Unlike some of your faves, I've been about this Deadpool life long before Fox merked the box office with the first Deadpool film in February of 2016. I remember my cousin getting one of the first Deadpool action figures back in the day, and over the years, I reignited my love of comic books by devouring Joe Kelly and Ed McGuinness' iconic run on the first official Deadpool solo comic series back in 1997. I came for the unabashed breaking of the fourth wall and stayed for the depressed anti-hero's antics.
I've spent many days on this very website penning odes about my love for Deadpool, the Merc With a Mouth. And I rejoiced at the ultraviolent feature film that Fox delivered. I'd lived through one phase of Deadpool being so popular that he was featured in damn near every comic that Marvel wanted to make relevant during the 2000s; therefore, I wasn't surprised at the May 2017 announcement of Donald Glover getting his own adult-oriented Deadpool animated series for FX. I was as excited about Glover's continued come-up as I was about the possibility of the man behind Atlanta having full reign. Needless to say, I was pissed when I read that FX canceled Glover's animated series over the weekend. At the time, FX only said that it was "creative differences" that caused the cancellation of the series, but that didn't stop many from speculating that Donald Glover's growing list of projects (which include everything from starring in Solo: A Star Wars Story as a young Lando Calrissian to playing Simba in the upcoming Lion King live-action remake) would have spread him too thin to give this animated series the proper time and care.
Early Wednesday morning, Glover said "fuck that" and dropped a script for what he said was the finale of the Deadpool series on Twitter. What was the first thing he said before he dropped it? "For the record," Glover tweeted, "I wasnt too busy to work on Deadpool."
for the record: i wasnt too busy to work on deadpool.
What followed was 15 pages of pure insanity that found Deadpool picking up a mercenary job that would involve stealing the horn of a rhino for some Bitcoin. In true madcap, pop culture-soaked Deadpool fashion, we got a number of references to shit that has been all over your Twitter timeline during the last week, ranging from Sanaa Lathan biting Beyoncé (allegedly) to the murder of Stephon Clark by the Sacramento Police to the cancellation of his own show.
After devouring the script this morning, I came to a number of conclusions. The first was that Glover had to have written this script on Tuesday, after having enough of people saying he was "too busy" to work on Deadpool. The amount of current events in these references isn't something that was gestating over the last year. Second, I realized that my level of productive petty is NOWHERE NEAR Glover's. Building on the idea that this is, in fact, a "fake script" that was written over the last 48 hours, this is a helluva awesome script. Glover took a grip of today's hottest topics and weaved them into this insane rhino story, complete with a twist AND a massive shootout, wrapping it up in a perfect bow. Which leads to my third theory: Donald Glover's Deadpool is the best Deadpool I've read since Joe Kelly back in 1997.
I realized that my level of productive petty is NOWHERE NEAR Glover's.
I say that knowing full well that Ryan Reynolds' take (from Deadpool, not X-Men Origins: Wolverine) was a very awesome depiction of the fast-talking, super murderous character. He really nailed Deadpool's foul-mouthed mayhem, which feels like a Wikipedia for mainstream freaks. That said, this "script" opened up exactly why it was Donald Glover who was bringing forth the animated Deadpool series. It actually reminded me of the script that you were to read while listening to Childish Gambino's Because the internet. There aren't too many things I've read that spell out shit like PURPLE DEVIL EMOJI to symbolize how certain scenes would make you feel. Glover has such a mastery of the internet, which is effectively what a Deadpool writer should be grasping for. Outside of his hideous skin and his penchant for violence, Deadpool's brain is so warped and zany, it's as if he's constantly connected to his Twitter timeline. Sure, he's focusing his thoughts and forming opinions on the fuckery, but not too many superheroes are able to perfectly utilize references to YBN Nahmir, Tekashi69, and price fluctuations of Bitcoin during covert operations in faraway lands.
The other elephant in the room is how Glover used this as a way to answer the questions many of us had about the terrible news of the series being canceled. On page eight, through Deadpool, Glover speaks candidly (to Sudan, the last white rhino), about his thoughts on the series being canceled. "You know," Deadpool begins, "I'm not mad about this whole 'canceled' thing. I actually think it's a good thing. I mean, is it even a good time to have a violent, gun loving white man ranting on TV?" After making a great reference to Trump, he goes on a bit about how maybe they (FX? Marvel?) "just wanna sell toys. And this style of comedy isn't it. It's more 'ha-ha, but I'm mad. I get that." One page later, Deadpool ponders if it's because of "racism," if the show was "alienating our white audience," or if it was the "Taylor Swift episode" (whatever that would've covered). A page later, Deadpool goes into some of the realest shit ever (after correctly pointing out that the future is just Google, Amazon, and Facebook).
"It just feels like everyone wants something different," Deadpool admits, "but no one want to do anything different to get it. Doesn't Marvel have enough feel-good minority shows everyone supports but doesn't watch? I mean, I think our show woulda been funny. I just wanted a place to be honest."
Maybe Glover—who himself has had issues with opening up IRL while having issues with exposing himself online as well— found a muse in Deadpool? Maybe all of the wildly honest, kind of nutty thoughts that everyone has but no one actually says sound perfect coming out of Deadpool's mouth? Those thoughts are usually never ones that are ready for mass consumption, and maybe FX, realizing that, was shook off of Glover's real shit? Deadpool is the kind of character that, in his fourth wall–breaking asides, says the shit we're all thinking, be it a quick dick joke or, in this situation, the lack of comic book shows that are heavy and don't always have happy endings and comment on real shit going on, especially for minorities?
We'll probably never know. FX hasn't said shit since announcing the cancellation of the series, and one has to imagine that Glover released this script with the specific intention to encapsulate not just what a Glover-ran Deadpool animated series would sound like, but also serve as his official statement on why he felt the series got canceled in the first place. Either way, I'm pissed the hell off, because in today's America, we need this Deadpool.
