Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the six hundred and eightieth week where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.
Click here for Part 1 of this week's Deadpool-themed legends.
NOTE: I noticed that the the CSBG Twitter page was nearing 10,000 followers. If we hit 10,050 followers on the the CSBG Twitter page then I'll do a BONUS edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed during the week that we hit 10,050. So three more legends! Sounds like a great deal, right?
COMIC LEGEND:
There was going to be a Deadpool comic book about taxes called Deadpool 1099.
STATUS:
False Enough for a False
Deadpool has had quite the career at Marvel Comics. He has practically his own cottage industry of Deadpool-related comic books.
There has been Deadpool Killustrated...
There has been Night of the Living Deadpool...
There has been Deadpool the Duck...
There has been Encyclopedia Deadpoolica...
There has even been Baby's First Deadpool Book...
So there really isn't anything that would be so absurd as to imagine that there wouldn't be a Deadpool comic book about.
Thus, when reader Ryan L. wrote in to ask if it was true that there was going to be a Deadpool comic book about taxes called Deadpool 1099, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the idea.
Heck, from the Instagram account for the Deadpool movie, they even made a joke back in 2016 when Tax Day (the annual filing date for personal income taxes in the U.S.) approached in the United States...
Business expenses. #TaxDay A post shared by @ deadpoolmovie on
So it's not some absurd idea.
However, it was not to be. Well, at least it was pretty much not to be.
First of all, this all is based on you knowing that Marvel used to have a line of comic books set in the future that had a title sequence of (NAME OF BOOK) 2099...
So keep that in mind when you learn about how Joe Kelly first pitched Marvel on him being the writer on their then-new Deadpool series back in 1997.
George Marston has the story in this great interview with Joe Kelly and Matt Idelson at Newsaraam from last week, which is almost certainly why Ryan wrote in to me about this the other day.
Kelly talked about pitching to Idelson to get the series and he just went for super over-the-top ideas...
Kelly: It’s true. So I thought “Well, this book is gonna get cancelled, so let’s just have some fun.” And we put together this pitch that was just ludicrous – even more ludicrous than what we eventually published. It had Obnoxio the Clown in it, and Deadpool fighting Ego the Living Planet. At the time, "Heroes Reborn" was happening, so part of the pitch involved Deadpool stealing the "Heroes Reborn" universe from Franklin Richards and having the globe that contained all the biggest heroes to mess with.
Idelson: Don’t forget "Deadpool 1099." It was a story where Wade has to pay his taxes and winds up dealing with the IRS.
As Kelly notes, these were just ludicrous ideas that were never actually going to be used in the series. It was mostly to show what kind of imagination that Kelly would bring to the project, which was clearly a very talented imagination.
Amusingly enough, years later, there would be a Deadpool 2009 during Gerry Duggan's run on the book...
Thanks to Ryan for the question! Thanks to George, Matt and Joe for the great information!
Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed - How was Taskmaster almost in the first Deadpool film?
Check back in a little bit for the final part of this week's all-Deadpool Comic Book Legends Revealed!