an iron-suited psychopath).

Superboy wore a leather jacket and shades – and not his emotions on his sleeve, as he does in the Young Justice cartoons. SpiderMan’s clone situation was so severely confusing and maddening – well, let’s not even go there.

Elsewhere from that decade: Night Thrasher and the New Warriors? Gone. Does anyone know what happened to Darkhawk?

A whole lot of good came out of comics in the 1990s, but there was an embarrassment of “meh” moments, to be sure. So just how did Deadpool survive being born in an era of hologram covers – and the promise that you could have a collector’s item in your hand (yeah, right) because the covers themselves claimed they were collector’s items? How did Deadpool emerge from the decade that gave us the 100th issue of Web of Spider-Man and all that foil-cover glory?

Not many comic-book characters jump from the page to the big screen untouched, with arguably only Spider-Man being the exception. Batman’s and Superman’s trunks have even been taken away before their forthcoming big-screen battle.

Yet there’s something about the classic look of Deadpool that still works today.

Given the roll of the dice that this movie is, 20th Century Fox risked alienating the fanboys even before the first trailer hit if Deadpool didn’t look like Deadpool.

In the early 1990s, when Image Comics was aiming to re-invent what a comic-book character could look like, Deadpool gave Marvel a character that didn’t look as if he were tied to the past.

Deadpool was always a little cooler-looking than whomever he shared a comic panel with. And he had a likeably witty, sarcastic personality that contrasted with his assassin’s costuming. The character emerged as unconventional, but that seems to have worked in his favour, since Deadpool is still here.

Also worth noting: Marvel Studios doesn’t own the Deadpool film rights (Fox again benefits from its X-clusive film rights).

But given the character’s popularity, Marvel Comics is prompted to keep multiple Deadpool titles in print.

And in 2016, Deadpool now has so much commercial swagger, he has even made it cool for Ryan Reynolds to be in a comic-book movie again.

What other comic character could do that? – Washington Post

AUTHENTIC: Deadpool’s cinematic style isn’t far from his 1991 look in his comic-book debut.