Warning: spoilers ahead for Deadpool Nerdy 30
Wolverine have a love-eviscerate relationship. They take turns alternately stabbing each other and teasing one another, but where did this rocky relationship start? Marvel Comics revealed the two super-healing Canucks first met when young Deadpool was in high school.
The Merc With A Mouth didn’t always have the mug of a greasy hamburger and was once a gregarious, loquacious teen. Even then, Wade Wilson had a penchant for silly antics that hinted at his future as a noisy assassin. Deadpool Nerdy 30 celebrates the red-and-black clad antihero’s 30 years gracing Marvel’s glossy pages through a number of short vignettes. Writer Kelly Thompson and artists Kevin Libranda and Bob Quinn reenvisioned Wolverine’s first team-up with Deadpool during Wade’s senior prom.
Wade, wearing his signature colors in a formal suit, crowned himself prom queen as Logan crashes into the prom fighting off Hydra goons. Wade is still sharp and handsome since he hasn’t developed cancer yet that caused him to seek out the Weapon X program for experimentation that also gave him super-healing abilities. Wolverine doesn’t spare any time to learn Wade’s name and the two are cuffed together by a shiny gauntlet so Logan has to drag around this loudmouth during a battle. A not-too-subtle metaphor for how Wolverine will constantly be shackled to the boisterous Deadpool in the future.
The two Canadian heroes' first appearance together was in 1994’s Wolverine #88 (by Larry Hama, Adam Kubert, Fabio Laguna, Mark Farmer, and Tim Townsend), and of course, it starts off with Deadpool trying to perforate Wolverine with bullets. This retconned initial meet-up makes Wolverine responsible for not letting Wade die while cuffed to his arm.
Wade helps dispatch a couple of Hydra foes and Wolverine leaves the young Deadpool with an unhelpful line that “You know kid you may have a gift. Not sure what it is exactly, but you got something.” This gives the young Deadpool some hint of what he could become, which is maybe, a violent meat shield for a mutant?
The fact that Wolverine is Wade’s de facto prom date didn’t get put to use in this comic, which is a severely missed oversight for potential joke fodder. Wolverine crashes in through the ceiling and Wade quips that at least it wasn’t pig’s blood. But readers were robbed of a where the two could have posed like a cheesy prom couple... not that Wolverine would be caught dead arms overlapping with Wade as they stand back to chest. Writers are always fond of making hero meetups earlier and earlier, often through half-missed chance encounters. So maybe in a few years, Deadpool will meet Wolverine as a preteen at his first schoolyard brawl.
