When it comes to unlikely team ups between Marvel heroes, it doesn’t get more bizarre than between characters like Deadpool and Daredevil. Daredevil is usually quietly brooding and carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, and he's deeply religious, relatively series and never kills. Deadpool, on the other hand, is basically the opposite in every conceivable way. He’s loud, crass and turns everything a joke, and he kills both fun and profit. As a homicidal, yet comical killer, the only thing that Wade Wilson has in common with Matthew Murdoch is that they both wear red costumes.
However, this unlikely pair have found themselves on the same side more than once. Now, CBR is taking a look back at two of Matt Murdock and Wade Wilson's most noteworthy encounters.
WHEN DEADPOOL MET DAREDEVIL
In 1997, Marvel's annuals featured team-ups between various sets of Marvel heroes, and DD met DP in Joe Kelly and Bernard Chang's aptly named Deadpool/Daredevil Annual. Instead of focusing on either one of those characters, one of their shared mutual acquaintances, Typhoid Mary. Having been held in a mental institution for treatment, the powerful and psychotic murderer swears vengeance on the hero who put her away: Daredevil. The story opens as Mary breaks free from the facility and goes on a deadly spree against those who wronged her.
While Daredevil, still reeling from his painful fling with Mary, sets out to stop her rampage, Deadpool, appears to be smitten with a woman who can match his own level of crazy.
Along with his sidekick Weasel, Deadpool attempts to kidnap Matthew Murdoch’s pal Foggy Nelson, only for Daredevil to intervene. Claiming to also be trying to help Mary, Daredevil finds that upon listening to his heartbeat, Wade Wilson is astonishingly telling the truth. As the two leave together, Foggy and Weasel are left to their own devices, where they decide to have a night on the town. As awesome as it to see Deadpool and Daredevil team up, the pairing of these two sidekicks as they swap war stories about being friends with superpowered people is one of the highlights of the book.
WHY DAREDEVIL AND DEADPOOL TEAMED-UP
Finally managing to track down Mary, it appears that Deadpool has done this all to set up Daredevil so that she may kill him. As Typhoid Mary and Daredevil battle, the deranged woman reveals a startling truth: a younger Daredevil supposedly set her down the path of villainy, accidentally pushing her from a window while he was interrogating a thug. Daredevil has shouldered the guilt of this action for years, thinking that he was a murderer. After a difficult battle, the devil of Hell’s Kitchen defeats his foe and refuses to take responsibility for a killer’s crimes, saying that she must shoulder her own burden for what she’s done.
Mary is shaken by this, and Deadpool reveals that his earlier betrayal was only meant to engineer this outcome. All of the hijinks were just a weird form of therapy to get Mary to face a hard truth from someone she couldn’t just kill. It’s a strangely touching, if not bizarre bit of depth from Deadpool, showing that beneath all his jokes and craziness lies a good-hearted person who cares deeply for his loved ones, even if that gets expressed in the strangest ways.
Years later, Typhoid Mary would briefly reunite Deadpool and Daredevil, along with Power Man and Iron Fist, as they tried to protect a criminal informant.
Daredevil and Deadpool: SUICIDE KINGS
This outing wasn’t the only time the two red-clad heroes paired up, however. In 2013's Deadpool: Suicide Kings miniseries, by Mike Benson, Adam Glass and Carlo Barberi, Deadpool gets himself into quite a jam when he is set up for an act of terrorism he did not commit by Tombstone. The Punisher sets out to find Wade Wilson and disarms him (literally) with a sword. Before things can get any uglier, Daredevil steps in to save the day, and in a rare bit of dark humor, even offers up a pun about Deadpool’s dismembered state. Daredevil then assists Deadpool in clearing his name and pinning the blame where it belongs.
Sometimes opposites do attract, and the pairing of these two Marvel legends shows how two totally different heroes can coexist, and even thrive, alongside each other. Despite all of their differences, both of Daredevil and Deadpool are two of the brightest heroes in the Marvel Universe.
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