Deadpool (3rd series) #8

Issue Date: 
May 2009
Story Title: 
Magnum Opus (Part 1): All Your Base Belong To Us
Staff: 

Daniel Way (Writer), Paco Medina (Pencils), Juan Vlasco (Inker), Marte Gracia (Colors), VC’s Cory Petit (Letters), Jason Pearson (Cover), Irene Lee (Production), Jody Leheup (Assistant Editor), Axel Alonso (Editor), Joe Quesada (Editor-in-chief), Dan Buckley (Publisher)

Brief Description: 

Deadpool is seeking revenge on Norman Osborn after he stole the bio-data on how to kill a Skrull Queen, thus robbing him of money and making him look a fool. He enters Avengers Tower where he believes Osborn is residing. When he enters the lobby, Osborn greets him and then remotely attacks, using a flying mechanical drone. Deadpool saves himself by using a chest plate from one of Iron Man’s armors. He enters the stairwell and uses a grappling gun to start his climb to the ninetieth floor. He lets his imagination run away with him during the climb, imagining himself to be Jack from Jack and the beanstalk. He imagines Osborn as the giant who is attacking him, until he realizes he is being attacked in real life by giant mechanical bats. After riding one of the bats to the top floor, he blows it up and enters the room where he thinks Osborn is. Osborn is nowhere to be found; instead his new team of Thunderbolts is ready and waiting for him.

Full Summary: 

Deadpool is standing in a warehouse full of wooden boxes, addressing an unseen figure. He tells them that not long ago Nick Fury came to him with a really big job attached to a really big pay check. He emphasizes that Nick Fury came to him.

He then goes on to say that Fury needed someone to infiltrate the Skrull Bio-Ops Center inside Cheyenne Mountain. The place was supposedly impossible to get into but he got in. He then accessed the computers and, using a password Fury had him memorize, uploaded some Skrull biological data. Specifically the data on how to kill the Skrull queen. He pulled the job off perfectly but somehow the data was intercepted by Norman Osborn before it reached Fury. Osborn then used the data to kill the Skrull queen and become a hero. Now everybody loves him… everybody except Deadpool.

The mercenary explains that since the data was stolen he never got his pay check and he ended up looking like a chump. The way he sees it is that Osborn owes him and he has a plan to make him pay.

Deadpool is now stood outside the Avengers tower with a duffle bag on his back. As he walks towards the front entrance, the voices in his head question his actions and ask “if this is the plan?” “To just walk in and…what?” Deadpool tells them he will see what happens but, when he tries to walk through the entrance, the revolving door doesn’t budge. He looks on the glass and sees a notice saying the tower is closed for remodeling. One of the voices ask what is his plan now to which Deadpool relies “%&*$ plans” and with that he squats down and gets a machine gun out his duffle bag. He then tells the voice to “%*&$ doors” too as he fires the machine gun, shattering the glass of the door.

He steps through the door into the lobby of the tower. Standing in the lobby is one of Iron Man’s old armors. Deadpool looks around and muses that he thought Zeke’s place was nice. Suddenly a voice comes over the intercom and greets Deadpool. The voice says they were getting bored waiting for Deadpool to show up so they came up with a few surprises to liven things up. With that Deadpool sees a small flying drone which is playing the transmission and recording him on camera. Deadpool asks what kind of surprises and then enquires as to if the owner of the voice got a new haircut.

In another room, Norman Osborn is watching Deadpool on a monitor. He replies to Deadpool saying he was expecting a hair joke. Not put off Deadpool retorts back saying “did you expect this?” And with that he throws two smoke grenades on the floor. Un-phased by the smoke, Osborn dryly mocks Deadpool and feigns not knowing where Deadpool is. He then presses a button on the computer consol and Deadpool is revealed on the screen in infra-red vision. He then presses another button which causes the mechanical drone to open fire in Deadpool. Osborn’s monitors show Deadpool lying on the floor and the words “Direct Hit” appear.

Deadpool then starts to get up much to the Osborn’s surprise so he opens fire on the mercenary once again. The computer says it was a direct hit again but Deadpool is still standing. The ventilation in the lobby clears the smoke and Osborn sees how Deadpool survived the attack. He squints his eyes and says to himself he should have had that thing removed. As the smoke clears in the lobby the Iron Man armor can be seen but the chest plate section is missing.

Deadpool, now wearing the chest plate, kicks down the door to the stairwell and makes his way up. He takes out a grappling gun to which the voices in his head ask him where he got it from. He fires the gun and starts his ascent. He asks the voices how many floors he has to climb to which one of them replies ninety. He grumbles and asks if the grappling hook can go any faster. The voices reply it could if he dropped the chest plate. “No way” Deadpool replies and goes on to ask the voices if they know how much a real Iron Man chest plate is worth on eBay. He’ll just use the time to come up with more hair jokes. The first voice in his head says it looks like it was grown in a Petri dish. Deadpool laughs and says it looks like his hairline is running away from his face.

In his room, a bemused Osborn is listening in to Deadpool and asks himself who Deadpool is talking to. Finally having enough of the mercenary, Osborn presses a button labeled “secondary defenses.” Deadpool gets excited when the first voice in his head tells him he is almost there. But is disappointed when he realizes he is only at the 12th floor. The second voice says a song would pass the time, to which Deadpool tells them what would really pass the time is one of his wacky hallucinations.

As smoke fills the stairwell Deadpool imagines himself as Jack from Jack and the beanstalk. He sees a great beanstalk rising upwards among the clouds with a castle at the very top. Just as he comments that this is going to be good he hears a booming voice say “Feee-Fiii-Fooo-Fummm.” He spins around to see the Norman Osborn in the guise of the giant. The giant continues saying “I’m a stinky dummy-dum”. Deadpool agrees with him and then points out he even has the stink lines around him. The giant looks down at himself at Deadpool starts to laugh. The giant then starts to swat away the flies that are buzzing around him as Deadpool continues to poke fun at him. Deadpool then tells the giant that he tricked him out of a lot of money. When the giant tries to deny it Deadpool continues and says that he saw it on TV and that he owes Deadpool a lot of golden beans.

When the first voice in his head tells him that’s not how the story goes, Deadpool ignores him and tells the giant to hand over the beans. The giant says he doesn’t have any and moves his hands to cover a sack hanging around his waist. Deadpool spots the sack and points out it has a dollar sign on it. Becoming angry, the giant reaches into the sack and throws some beans at Deadpool. The beans, however, turn into mechanical purple bats. Deadpool thinks they are awesome but the first voice in his head tries to interject. He continues to muse on how great they are until the second voice gets his attention and points out the bats are real.

In the stairwell, Deadpool is surrounded by pumpkin bombs and mechanical bats. As they start to explode, Deadpool drops the grappling gun and grabs onto one of the bats. He climbs onto of the bat and is about to shoot it with his pistol. He suddenly realizes that it would be a bad idea to do that just as another bat opens fire on him. The blasts miss him and Deadpool suddenly realizes something. He asks the voices in his head if they saw what he saw. When they ask what he saw, Deadpool points out that the bat is avoiding getting hit by the blasts of the other bats. It can think. When the voices ask what that means, Deadpool tells them that it means he doesn’t need them anymore. With that, he holds onto the bat and aims it up the stairwell.

Reaching the ninetieth floor, Deadpool jumps off, but the bats have followed him and prepare to attack him. He takes out a small detonation button and tells the bat that it’s over between them. With that, he presses the button and a small bomb he planted in the bat explodes, destroying it and the other bats around it in a big explosion. As Deadpool walks away from the explosion, he calls out to Norman Osborn. He says he has a joke for him. He starts off by saying “knock knock.” “Who’s there?” replies Osborn.

A blast rips open the door on the ninetieth floor and Deadpool walks through. “Not… you…” says a surprised Deadpool, standing in the doorway. He ducks as an axe flies towards him, narrowly missing his head. In the room stand the Thunderbolts. Over the intercom Osborn simply tells the Thunderbolts they know what to do. In another building looking out towards the Avengers tower he finishes off by telling them to let him know how it goes.

Running from the Thunderbolts, Deadpool shouts to the voices in his head and asks them what to do. They tell him that they are not talking to him to which he begs them to be his friends again. But they tell him that they are over.

Characters Involved: 

Deadpool

Norman Osborn

Black Widow II, Paladin, Headsman, Ghost and Ant-Man III (O’Grady) (All Thunderbolts)

(In Flashback)

Deadpool

Nick Fury

Norman Osborn

(In Deadpool’s imagination)

The Giant/Norman Osborn

Story Notes: 

This is the first part of a four-part crossover between this series and Thunderbolts (1st series).

The story of how Deadpool infiltrated the Skrulls and stole the bio-data can be found in Deadpool (3rd Series) #1-3.

Since Norman Osborn came to power after the Skrull invasion, he has created his own team of Avengers and has taken over the Avengers tower.

The Zeke Deadpool refers to is Colonel Zeke from Deadpool (3rd series) #4-5.

Deadpool realized it was Norman Osborn who stole the data when he saw him on TV in Deadpool (3rd series) #7.

When Deadpool comments that his imagination is Bruckheimerian, he is talking about Jerry Bruckheimer who is a director famous for films such as Armageddon, Con Air, Pirate of the Caribbean and Nation Treasure.

The next part of the crossover can be found in Thunderbolts (1st series) #130.

Issue Information: 
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