Deadpool as a Mad Queer Crip

Cover image of Way, Daniel. (2008). Deadpool #40: "Institutionalized, Part One." New York: Marvel Comics.
Cover image of Way, Daniel. (2008). Deadpool #40: “Institutionalized, Part One.” New York: Marvel Comics.

While planning for an on-line presentation on the “Cripping” Graphic Medicine Series (Garden, Wiener, and Zubal-Ruggieri), my colleagues and I met online and each of us recognized and relayed an experience that illustrates the impact of a “Cripped” Graphic Medicine on our lives, even more now in the time of COVID-19. After I logged into our Zoom planning session, my co-presenters noticed and remarked that I was using an image of the Marvel comic book character, Deadpool, as my Zoom background. I then shared how my work/research has been examining Deadpool as a Mad Queer Crip (MQC) (Dehaiman and Zubal-Ruggieri), and how some imagery and story lines from his narrative and comics can be used to interpret disability, mental health, and alternative sexuality. Sure, he’s fictional, but because of who he is, Deadpool is often overlooked but well loved, and he is a character worth examining—flawed, uncanny, and a character who portrays some things “right” about disability. He constantly “makes mad,” queers, and “crips” comics. 

While there are many examples from Deadpool’s overall narrative, one particular image is worth close scrutiny. On the cover of Deadpool Vol 2. Issue #40, titled “Institutionalized Part One” (Way, Deadpool #40), Deadpool is hanging upside down, wearing a straitjacket and red Captain America logo boxer shorts. His superhero mask is half off his face, he is grimacing and drooling, and his scarred chin can just barely be discerned. The lower strap on the straitjacket transverses his crotch, buckled tightly, disappearing between his buttocks. In the background, there are two distracted or drugged male figures, standing in a disheveled back ward of an asylum, hospital, or institution. One, like Deadpool, is wearing a straitjacket. The other is wearing a hospital gown and a Napoleon-style hat.

This imagery is rife with controversy, symbolic of multiple contentious issues—the over-medicalization of mental patients (Deadpool is drooling and the figures in the background are dazed); the use of unproven medical practices and torturous treatments (Deadpool is hanging upside down); Deadpool is bound, immobilized, a contained threat, thus he has reduced agency, representative of the mentally ill as uncontrollable, unrelatable, and to be removed from “proper society” and hidden away. It can also easily be perceived as an overt representation conflating BDSM, queerness, and aberrant sexuality with mental illness.

This image brings us in (gets our attention) as readers (or watchers), and when we open the comic issue in question, the reader discovers that things are not as they appear.

Important Points:

  • Deadpool and the discomfiture of his whole character can be utilized to inform and educate readers about issues such as mental health, chronic illnesses, sexuality, and popular culture.
  • This illustration, as well as others within the limited “Institutionalized” comic mini-series can be used along with a specifically created Venn Diagram for analysis and discussion (included below).
A Venn Diagram illustrating overlapping identities of "Mad," "Queer," and "Crip"
A Venn Diagram illustrating overlapping identities of “Mad,” “Queer,” and “Crip”

Works Cited

Garden, Rebecca, Diane Wiener and Rachael Zubal-Ruggieri. Cripping Graphic Medicine: Academic Disability and Health/Care Activism. Multiple Perspectives Conference, ADA Coordinator’s Office, Ohio State University, April 7, 2020.

Dehaiman, Layla and Rachael Zubal-Ruggieri. Breaking the Fourth Wall: Deadpool, The Disabled and Mad Antihero. Deaf-initely Ironic…? “CRIPPING” THE COMIC CON 2016, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, April 1, 2016.

Way, Daniel. Deadpool #40: “Institutionalized, Part One.” New York, Marvel Comics, 2008.
Way, Daniel. Deadpool #41: “Institutionalized, Part Two.”  New York, Marvel Comics, 2008.
Way, Daniel. Deadpool #42: “Institutionalized, Conclusion.”  New York, Marvel Comics, 2008

Recommended Reading

Baker, A. C. (2017, January 30). 15 Things About Deadpool That Everyone Gets Wrong. Screenrant [Website].

Darowski, J. J. (2009). When You Know You’re Just a Comic Book Character: Deadpool. In W. Irwin, R. Housel, & J. J. Wisnewski (Eds.), X-Men and Philosophy: Astonishing Insight and Uncanny Argument in the Mutant X-verse [Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series] (pp. 108-131). New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Jack MC. (2018, September 24). Deadpool Unmasked: Sometimes we forget who Wade Wilson really is. Odyssey [Website].

Kelly, R. (2016). The Top 6 Tragedies of Deadpool: The Healing Humor of the Merc with the Mouth. Shrink Tank [Website].

Lussier, G. (2016, February 8). The Unlikely Origins of Deadpool, The X-Men Character Who Conquered All Media. io9.com [Website].

Michaud, N., & May, J. T. (Eds.). (2017). Deadpool and Philosophy: My Common Sense Is Tingling [Popular Culture and Philosophy Book 107]. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co.

Triana, B. (2018). Deadpool: When Our (Anti)Heroes Do Less and We Reward Them More. Journal of Popular Culture, 51(4), 1016-1035. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12712.

Notes

Any and all work I may share about Deadpool is inspired by, if not based upon, collaborative work with Layla Dehaiman starting with a 2016 “CripCon” presentation, resulting in two unpublished manuscripts and countless presentations and works in process.

This is one of many examples using mainstream/superhero comics as an interdisciplinary example.

This short essay is inspired by the format used for a certain class assignments while the author was enrolled in HNR 360: (Dis)abling Comic Books at Syracuse University in Spring 2017.

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