The long-awaited Deadpool movie hits theaters quite soon, but as we're bombarded by ironic ads and reframed trailers, let's take a moment to remember one of the nuttier aspects of a very nutty character's creation.
The time is 1990. The place is Marvel Comics (this is not really a place, but pretend it is for dramatic cadence). The people are Deadpool co-creators Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld. They had decided to introduce a sword and gun wielding assassin with super-agility to the pages of New Mutants, and Liefeld had just delivered his first designs on a character that he suggested they call "Deadpool."
Nicieza called him back: "This is Deathstroke from the Teen Titans."
In comics, Slade Wison, alias Deathstroke the Terminator, is a primary antagonist to the Teen Titans. He's best known outside of comics for appearing in Arrow and the Teen Titans cartoon adaptations (where he went by the name Slade, presumably because the name Deathstroke the Terminator was considered a little much by kid cartoon standards).
Nicieza was not making a stretch, here. Liefeld was — is — a self-professed fan of DC's teenage sidekick superteam. The New Teen Titans was one of the company's most popular series in the 1980s and in 1990 it was still going strong. It is often described as DC's answer to the success of Marvel's similarly character- and teen-driven Uncanny X-Men, a series that saw the mutant team gain significant popularity with readers — and make a significant amount of money for Marvel — for the first time. Uncanny X-Men was also the series that Nicieza and Liefeld's New Mutants had originally spun out of.
Teen Titans' most memorable story arc of the 1980s was "The Judas Contract," prominently featuring the troubled superheroine Terra and the assassin Deathstroke. In the early 2010s, when Liefeld got the chance to write a Deathstroke series for DC Comics, he said, of his affection for the character, "I've always been in awe of ... Deathstroke — and "always" means since I was a child."
So, Nicieza wasn't insinuating that Liefeld may not have known about a similar character at a competing company — it was patently impossible for Liefeld to not have been aware of Deathstroke. Here's Deathstroke over on the left.
Liefeld was proposing they create a very similar looking, similarly named, supernaturally agile assassin character, who even used the same weapons as a character who belonged to Marvel's biggest competitor.
What did the two young creators do in the face of this problem? Honestly, this is where the story reaches its wackiest point. They decided to lean into it.
Deathstroke's real name is Slade Wilson. So they named Deadpool "Wade Wilson."
And, in an industry with a history peppered with predatory copyright lawsuits, where Marvel couldn't stop publishing a comic called Captain Marvel for decades or risk losing the trademark to DC's Captain Marvel character — who, in the meantime, could not appear in a comic that bore his own name — Nicieza and Liefeld's Deadpool turned out surprisingly fine.
Names, outfits and fighting abilities aside, they display very different personalities and roles in their respective universes.
"While ruthless, there is certain nobility to Slade." Liefeld told Comic Book Resources in 2012. "He tried to have a normal family at one point, and believed in honor amongst thieves. Wade, while canny, is an insane person. The similarities are they both shoot guns and wield swords."
Now I know what you're saying: What about Deadshot? The similarly attired amoral marksman and assassin whose existence as a DC Comics character predates both Deathstroke and Deadpool by decades? The one who's being played by Will Smith in Suicide Squad?
Oh, no connection. Comics, everybody!
Update: A previous version of this post stated that Liefeld began writing for Deathstroke in the early 2000s with the New 52 launch. This was an error, the New 52 launched in 2011.