Deadpool: The End #1
Joe Kelly (w), Mike Hawthorne (a)
Marvel Comics

Liz says: How do you kill an unkillable killer? Deadpool: The End #1 tells you how in not one but twenty-five different ways! The latest installment of Marvel’s ‘The End’ (a series of one-shots relaying a potential last story for a titular character), this issue is as appropriately wacky, hilarious and fourth-wall-breaking as any final Deadpool should be. While our anti-hero Wade Wilson has survived the unsurvivable at least a million times over, writer Joe Kelly offers up a number of entertaining and vaguely credible death scenes for the Merc with a Mouth. It’s fitting that Kelly (the writer largely credited with defining the character) should be tasked with writing Deadpool’s final story, and he certainly doesn’t disappoint. The mostly single-page entries range from “death-by-joyous-orgy” to “death-by-office-admin”, with all sorts of crazy in-between – amidst the many set-ups, we’re given differing possible scenarios in which Deadpool joins the Avengers and dates a member of the team (one male, one female), a bored-marriage scene between Deadpool and his longtime paramour Death, and a funny dig at DC Metal (the Batman-Who-Laughs in particular). Most notably, there are two very plausible (and surprisingly touching) endings that would make any true fan weep. If this truly is Joe Kelly’s last words on Deadpool, I couldn’t have asked for a better “The End”.