In Meta-Messages, I explore the context behind (using reader danjack's term) "meta-messages." A meta-message is where a comic book creator comments on/references the work of another comic book/comic book creator (or sometimes even themselves) in their comic. Each time around, I'll give you the context behind one such "meta-message."

Recently, I did a list about the most hilarious superhero deaths.

Almost all of the deaths on the lists were INTENDED to be funny at the time of the death (you know, like the Gunfire of the future accidentally turning his own ass into a hand grenade), but one death on the list wasn't technically supposed to be funny.

In Avengers #502 (by Brian Michael Bendis, David Finch and Danny Miki), part of the "Avengers Disassembled" storyline, the Kree show up to invade out of nowhere. The Avengers are fighting them off when Hawkeye's quiver gets blasted. Realizing that eventually the fire will reach the explosive arrows in his quiver, Hawkeye decides to at least take the Kree ship down with him, so he screams "Not like this! Not like this! Like THIS!" and blows up the Kree ship, thus giving his death more meaning.

But, of course, you see, his death didn't ACTUALLY have any meaning, as the whole thing was just created by the Scarlet Witch, who had gone insane and was just lashing out with her reality-altering powers to attack her former Avengers teammates.

One of the big jokes at the time was - why didn't he just try to get the quiver off before it exploded?

This was something that Deadpool made fun of in Cable and Deadpool #12 (by Fabian Nicieza, Patrick Zircher and a few different inkers), where Deadpool has brought in former Thunderbolt member, the Fixer, to help, well, you know, fix Cable (who had been overtaken by the techno-organic virus) while meanwhile, one of Deadpool's former allies, Agent X (who has parts of Deadpool in him, including his healing power), is hired to prevent Deadpool from saving Cable.

They have a confrontation, where Deadpool threatened to turn his harness into an explosive device, but Agent X suggested that it would blow him up himself if he tried that, but Deadpool explains that everyone obviously knows that harnesses have failsafes in place in case something like that ever happened.

Pretty funny stuff. Reader Paul L. suggested this one. Thanks, Paul!

If anyone ELSE has a suggestion for a good future Meta-Message, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!