365 Comics...28: Deadpool Killustrated#1 (2013)

I'm not squeamish when items to violence or gore.  What tends to repulse me is stupidity, and the psychopathic id that is Deadpool is the definition of the word. He's a one-note character whose murderous antics become very tiresome to me very quickly.   I've largely avoided the character knowing quite firmly that he wasn't for me, and yet I keep getting suckered into picking up his books: the random issue of his backwards-numbered Deadpool Team-Up or the Kyle Baker-illustrated Deadpool Max, or comic Brian Posehn writing the Marvel Now Deadpool series.  I never last more than 2 issues though before the mind-numbing sets in.  

Deadpool Killustrated suckered me back in with its rather glorious cover as well as Cullen Bunn on writing chores.  This is a ridiculous comic but one that is so clever and so smart it is baffling to me that a conceit this ingenious is used merely to service the rampant death-dealing and mayhem of comics first officially retarded character.  And I do mean that literally.  He's a really, really dumb guy with serious mental challenges.

I'm in awe of Bunn's metatextual extremes here.  He's hitting Morrison levels of inspiration, but its so wasted on a character that is barely a character.  Are Deadpool's die hard fans constantly high? It's about the only way his popularity makes sense to me. 

I suppose there's something Looney Toons about him, a bloodthirsty Bugs Bunny, but even with my tolerance toward  bloodshed I just can't seem to like him. But I do like this invading Classic literature as well as the multidimensional angle Bunn is taking it so I'm torn about whether to pick up issue two.  Bunn is close to transcending the character, but all to often the conceit of Deadpool drags it down.

This series particularly brings Deadpool very close to Ambush Bug territory for me, the kind of character fully aware of his place in the world, both fictional and real.  But instead of the Bug's style of pranking and pestering the characters in the fictional universe and its creators, Deadpool is solely out to kill them all.  Sigh.