Posted in: Comics | Tagged: deadpool, marvel, x-men, X-ual Healing - The Weekly X-Men Recap Column

X-ual Healing: From the Vomitorium to the Sanitarium in Despicable Deadpool #300

Published Sat, 12 May 2018 17:30:35 -0500

Sworn to sell comics for Marvel executives who feared and hated the fact that Fox owned their movie rights, The Uncanny X-Men suffered great indignities, but with a corporate merger on the way, the X-Men can finally get back to doing what they do best: being objectively the best franchise in comics.

Each week, armed with the joy, heartbreak, and frustration of 30+ years of reading X-Men comics, we read every new X-book that comes out, recap the events, provide the historical context so you can read it on Marvel Unlimited, and wonder when Marvel will let Chris Claremont write something again.

It's the way X-Men comics were meant to be read! It's the column that can only be known as…

For more about the column, check out the reboot issue here.

DESPICABLE DEADPOOL #300
GERRY DUGGAN (W) • MATTEO LOLLI, MIKE HAWTHORNE & SCOTT KOBLISH (A)
Cover by MIKE HAWTHORNE
300 Deadpools Wraparound Variant Cover by SCOTT KOBLISH
Variant Cover by TONY MOORE
Variant Cover by ROB LIEFELD
Blank Variant Cover Also Available
Every bad decision, every betrayal, every fart joke — they've all come back to haunt Deadpool. He's gone from criminal to outcast to celebrity and back to criminal, and as Captain America leads the biggest heroes of the Marvel Universe to take him down, Wade is forced to be his most despicable self ONE LAST TIME…
For over five years and more than a hundred issues Gerry Duggan has been putting words into the Mouth of the Merc with same…but all that ends in this TRIPLE-sized issue with art by longtime Deadpool collaborators Scott Koblish, Matteo Lolli and Mike Hawthorne! It's one last love letter to the character we love to hurt. Sorry, Wade! This one's gonna sting.
72 PGS./Parental Advisory …$5.99

The moment has finally arrived. It's Despicable Deadpool #300. Truly, a milestone that can only be celebrated by canceling the book and rebooting with a new #1 issue. Make yours Marvel!

The issue opens with a Flashback to a previous "ten-dollar issue" of Deadpool, taking place in Knowhere. See, why pay $10 when they're just going to recap it here for free a few years later? Deadpool purchases some kind of chemical that will allow him to kill "powerful enemies." Now, he says, the time has come to use it. In the present, on Earth, we're treated to a Deadpool drawn-out Deadpool nude scene as he douses himself in the chemical…

You're welcome. It turns out Deadpool got ripped off, as he has no new powers, though he does make a woman at the ice machine in his hotel vomit when she sees him naked. Or so he thinks…

Outside, The Falcon is spying on Deadpool, which is fine if that's what he's into. We don't kink-shame here at X-ual Healing. As Deadpool exits the hotel, Falcon attacks, but he ends up vomiting as well. Daredevil attacks next, and, well…

It turns out that Deadpool didn't get ripped off at all. He's become a walking biological weapon. The Champions attack, but Deadpool makes them puke too. Spider-Man pukes in his mask, Nova pukes into his charged-up fists, and Ms. Marvel's cheeks embiggen with puke. Yeah.

Deadpool is sad. He wanted one last battle before the reboot, but instead he's just making everyone sick. The Scarlet Witch attacks, but her chaos magic is no match for Deadpool's stink.

A bunch of cops show up, and they vomit. A police dog vomits. It then eats the vomit and vomits again, twice. Then the whole crowd vomits. Brother Voodoo shows up and barfs through a portal onto Deadpool. The Mighty Thor (Jane Foster version — isn't she dead?) and Iron Man show up. Thor barfs into her own spinning hammer, spraying vomit on everyone in the streets outside the hotel. Iron Man's suit fills up with barf and he's ejected from the armor. Finally, The Vision arrives to talk to Deadpool. He's impervious to the chemical. Vision is about to arrest Deadpool, but then Giant-Man shows up and pukes all over everyone.

Unfortunately, Vision can't kill Deadpool because the puke has shorted him out. Dejected, Deadpool walks away, takes a swim in the river, and washes his clothes at a laundromat. He mentions his request of Captain America earlier in this story arc to revive the dead life model decoy containing the consciousness of his friend, Agent Preston. Speaking of which, Cap and Preston show up on the scene of the puketastrophe, but Deadpool is long gone.

Deadpool is hitchhiking at a truck stop now. A car pulls over to pick him up, and it's writer Gerry Duggan driving. Deadpool tells Duggan that he's ripping off Grant Morrison's Animal Man, which Duggan realizes is true. Deadpool tells him not to worry — he knows how to end the book. Duggan apologizes for all the bad things he put Deadpool through. Deadpool shoots Duggan in the head and tosses him out of the car.

In upstate New York, Cap and Preston talk about how crazy they were to ever trust Deadpool. They're trying to make it to Deadpool's hideout before him, but Deadpool speeds past them in Duggan's car. Deadpool is so happy to see Preston, he rams their car, so Cap tosses his shield at Deadpool and knocks him onto the road. Deadpool surfs on Cap's shield and ends up crashing through the windshield of their car. He slams it into park, and they all go flying. Tsk tsk. Even Captain America wasn't wearing his seatbelt? Someone contact Joe Quesada. He put a stop to smoking in Marvel comics, and now he needs to make sure that proper auto safety is demonstrated in every panel. You know, for all the kids that read Marvel comics.

What? Kids read these, right?

Preston tells Deadpool to turn himself in, but Deadpool says that's not an option. He says he's a danger to everyone, even unintentionally. To demonstrate, he fires his gun in the air, which happens to take down a spaceship carrying former SHIELD Agent Adsit, who just learned of Deadpool's murder of Coulson and Preston last issue before jumping in a ship back to Earth. Adsit is the sole survivor of the crash, and he's glad to see Preston alive, so that worked out well, all things considered.

Deadpool makes it to his safehouse, formerly the office of a Bartol Utler, or Butler, a former Weapon X scientist who experimented on him and whose story was featured way back around Deadpool #15. There, he's kept a stash of the chemical that Utler used to wipe his memory after each experiment. Deadpool hooks himself up to a bunch of IV drips of the stuff as Cap and Preston try to talk him into coming out of the building and turning himself in. He refuses, so they bust in to find Deadpool passed out, having ingested all of the chemical. Preston tells Cap that only a little bit of them would wipe out Deadpool's memories for a few days; the amount he took may have totally wiped out his entire brain.

Inside Deadpool's brain, Deadpool walks through the corridors of his mind, killing all of his happy memories, literally, with guns. That includes his history with Preston, his marriage, and even his daughter, Ellie. He falls into a flaming hell pit where he sees some of the people he's killed, like Agent Coulson, and also the demon Vetis, who Deadpool got sent to hell way back in Deadpool #7. However, Deadpool is saved by a woman made of light who tells him that he deserves love, but needs to love himself (prompting a masturbation joke, of course). She tells Deadpool that she forgives him.

Back in the real world, a smiling Deadpool is wheeled into an ambulance. Captain America sends Preston to live with her family, who are in witness protection, and will be pleased to learn she's alive. He finds Deadpool's costume on the ground, and in it, a photo of himself, Deadpool, and Wolverine in happier times. Later, at Deadpool's trial for the murder of Phil Coulson, the judge rules that, due in part to testimony from Captain America, Deadpool mentally incompetent to stand trial and will be handed over to the state psychiatric system.

Later still, Deadpool is residing at an asylum when the staff coincidentally wheel in a person who believes themselves to be Deadpool into the same room as the real but mindwiped Deadpool. The real Deadpool sees the imposter's costume and puts it on, saying that he needs a "fresh start" (the branding for Marvel's latest line-wide relaunch which is sure to work out differently than the last ten line-wide relaunches).

The last thing Deadpool remembers confirms that everything after the 2008 Deadpool series (which ended in 2012) has been wiped out. Deadpool easily escapes the sanitarium and is ready to start his new comic book. Next, we're treated to a two-page spread of Gerry Duggan delivering a heartfelt thanks to all his collaborators and reflecting back on his Deadpool run. Finally, we get a two-page epilogue taking place in the year 2099.

And that's finally it. We were honestly on board with the entire final issue of Deadpool being Deadpool making everyone vomit. That would have been a fitting 300th issue. The second half of the comic squeezed a lot of stuff in with more emotional impact, allowing for more closure to this chapter of Deadpool's history. It also set up a premise for the reboot.