Deadpool As the Post-Watchmen Superhero Kenna Alise Day Thesis Submitted to the Faculty
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1 “Crazier Than a Sack of Ferrets!”: Deadpool as the Post-Watchmen Superhero Kenna Alise Day Thesis submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts In English Dr. Diana George Dr. Jen Mooney Dr. Nancy Metz 4 May, 2015 Blacksburg, VA i “Crazier Than a Sack of Ferrets!”: Deadpool as the Post-Watchmen Superhero Kenna Alise Day ABSTRACT Watchmen has been hailed as revolutionary not only for the literary quality of Alan Moore’s script and the precise execution of Dave Gibbon’s art, but also for the novel's successful exploration of sophisticated subject matter and realistic moral conflict. Perhaps the most interesting question Watchmen forces us to consider is why an individual would put on the costume and don the mask, and how such a constructed persona affects the individual psychologically and morally. For those heroes that came before, the compulsion to fight crime was often an in-born ideology of “justice.” But for Moore's Watchmen, we find that even superheroes are corruptible, flawed, imperfect, and even (more than) a little crazy. In the wake of what is arguably one of the most influential superhero novels published to date, the comics industry saw a rise in the popularity of anti-heroes like Moore's, but it wasn't until the 1991 creation of Marvel's Deadpool that fans saw exactly what it means to be a hero in the post- atomic, post-Vietnam age. Through self-reflexivity, genre deconstruction, and dark hysteria, Deadpool shows us that it isn't so easy to walk the straight line of the righteous, and that sometimes it's much easier to submit to the madness of a chaotic, morally ambiguous world. Table of Contents Dedication ........................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... ii Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 The Watchmen Effect ...................................................................................................... 2 Pulp Fiction, Pulp Culture............................................................................................... 6 The Streets Are Extended Gutters: Project Overview .................................................... 9 A Brief Note on Citation and Phrasing ..................................................................... 10 Chapter One: Becoming Heroes ....................................................................................... 14 Superheroes and Ideology ............................................................................................. 14 Why Ideology? .......................................................................................................... 14 Myth and Meaning-Making ...................................................................................... 16 Look, Up in the Sky!: A Brief History of Superheroes ................................................ 23 Genre Conventions.................................................................................................... 24 Forging Iron from Bronze: The 70s-80s ................................................................... 26 1986: The Year of Legitimization............................................................................. 29 The Post-Watchmen Superhero .................................................................................... 31 The Dark Knight Returns vs. Watchmen .................................................................. 32 Redefining an Industry of Heroes ............................................................................. 35 The 90s, Deadpool, and Beyond ................................................................................... 39 Chapter Two: Genre & Hegemony ................................................................................... 42 Introduction: Superhero as Genre ................................................................................. 42 Genre, Hegemony, Subversion ..................................................................................... 43 Establishing the Superhero Genre ................................................................................. 47 Essential Elements: Naming, Parody, Imitation & Repetition ................................. 47 Distinguishing the Genre .......................................................................................... 49 The Superhero-Supervillain Dichotomy ....................................................................... 51 The Hegemonic Superhero ....................................................................................... 51 The Hegemonic Supervillain .................................................................................... 53 Chapter Three: Origin Stories ........................................................................................... 57 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 57 Walter Joseph Kovacs, alias Rorschach ........................................................................ 59 Jon Osterman, alias Dr. Manhattan ............................................................................... 64 Wade Wilson, alias Deadpool ....................................................................................... 67 Chapter Four: Super-Bodies ............................................................................................. 74 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 74 The Code Name ............................................................................................................ 74 The Costume ................................................................................................................. 77 The Transformed Body ................................................................................................. 80 Chapter Five: Heroes in Crisis .......................................................................................... 82 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 82 The Death of Dichotomy .............................................................................................. 83 The Birth of Contradiction ............................................................................................ 86 Picking a Side ............................................................................................................... 89 Teaming Up .................................................................................................................. 91 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 94 Works Cited ........................................................................................................................... I i Dedication To all of the die-hard fans who came before me. To all the scholars who paved the way for our field. To all the writers and artists who shaped my perception of the world. To my partner in all things: Thank you for sharing your life and your love with me, Alex. Nothing I do in this world is possible without you. ii Acknowledgements My first real introduction to comics came at the age of 14. I was browsing the shelves of a now out-of-business Borders bookstore (rest in peace), looking for more books by Neil Gaiman. Unfortunately, like any good anti-social teenager, I had read them all. A sales associate informed me that, years before American Gods, Gaiman had written a rather famous comicbook series. I had dabbled in manga and I had seen the Saturday morning superhero cartoons. However, I came to the slow realization that comics were able to do something other types of text couldn't. For lack of a better description, this was my “Holy Haberdashery, Batman!” moment. I became an avid enthusiast and by the time I graduated from high school, I had begun formulating rudimentary ideas of the way comics reflect the human condition. The rest, as they say, is history. I would first like to thank my fearless graduate school leader, Dr. Diana George. A few months after I entered my master's program, I knew I had to write about Watchmen – the way it changed comics, the way it developed a new darkness in the superhero psyche – and I also knew that I wanted to write about Deadpool, my favorite academically underrated superhero. It was Dr. George's course in graphic novels and comics that really taught me how to write about what I love, but it was her unwavering faith in my writing and her constant encouragement that kept me going during the entire thesis process. I would also like to thank the committee readers, Dr. Jen Mooney and Dr. Nancy Metz, who met my indecision and insecurity with grace, kindness, and inconceivable patience. It would be a cruel injustice to exclude the mention of my best friend, who sat down next to me in our sophomore year at Virginia Tech and said, “Hey, weird girls have to stick together.” iii Emma Briscoe has uplifted me through each of my failures and celebrated each of my triumphs. For all of the sleepless nights and delirious mornings,