Deadpool (Vol. 5), Issue #1 – “In Wade We Trust”

* Part 1 of 6 of the Dead Presidents storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Deadpool (Vol. 5), Issue #1 – “In Wade We Trust”!

Ahhh, Ryan Reynolds.

Ok, that’s almost my entire working knowledge of Deadpool. That, and he’s some sort of X-Man, and he’s supposed to be really funny. We’ll see about that last part! But, I adore Brian Posehn’s humor and his handsome face, so I trust that this will be adequately hilarious or my money back.

I don’t know who the fuck this Gerry Duggan guy is, though! If things are unfunny I’ll blame Duggan for dragging it down.

Deadpool (Vol. 5), Issue #1 [January, 2013]
Written by: Brian Michael Bendis
“In Wade We Trust”

Cover art. Deadpool fights Godzilla. Moving on!

“My country is falling apart.” Narration time! Roads and bridges are collapsing, ruining cars and causing mass panic. “It’s divided, and my fellow Americans are at each other’s throats, treading on one another.” A man wearing a camo jacket, wrap-around sunglasses, and a “Don’t Tread on Me” snake shirt is shoving a Rastafarian man at a voting location. “Suffering abounds. I’m powerless to stop it…” A homeless veteran slumps in the alley drinking booze out of a paper bag. “…but I can bring back the men that can save us from ourselves.” Some sort of Washington D.C. government building.

Very funny so far! I’m laughing so hard that my sides hurt, and that’s not just the scorpion stinging me below my rib cage either.

24 hours ago, in Independence, Missouri, a terrifying beardy man with an American flag painted across his brow slaughters a sheep and draws a terrifying pentagram symbol with blood on a terrifying grave of Harry S. Truman. He holds an ancient tome and speaks in alien gibberish while his fingers glow and yeah yeah yeah Satanic witchcraft.

“HAIL TO THE CHIEF!” he bellows as a gross, zombified arm breaks through the ground. Then the man gets hit in the back with a shield with a star on it.

And I’ll be fucked if Captain America doesn’t show up AGAIN in a comic series where he doesn’t belong! “This stops now, madman,” Cap stays while contorting his jaw in a most ridiculous manner. Lookin’ like he’s chewing cud.

“You should be helping me!” the bearded lunatic shouts back with a concerned look in his sad, little eyes. “No one loves the country more than Captain America.”

Ugh. Yeah, that’s true. What a nitwit. I bet Steve Rogers voted for Trump so he could make America great again.

I’m siding with Hairy-Assed Truman on this one entirely! Nuke this sucker!

Captain America grabs the man by his shirt and maniacally tells him to send the decomposing president back to the grave from whence he came. Cap looks positively feral, like a John Kricfalusi drawing. The man isn’t able to send him back. It’s a one-way street, baby. He speaks his gobbledygook rune language and fades away into nothing. “Don’t disappear on me, you coward!” Cap screams. Now he’s left to face President Harry S. Truman alone. Cap was probably alive in 1945 to kiss him on the lips. Now the tables are turning.

“Last time I was here, you were dead,” Truman snarls. “I think I liked it better that way…” See, I knew I liked this guy! Wants America destroyed. Wants Captain America dead. What’s not to like?

The next morning on the really dumb-looking S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, a mustachioed man named Agent Gorman angrily holds up a copy of the Daily Bugle. “CAP SNAPS IN SCRAP. DECAPITAIN AMERICA STARS IN TRUMAN SHOW.”

Captain America is now 1 for 500 on cool things I’ve actually seen him to so far.

This press ain’t good. “Americans don’t need to see Captain America decapitating President Truman!” Gorman spits, pointing to a very graphic photo on the front page. Agent Preston is bearing the brunt of this backlash. She insists that they’re doing what they can to find the beardy necromancer, and Gorman requests no involvement from the Avengers. They just do whatever the fuck they want, and Director Maria Hill doesn’t need to deal with that right now. Like usual.

“You’ll find a way, Emily,” Gorman says as he boards his jet. “Get creative if you need to, but shut this embarrassing mess down quietly.” He trusts her to get it done in spite of her hesitation. Agent Emily Preston is on the hook! Time to call Deadpool? Maybe?

A man runs up to Agent Preston with some awful news. “It’s FDR – he’s tearing up Manhattan.”

How? Is he flying his wheelchair into the Twin Towers? “Scramble a team,” requests the grimacing Preston. “I can’t believe nobody remembered it’s my birthday,” she mutters. “What else could go wrong?”

Well, forget FDR, because a giant Godzilla-like Godzilla is Godzillaing Manhattan. Tearing up buildings, crushing cars, taking huge fire truck-sized dumps on childrens’ heads. People are running and screaming… and then, suddenly, the creature stops. “Urk,” he gurgles, looking quite sick. A katana is known to emerge from his stomach from the inside. The katana slices down the center of the abdomen. “HERE COMES DEADPOOL,” screams a man in a torn-up red costume, covered in blood and guts.

“Get away from us!” yells a nauseated woman.

“That was awesome!” grins the woman’s young son.

“Chest burster, run!” yells a Matthew McConaughey-type motherfucker.

“Don’t thank me all at once,” our masked crusader grumbles. Thor, too, emerges from the dead Godzilla’s slimy innards. He looks peeved. Deadpool promises he won’t tell anyone about their “marvelous team-up”. Thor insists that it wasn’t a team-up.

A guy with a broom points his finger at Deadpool and tells him to clean this mess up. “Just roll Deadzilla to the curb. A hobo will eat it,” Deadpool says, waving the man away. People are running again; there’s some more trouble a-loomin’. Deadpool assures a fire chief that he is able to heal from any injury due to a new immune system from the Canadian government! So, he’s got that going for him! The fire chief doesn’t care about that right now, FDR is rolling through!

Methinks good ol’ Uncle Franklin is going to gift us with one of his famous fireside chats.

A petrified police officer struggles on what to do about this while Deadpool chomps on a hot dog. FDR lifts a taxi over his head and the officer shoots three bullets into his chest. As you can imagine, it doesn’t work, and the taxi gets launched toward them. The officer is crushed like a grape. Deadpool leaps out of the way.

“And what about you, Mummer. Are you next to feel my wrath?” FDR threatens as Deadpool stands up to the Zombie-in-Chief with a couple of semi-automatic rifles. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t fucking work. Why would it? FDR barrels through on his wheelie wheels. The rifles’ rounds are emptied. FDR glares with a menacing grin. “JUST SO EVERYBODY KNOWS,” Deadpool shouts into the open city space, “THE WHEELCHAIR GUY STARTED IT.”

And the wheelchair guy intends to finish it. FDR slams into Deadpool and they fall down the subway steps. Deadpool stabs the president in the chest with one of his katanas, kill-style. “You are made of stern stuff, clown,” the dead president retorts, sort of not killed nor dead. “Let’s see how you react when I unleash the very essence of death!”

The “very essence of death” is just a bunch of lightning, so I’ll remember that next time there’s a storm. I thought it was God bowling, but no, it’s the very essence of death. Deadpool reacts like this: “YEAAARGH!” Then he shoves his stinky mask over FDR’s head and pushes him into the oncoming train.

It’s like this guy can survive four terms or something.

“You have nothing to fear – except me!” FDR bellows, now floating above everyone’s heads. This fuckface just won’t die! “You don’t belong here – old people should either be dead or in Florida!” Deadpool quips. These quips are making me groan. Step it up, Posehn.

The Pool of the Dead tries impaling the lovely president again, but it seems fruitless. He pushes that sucker through him right to the hilt. That works for some reason. “NOOOOOOOOO!” FDR roars like Darth Vader. He explodes in a torrent of electricity and green smoke.

“He did it!” exclaims Agent Preston. “How would you like a job, Deadpool?”

“Lady, I’m taking some time off, thank you very much.”

Preston tries to help the decrepit hero up, but she pulls his rotting arm right out of its socket. “I’m honored that you trust me to serve America, the country that I do the most damage in,” he smiles. Preston tells him that she can’t have real heroes like Captain “400 on the SAT” America fighting these zombie presidents. She needs some wack ass like Deadpool to do it so that the public can be like “oh yeah, the dead-ish weirdo is fighting the dead-ish weirdos. Makes sense. “You’re the scumbag we need,” Preston tells him with only the highest of compliments intended.

They take the Helicarrier to the S.H.I.E.L.D. infirmary, Agent Something-Or-Other asks Preston if she’s really serious about paying Deadpool millions of dollars to eradicate these presidential buttheads. “And when the job is done I get my money in a pillowcase with a big dollar sign on it!” Deadpool says lying in the infirmary bed.

Preston’s got some terms! He listens to everything she says, no ifs, ands, buts, and all the other conjunctions. Do NOT tell anyone that you’re working for S.H.I.E.L.D. Do not hurt a civilian. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. lol, that’s my joke!

Butt.

Uh oh, George Washington is terrorizing Philadelphia! Time for action! Deadpool books it to Liberty Hall where a mess of zombie American leaders have convened. Dead Taft is stuck in a bathtub. Abe Lincoln shoots Deadpool in the back of the head. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” he says, fist-pumping.

“Order! Order!” George Washington bangs his gavel on the bench. “All in favor of destroying this country and starting over?”

“AYE!” screams the entire room.

“Motion is unopposed and carries.” The menacing Washington snarls with lightning coming out of his horrible green eyeballs. “We shall destroy this country and start anew.”