MARVEL COMICS
Marvel Cinematic Universe
MCU First Appearance Key
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (2024)
- First Appearance: Zenpool (Wade Wilson)
Deadpool Vs The Homage
The year was 1939 - and it was a big year. World War II was raging in Europe as Germany invaded Poland, but the United States proclaimed itself neutral in 1939, a country where the price to own a new house averaged $4,000. Hollywood rolled out two of its biggest films ever in 1939, Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz, with Judy Garland's "Somewhere Over The Rainbow: charting at Number One. Beginning in New York City, TV sets went on sale to the public for the first time ever in 1939, and soon after the NFL broadcast its very first football game. Tina Turner was born, Nylon stockings hit the store shelves, and the idea for bank ATM's was patented.
Newspapers continued to be big, too, and "Superman" became a comic strip for the first time following his appearance in Action Comics #1 (1937), and MARVEL COMICS #1, a one-shot with a print run of 80,000 copies, hit newsstands nationwide to first introduce young readers to characters like The Human Torch, Sub-Mariner and Ka-Zar The Great. Published by Timely Comics under the watchful eye of Martin Goodman, the man who would later hire a young lad named Stan Lee to work for the business, Marvel Comics #1 featured comic book stories that promised to make readers "marvel" at the content. The title proved to be a good call, as the book's entire print run sold out and lead to a second printing of 800,000 copies the very next month.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, in the region everyone now calls "Bigfoot Country", Bigfoot hadn't yet been captured on film and, except for the establishment of the first US Post Office inside one community, most Sasquatch still lived quietly in remote areas throughout the Oregon-Washington wilderness. Yes, 1939 is one of those years that's worthy of much respect, all these 80+ years later.
With that veritable amount of respect in mind, GABRIELE DELL'OTTO'S INCENTIVE 1:25 VARIANT COVER -- an Homage to Marvel Comics #1 in which DEADPOOL replaces, or PHOTOBOMBS, the ordinary male civilian originally pictured on its cover -- keenly conveys an aspect of Deadpool's character that is often overlooked: irreverence. Not just a little irreverence, but enormous irreverence. As Deadpool fans and readers, our reaction to his irreverence is laughter, as that's how we interpret what we see. We laugh at the irreverence, because it's funny, without really considering the sheer disregard of respect or of seriousness Deadpool has for things worthy of such treatment.
That's the brilliance of Dell'Otto's cover for Deadpool #36 (Vol 5, 2014). In a comics landscape that's become saturated with Homage Covers, covers meant to pay respect and in tribute to great works of the past but which have become ubiquitous thanks to the recent (and very nice) Facsimile Editions and the never-diminishing demand for recreations of a handful of covers by Todd McFarlane, the gravitas inherent in those original works is often lost. A character like Deadpool being found inside one of those covers, one of the most esteemed and important publications in comics history, is a powerful move that emphatically defines both the cover and the character by placing the two in sharp contrast to one another.
Also, it's funny. Definitely funny. Give your collection what it deserves ... today!
(VOL 5, DEC 2014)
- First Appearance: Zenpool (Wade Wilson)
- Gabriele Dell'Otto Incentive 1:25 "Marvel 75th Anniversary" Homage Art Variant Cover
- Homage to Marvel Comics #1 (Vol 1, 1939) after Frank R. Paul
- "Axis" event Tie-In
- Low Print Run
- First Printing
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