Deadpool / Wolverine #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
DEADPOOL / WOLVERINE #1
“The Secret Lives”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colour artist: Guru-eFX
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Mark Basso
Well goodness, this is just like old times, isn’t it? This is in fact the first Deadpool / Wolverine book… with that specific combination of words in the title. In the last year alone, we’ve had the miniseries Deadpool & Wolverine: WWIII, the Infinity Comic Deadpool vs Wolverine: Slash ‘Em Up and the back-up serial Weapon X-Traction. Fortunately, this issue shipped on 1 January 2025, and so we can say with confidence that it is at least the first Deadpool & Wolverine series of the year.
You’ll be pleased to hear that this is not an issue that calls for much annotation, which would, after all, rather miss the point of publishing a Deadpool / Wolverine book.
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE
The book seems to be going with the established routine where Deadpool wants to be best friends and Wolverine wants the annoying guy to go away. However, as soon as he steals Sven Sunguard’s metal teeth (see below), Deadpool falls under some sort of influence, and starts acting weird – which is to say, quietly and rationally. This version of Deadpool thinks that Wolverine will be under the same influence and assumes that Wolverine already knows the mission they’re supposed to be carrying out together. This out of character behaviour is what motivates Wolverine to stick around. (A very similar plot device was used in WWIII, but ssshhhh.)
The outside influence seems to be due to nanites, and it looks as though they were meant to activate and trigger Deadpool and Wolverine to go carry out a mission for Stryfe (again, see below). Since they apparently don’t get purged by healing factors, an obvious explanation would be that any historic latent nanite infection that Wolverine might have suffered would have been lost during one of his many Krakoan-era resurrections.
Wolverine’s healing factor now takes several hours to put him back together after he falls out of an aircraft, which seems like it’s been dialled back a bit from recent years. I’m all for that.
VILLAINS
The Nordic Mob are exactly what they sound like, and they’ve gathered to attend the funeral of patriarch Sven Sunguard. Sunguard has metal teeth allegedly made from “the melted-down and reforged sword of legendary Viking Erik the Red”. Erik the Red was actually more of an explorer than a warrior, but sure, I guess he probably had a sword too.
The O*N*E probably count as villains given their role in X-Men, but the first two agents in this issue, Andy and Shaun, are just low-ranking guys who’ve been sent to catalogue crates full of “mutie records” at a dilapidated S.H.I.E.L.D. warehouse. The “records” actually seem to be crates full of mutant-related objects. In the time-honoured tradition of such characters, Andy and Shaun think that if there’s a cryogenic storage facility kept inside an adamntium chest which is sealed in concrete, wrapped in chains and held in a crate marked DO NOT OPEN, it must be a really good idea to open it. They die.
Maverick is now working for O*N*E, because why not?
Stryfe is the villain controlling Deadpool – the suggestion seems to be that the teeth are just a coincidence and that Deadpool fell under Stryfe’s influence once O*N*E accidentally released him. Given Stryfe’s convoluted personal timeline, it’s hard to say what he was doing “last” – in publishing terms, we last saw him in Marauders vol 2, when he was way back at the dawn of life on Earth. On the face of it, Stryfe’s plan seems to involve committing mass slaughter for reasons yet to be explained.
Cassara’s Stryfe wears a somewhat more restrained version of his armour, and no helmet. Helpfully, he’s bald, so you can tell him apart from Cable.
Deadpool thinks that, as mind-controlled soldiers, he and Wolverine are “X-Cutioners” – presumably a reference to the “X-Cutioner’s Song” crossover from 1992, in which Stryfe was the major villain. A little more alarmingly, the hidden base to which Deadpool takes Wolverine includes a vial marked “Legacy: Reborn”. That’s presumably a reference to the Legacy Virus, which Stryfe released at the end of “X-Cutioner’s Song”. Wolverine pockets the vial.
Oh no, Erik the Red was absolutely a warrior, a proper pagan nutter who was driven to explore after getting outlawed in Iceland for killing a bunch of people on two different occasions.
I’m not sure you’d technically call him a “warrior”, as he was initially a farmer by trade, and while he was a violent nutter, the people he killed weren’t exactly any better.
One of the people he killed was someone who had murdered slaves of Erik the Red first. Another man he killed on the first occasion was known as “the Dueller”, so you know, probably not the most level-headed of people.
The second occasion involved a family feud, and the people killed by Erik the Red were killed in self-defence.
Stryfe makes sense as a villain for this series because he has a history with both Deadpool and Maverick. Stryfe forced Deadpool to kill four people for him by threatening his family. One of those was Cable’s reporter friend Irene Merryweather but Cable was unable to undo her death using time travel.
As for Maverick, when Stryfe unleashed the Legacy Virus in the 1990s, Maverick was infected for years and nearly died. He was only saved by some telepathic lady who wanted revenge on Sabretooth.
In fairness, there is a good reason for this series to exist. Breevort seems to want to revitalize the X-Men’s rogues gallery after the Krakoan Age. Part of this involves bringing back old villains like Trevor Fitzroy, Sugar Man and Cassandra Nova and making them major threats again. But another goal seems to have been revamping Stryfe. The problem is that Joe Casey, who’s writing Cable’s main book, Weapon X-Men, seems to want to use threats from the larger Marvel Universe. A Deadpool/ Wolverine series is a good book to revamp Stryfe in because, as mentioned above, Stryfe has history with both Deadpool and Maverick.
That being said, it is odd that these villains are not appearing in their nemesis’s books. Fitzroy is Bishop’s nemesis but he fought an X-Men team led by Magik. Stryfe is appearing here instead of a Cable book. What’s next- Kwannon fights her longtime nemesis S’ym?
Note that BOTH Cassandra Nova and Stryfe made it back to the present from the Threshold past. Which makes it funny that Kitty and Emma thought it was a secure place to strand a villain.
In Timeslide, Bronze showed Cable and Bishop a list of future events and one of them was “A Time of Strife”. That obviously refers to this story.
“This is in fact the first Deadpool / Wolverine book… with that specific combination of words in the title. In the last year alone, we’ve had the miniseries Deadpool & Wolverine: WWIII, the Infinity Comic Deadpool vs Wolverine: Slash ‘Em Up and the back-up serial Weapon X-Traction. Fortunately, this issue shipped on 1 January 2025, and so we can say with confidence that it is at least the first Deadpool & Wolverine series of the year.”
“In the time-honoured tradition of such characters, Andy and Shaun think that if there’s a cryogenic storage facility kept inside an adamntium chest which is sealed in concrete, wrapped in chains and held in a crate marked DO NOT OPEN, it must be a really good idea to open it. They die.”
I totally come here for the deadpan snark. Better than reading the actual book. Especially with Percy at the wheel.
Well you know, when you think “farmer” you think of a bloke with a pitchfork and a bit of straw in his mouth. What Erik was, was a moneyed landowner, and the son of a moneyed landowner. Medieval moneyed landowners were expected to be warriors, trained from youth, and Erik was quite good at killing.
Sorry. That Deadpool guy, huh? He’ll be a hit with the kids and no doubt.
Certainly, the farmers knew how to fight. I think we’re just thinking of the term “warrior” differently. I think of the term warrior in the sense of a caste system. Iceland’s culture was different during the time that Erik the Red lived, without a centralized authority. They had a chieftain system where landowners who pledged support to a particular chieftain were expected to support their chieftain in his feuds, but there wasn’t a particular warrior caste in Iceland during that period of Iceland’s history.
I realize that in other Scandinavian societies members of the warrior caste were often also farmers when not at war, but the Icelandic system was still different than the other Scandinavian lands until it was subjugated by Norway.