Deadpool

OMG. You actually did it. You clicked on the “Lore” tab, and you’re taking the time to read my backstory. I can’t believe it! I’ve just been sitting here waiting and waiting and waiting for someone to show up so that I could tell them all about my zany interdimensional adventures and share my innermost feelings about —

Wait! No! Don’t you dare click the back button! I’ll make it worth your while! I promise! I’ll… I dunno… I’ll slip in a few Easter eggs about upcoming seasons! How’s that sound?

Whew. Thanks. Sorry if that came off as too desperate. It just gets kinda lonely here between matches… and a guy can only shake his sweet gyat in the Times Square lobby so many times before he just wants to dive into a collapsing timeline and end it all, y’know?

But enough of all that. You’re not my therapist. You’re a fan. More accurately, you’re a true fan. The kind who’s eager to connect all the dots between the ever-growing assemblage of characters who were plucked from across the Chronoverse to save reality by doing what no other heroes can: Stopping vehicles and capturing Mission Areas.

You came here for answers, so let’s kick this deep dive off with some easy ones. For starters, which version of Deadpool am I anyway? Am I the one from the comics? The movies? The ‘90s X-Men cartoon? Or maybe I’m that cheap bootleg action figure you found at the souvenir store in Koreatown? Nope! None of the above, Skippy! This Wade Wilson variant is 100% original!

Okay, maybe not 100%. After all, at my core I’m still the same loveable, wise-cracking mercenary with an enhanced healing factor that was given to me by the Weapon X program — a power which happens to be the only thing keeping my insanely aggressive cancer at bay. (No need to make unnecessary changes to an already perfect origin story, am I right?)

So, where did my path diverge from all the other ‘Pools across time and space then? I’ll be glad to tell you, but you’d better buckle up, buddy. It’s gonna be a wild ride!

Hold on. I forgot. You can’t buckle up. Because, for some unfathomable reason, school buses don’t have seat belts! And my primary mode of transportation currently happens to be an enchanted bus that I… let’s say, "borrowed"… from the fine folks at the Strange Academy a while back. What began as a joyride between dimensions eventually turned into one of the most dangerous missions I’ve ever taken on. (Other than that one time I got hired to trim the Hulk’s toenails.)

The trip started out great. I got to visit all the hottest alternate universes, from the Age of Apocalypse to that one with all the zombies. (Do not recommend!) But it wasn’t long before my magical mystery tour took a sharp and unexpected turn. While I was hanging with Spider-Ham in the dimension where everyone is an anthropomorphic animal, reality started to go on the fritz. As cute, furry little heroes started to blink out of existence before my eyes, all I could do was leap into the bus and hit the gas. I barely escaped… and where I ended up changed everything from that day forward…

My magic school bus screeched to a halt in the middle of a cosmic paradise at the very edge of all that is. And as soon as I stepped out into the Grand Garden, I realized I wasn’t alone. I was greeted by a skeezy old dude who called himself The Collector. He claimed that he had used his vast power as an Elder of the Universe to guide me to his world, saving me from the effects of a “Timestream Entanglement” that was sweeping across the Multiverse. I politely thanked him for the assist and attempted to make my exit as quickly as possible, but then he offered me the one thing no good mercenary can ever pass up: A paying gig.

The Collector explained that there were tons of other realities on the brink of destruction, similar to the one I’d just narrowly escaped. He wanted to make sure that the rare species and unique artifacts from those realities weren’t completely erased in the chaos. Sounds pretty noble, right? Guess again. I could immediately tell it wasn’t something he was doing out of the kindness of his shriveled old heart. Like most collectors, this guy was a completist, and he simply couldn’t bear the idea of losing his chance to own a full set of freaks. That’s why he was willing to pay me the big bucks to go out on a cross-dimensional shopping spree for him, capturing his carefully-picked specimens and bringing them back to his weird little museum for safekeeping.

I’ll admit, at first, I was a little uncomfortable with the idea of rounding up innocent people and handing them over to some sort of cosmic zookeeper. But then I realized that I’d actually be saving lives for once instead of taking them, which sounded strangely satisfying. And the paycheck? Well, let’s just say that it was more than enough to wash away any other concerns I might’ve had about the Collector’s motives or ethics. As long as I could convince myself it was a rescue mission, I figured I’d be fine.

So I signed on and set off. My first stop was an Earth that felt like something out of an old samurai movie. The whole place looked like it was painted in watercolors, and its forests were filled with demons called — Oh, man, what’s the word? She says it all the time… “Yoplait”? “YoYoMa”? “Yokai”! That’s it! Luckily, the Collector didn’t want me to bring him any of those freaks. All he wanted was one telepathic ninja named Sai. Easy peasy pimple squeezy!

I parked my bus deep in the woods on Mount Shi’aru and waited for Sai to finish fighting some nightmare-inducing monsters. After the battle, once she was exhausted, wounded, and disoriented, I made my move. Using a training Sling Ring that I’d slipped into one of my pouches during my last run-in with the Strange Academy, I was able to open a portal right in front of her and catch her off guard. Before Sai could even reach for her sword, I’d already clocked her in the head with the butt of my gun, knocking her out cold. Her stupid pet wolf tried to maul me, but I managed to fend him off with a swift boot to the snoot. Once I’d dragged my unconscious target onboard the bus, we got out of her world split seconds before its pale tones were painted over by a powerful wave of destructive red energy.

(FUN FACT: That wolf of Sai’s apparently managed to chase us through the bus’s dimensional doorway and ended up escaping their universe’s grizzly fate, too! But I’ll let Squirrel Girl tell you that story in her “Lore” section…)

I dropped Sai off with the Collector and headed out to gather more crazy creatures off his list. A frog with an itty-bitty Thor hammer. A dog in a space suit. A werewolf version of Captain America. And even a giant, red T-Rex. (Don’t even ask how I managed to get him inside of the bus. You don’t want to know.) Thanks to yours truly, every single one of them was snatched from the cruel jaws of fate in the dying moments of their realities, only to find refuge in the Collector’s menagerie. Yet, for some reason, none of them seemed too thrilled about that fact. Still, I tried to remind myself that I wasn’t doing this to make friends. I was doing it to make money! And also to save lives. But I never imagined that the next life I saved would also end up saving mine (literally and metaphorically).

When I found Jeff, he didn’t seem to have a care in the world. I guess I wouldn’t either if I were a baby Land Shark capable of devouring absolutely anything in my path. He was out frolicking in the waves with some cute blonde in a pink and white bikini when I swept him out of the water and loaded him onto my bus. I was worried that he was gonna try to sink his razor-sharp teeth into me for kidnapping him, but instead, Jeff gave me a giant lick with his slick tongue. It was almost as if he already knew me and liked me. Maybe he and the Deadpool on his world were pals. I wasn’t sure. But I was sure glad I didn’t become his next snack!

As I set our course for the Collector’s Gallery, Jeff really seemed to be enjoying our little cross-reality road trip a hell of a lot more than any of my previous passengers. He was gazing out the windows, mewing and chirping in the most adorable way and dancing around the bus like it was his own private discotheque. Just when I was about to pump the brakes, the little fish nugget nuzzled up next to me and purred in a way that vibrated to my very soul. I tried to remind myself of the first rule of being a merc: “Don’t fall in love with the target.” But it was too late. And so, instead of slowing down, I hit the gas. If I was gonna keep doing the Collector’s busy work, I might as well have company, right? And Jeff seemed like the perfect traveling companion!

Together, we managed to check off dozens of items on the Collector’s list. A dusty old copy of the Darkhold. A couple of Cosmic Cubes. A full set of Infinity Stones. Even an Origin Box from the Ultimate Universe (which, honestly, how many origins does that Universe need?). And along the way, my fishy friend reminded me that the real treasure wasn’t the priceless artifacts we were collecting. It was the friendship we were building. And what a friendship it was!

We caught an epic wrestling match at the Black Hand of God, where Beta Ray Bill got his thicc yellow patootie handed to him by a cosmic shark who honestly may have been even cooler than Jeff (please don’t tell him I said that!). We spent a couple nights at the Profiteer’s Casino Cosmico, where I accidentally won a planet made of strawberry mochi in a game of chance I didn’t realize I was playing. Oh, and who can forget when we used that weird Black Vortex mirror to unlock our full cosmic potential and became gods for, like, fifteen minutes before we got really, really bored and relinquished our newfound omnipotence? >Sigh< Good times…

But then things went terribly wrong, as they always tend to do when I’m involved. We were looking for a shard of the M’Kraan Crystal on Chandilar — the abandoned throneworld of the Shi’ar Empire — when we discovered that the world wasn’t quite as abandoned as we originally thought. The whole stinkin’ planet had been turned into a hive for the giant alien bugs known as the Brood! Still, I’d seen nastier looking roaches skittering around Blind Al’s apartment, so I figured we’d be fine. Boy, was I wrong.

A Brood drone attacked out of nowhere and almost lopped my head clean off with its razor-sharp limbs. (Don’t worry, it would’ve grown back. Probably.) Thankfully, Jeff leapt to my rescue and devoured my insectoid attacker in a single gulp. But before I could even thank him for saving me, a horde of Broodlings emerged from the shadows and grabbed hold of my poor Jeffy-Boy, dragging him back to their queen.

My rescue mission suddenly got a whole lot more rescue-y as I fought my way into the heart of the Brood hive, guns blazing and swords swinging wildly. Severed alien limbs were flying everywhere. It was absolutely disgusting… and I loved every moment of it! Not only did I manage to liberate Jeff from almost certain doom, but I also bagged the big, bad Brood Queen as a bonus for my boss! Talk about a win!

But as I was loading the comatose cockroach onto the bus, I saw something that broke whatever I had left of a heart. My poor, sweet Jeff had been seriously wounded by the Broodlings that captured him… and without a healing factor like mine, it wouldn’t be long before he went belly up. It was all my fault for dragging him into this mess in the first place. I had to take him somewhere he would be safe from any further harm. Somewhere I couldn’t put him in any more danger. So I only had one choice. I had to take him back to the Collector.

When we arrived at the Grand Garden, the Collector promised me he could heal Jeff’s physical injuries, but the mental anguish he had suffered during the Brood encounter was deeply rooted — psychic attack is one of their go-to moves. The Collector said he could remove that trauma from Jeff’s mind… but that doing so would likely remove any memory of our time together as well. As much as I hated the thought of Jeff forgetting every awesome adventure we’d shared, I knew it had to be done. I hugged his squishy little head one last time and got on my bus, knowing he was better off without me.

After that, I tried to focus on the job and stopped trying to make friends. I wasn’t gonna let feelings get in the way anymore… or at least that’s what I told myself until Anna Marie and Remy showed up here and turned everything upside down again. (But I’m gonna let you read all about that on the Gallery Cards. I’ve blathered on for long enough.)

Anyway, Jeff may not fully remember our time together, but I’ve binged enough Shark Weeks to know that guys like him are all about instinct. And I can see it in those big, black eyes of his that, deep down, he knows he can trust me. That’s a good start. And I’m gonna do everything in my power to prove his instincts right.

So, there you have it, True Believer! All the answers to — Hang on… What was the question again? Eh. Who cares. It probably wasn’t important anyway.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, the giant, world-devouring teenage girl who talks inside of my brain is telling me that a battle is about to start. Whaddaya say? Those thumbs of yours all rested up and ready for action? I sure hope so. (The last guy who picked me SUCKED!)

Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll even get to save a few lives along the way. ‘Cause, I gotta be honest, it turns out it’s almost as fun as ending ‘em!