Deadpool: Wade Wilson's War
"You know, sometimes it feels like I'm the only one who can see the truth. That life is just an absurdist comedy. And the only appropriate response is to laugh."—Deadpool, the man himself.
A 2011 Marvel Knights miniseries that stars a different version of Deadpool, as well as Domino, Bullseye, and Silver Sable. Written by Duane Swierczynski.
It starts with a Senate hearing about the recent massacre of a drug cartel and a load of civilians in the town of Sinaloa, Mexico. The Senate has an expert witness, however: not just a witness, he claims that he was one of the mercenaries that took down the drug cartel, a man named Wade Wilson, but who prefers the name 'Deadpool'.
Deadpool then proceeds to spin out a story about a black-ops team so secret it didn't even have a name, just a letter: X. The members of this team (the aforementioned Domino, Bullseye, Silver Sable, and, of course, Deadpool) did things for the US Government that it didn't want official records on.
Or did they? Is Deadpool really lying? What really went down in Sinaloa? And where is Domino now? And what is the truth?
- Action Girl: Domino, Silver Sable.
- Alternate Continuity: Which is why they put it is Marvel Knights imprint.
- As You Know: See the example on the trope page.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Even more so then in his regular series. At one point, he stops time (or comic book time) and at another point, he makes everything except himself fade to white. (And then explains that he only included that part in the comic so there would be a different perspective than his and we would believe most of his story.)
- Bittersweet Ending/Downer Ending: Deadpool and Domino get away with Bullseye and Silver Sable, who are still alive. Except maybe the whole thing is just inside Wade's mind, a revenge fantasy he wrote while they are all still in a mental hospital. It's left ambigious, but the last page shows an orderly at the hospital who looks like the Senator Deadpool was talking to and then it slowly zooms in on a comic Wade drew that says "The End!"
- Mind Screw: Yep. For one thing how much of it actually happened? Did any of it happen?
- Most Common Superpower: Even though Silver Sable had this before, this book...exaggerates it.
- Schrödinger's Butterfly: Are Wade and Domino crazy in an asylum? Did they really escape? Was the whole thing just a revenge fantasy?
- Through the Eyes of Madness: There are a few parts where we see things from Deadpool's perspective and we know are lies - where he hits two soldiers and grabs their guns, but then in the next panel no longer has them and still has handcuffs on. The whole mini-series, in fact, might have been through his eyes of madness.
- Xanatos Gambit: If the whole thing is real, then Domino's plan to kill the Senators: orchestrate a massacre so big it would require a Senate hearing, then infiltrate the hearing as "expert witnesses."