The Best Deadpool And Wolverine Comics, Ranked - SlashFilm (2024)

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ByDevin MeenanAug. 18, 2024 8:00 pm EST

Three weeks after landing in theaters, "Deadpool & Wolverine" is still going strong. It has not only crossed the $1 billion box office milestone at the box office, but also and bocame the highest-grossing R-rated film ever.

"Deadpool & Wolverine" has a lot of problems (read /Film's mixed review here) but the titular buddy dynamic is one of its strengths. If nothing else, it's fun to hear a grouchy Hugh Jackman call Ryan Reynolds an idiot over and over.

Logan and Wade Wilson have a long history in Marvel Comics. They're both way more lethal than most other superheroes and have a shared history of being experimented on by the Weapon X super soldier program. (Lest we forget, Reynolds' debut as Deadpool was in the best-left-forgotten "X-Men Origins: Wolverine.") Wolverine's bad temper makes him the perfect comedic foil for Deadpool's flippancy, so their team-ups are a salt-and-pepper pairing that makes for a truly dynamic duo.

Looking across the three decades of Deadpool and Wolverine's shared comic history, here's the best Marvel Comics to check out if the movie left you with an itch only the funny pages can scratch.

Marvel Comics

It all started here! Logan and Wade first met in 1994 during writer Larry Hama's long run on "Wolverine." Like any superhero team-up, the issue spends most of its time with them fighting each other. Wade's girl Vanessa (played by Morena Baccarin in the movies) has left him for a different mercenary, Garrison Kane, and the two of them are trying to leave the superpowered life behind. Deadpool, trying to win Vanessa back, runs into Wolverine, who is tracking Kane.

The issue includes many back-to-back double page spreads of the two lunging at each other. Adam Kubert draws in the '90s Marvel house style: huge muscles that contort in impossible poses. Even so, his art has a beauty and sheen that other artists of the era lack, including Deadpool's co-creator Rob Liefeld. Three decades on, it looks retro and X-treme, but still cool in a way you can't deny even if it feels a tad embarrassing not to.

Marvel Comics

Note: this issue was published before Joe Kelly's ongoing "Deadpool" series (started in 1997). That series is where Deadpool got his sense of humor (and fourth wall awareness), and is the main influence on the films. The Deadpool seen here is a halfway point between Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza's original Deathstroke-inspired badass and Kelly's later half-smart jokester. Wade has a sense of humor in this issue (Wolverine notes that Deadpool rhymes with "Dead Fool" and Wade fails to think of what rhymes with "Wolverine") but a more vicious one. Note Kubert's cover, where a shadowed Deadpool skewers Logan on his swords. Most of the later Deadpool and Wolverine team-ups play Wade as the silly one, rather than using him to one-up Wolverine as a scary badass.

Marvel Comics

Now we get to one of the silly team-ups. The one-shot "Wolverine/Deadpool: The Decoy" was published in 2011, when Deadpool's sense of humor and pansexuality were well-established. That cover by Skottie Young of Wade striking a girlish pose wearing the costume (and wig) of Logan's alway unrequited love Jean Grey/Phoenix? It's no lie.

The set-up: the Stalker, a Shi'ar robot, has come to Earth seeking the destruction of the Phoenix Force. Jean is currently dead (as she often is), so to entrap the robot and limit its rampage, Logan recruits Deadpool. Wade will act as the decoy, dressing up as the Phoenix to lure the Stalker in so Logan can slice and dice it. but "The Decoy" has him outright cross-dress and quote "West Side Story" ("I Feel Pretty!" Wade shouts as Logan puts the finishing touches on his Phoenix costume).

Why, you ask, is Deadpool the best choice to impersonate a godlike redhead? Simple: Wolverine doesn't like him enough to care if the robot vaporizes him in the process.

Marvel Comics

"Old Man Logan" by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven — or "Unforgiven" by way of X-Men — is one of the most famous Wolverine comics, especially since it inspired 2017's "Logan." (Famous doesn't mean best; "Logan" outshines the comic, especially since it lacks gross-out moments like Hulk incest.)

2014's "The Death of Wolverine" left a hole in the Marvel Universe (spoiler: it didn't last). To fill it, the Wolverine from the alternate future of "Old Man Logan" was brought over into the main Marvel Universe for a few years (2015 to 2019). He meets up with Deadpool in "Deadpool vs Old Man Logan" by Declan Shalvey and Mike Henderson. The comic, a pretty simple five-issue mini-series, is about both men trying to save a young mutant girl from becoming a human weapon like they did.

Old Man Logan isn't really different enough from his younger self for a different dynamic. (The story ends with Wade and Logan sharing a fist bump — only for Logan to unsheathe his claws). You could slot the mainline Wolverine in this story and it would barely change. But the simple, familiar beats let the comic focus on bloody action. Shalvey (a writer and artist) draws the book's covers, using ethereal white backgrounds to better highlight the freeze-frame action. For the interior pages, Henderson mostly sticks with a simple layout of three, four or five rectangular panels stacked on top of each other, or a nine-panel grid to give each slice-and-dice its own close-up.

Marvel comics

Both compositions allow for decompressed action and that's "Deadpool vs Old Man Logan"a nutshell: simple, breezy yet bloody, and fun.

Marvel Comics

Inspired by Garth Ennis and Doug Braithwaite's "Punisher Kills Marvel Universe," "Deadpool Kills The Marvel Universe" sees Deadpool go even crazier than usual. He's sentenced to super-villain asylum Ravencroft, only to find the super-villain Psycho Man is running it in secret to build a brainwashed army. The doctor's treatment awakens a demon in Deadpool's fractured mind and puts him on a planet-wide murder spree.(Deadpool's dialogue/thought balloons are usually colored yellow instead of white, to reflect that he's on a different plane of thinking than other characters. Once his other half takes over, the text boxes become red.)

Writer Cullen Bunn has two niches. At Marvel, he's mostly an X-Men writer. (His "Magneto" series, following the anti-hero operating as a low-key vigilante, is well worth a read.) For his creator-owned comics, he focuses on horror (he wrote "The Empty Man," later adapted into a modern cult film.) Bunn marries his two talents for "Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe," a fun splatterfest with a black heart.

While it's not exactly a team-up, Wolverine is on Deadpool's kill list and gets not one, but two painful deaths. First Logan is vaporized with the other Avengers, but his adamantium skeleton endures and he grows back in time to get slaughtered with the other X-Men. A possible joke about how overextended Wolverine is? I'd bet on it.

Marvel Comics

"Uncanny X-Force" by Rick Remender (initially drawn by Jerome Opeña, who set the standard for the book's neon-watercolor palette) is one of the best "X-Men" books of the 2010s. While Wolverine was playing principal of the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning in Jason Aaron's "Wolverine and the X-Men," he was simultaneously leading a mutant black-ops team in this one. If that doesn't speak to the character's wide range, what does?

The book initially stars Logan, Deadpool, Psylocke, Archangel, and Fantomex. In four-part kick-off story, "The Apocalypse Solution," the team discovers that Apocalypse's disciples Clan Akkaba are planning to resurrect their master, so they must assassinate him. Only problem? The reborn En Sabah Nur is a young boy with no memories of his evil self. Deadpool, the surprising heart of the team, is the one unwilling to kill the metaphorical baby Hitler. (Some have speculated this inspired Wade trying to save the soul of future super-villain Russell (Julian Dennison) in "Deadpool 2.")

Marvel Comics

Meanwhile, Wolverine is at his darkest in this series. In issue #9, he track down and kills a former Nazi at Magneto's request; the monster shaped like an old man uses his last words to remind Logan that Wolverine's own victims will come one day. At the end of the run, Loganhas to deal with such a vengeful face: his long-lost son Akihiro/Daken. Their final face-off, where Logan drowns Daken and imagines the memories they could've made? Heartbreaking. Logan failed at being a father and his son became a monster, but Wade might just steer "Evan Sabahnur" off that path.

"Deadpool & Wolverine" is currently playing in theaters.