Despite literally being on home plate, Deadpool's home run is strictly metaphorical...

Leave it to Deadpool to bring us a less...conventional use of the baseball diamond: first, sparring with Warpath of X-Force on the Field of Dreams set in Iowa!


Then, scoring with his dream date, Siryn!

Yep, looks like everything's coming up Deadpool, and everything is right with the world--wait, what's going on here--

Why would Siryn have an image inducer--

--oh, dear God! Ick. Kinda defiled the cornfield, too. And Pool either didn't tuck his mask in, or decided he wanted to try the Cobra Commander look.

Typhoid Mary was an Ann Nocenti creation, and as we may have mentioned before, wrecked Daredevil up; as she organized a multi-villain beating while driving Karen away from Matt. (Again.) DD managed to get her into an asylum once, but her multiple personalities put ads in the paper: one to spring her, the other to kill her. ("It's a daily double!" proclaims Deadpool's buddy Weasel, in issue #4. That was the first issue of Deadpool I read and I've been there most of the way since.) We won't mention her third personality, Bloody Mary...seriously.

After kicking the legs out of Pool's attempts to be a hero, Typhoid strolls out of the book, and I'm not sure what her next appearance was. She recently reappeared in the Marvel Universe, but I don't want to say where since it was a surprise reveal. (Here's a hint: not Thunderbolts.) While she hasn't been in as many comics as that, Mary still has a pretty good win-loss record, and I still have her old Toy Biz Vault action figure. With little straitjacket!

A funny story: when I was in high school, my Grandma rented Field of Dreams, and was really excited to watch it, since she said a friend told her it was based on a true story. About halfway through, when the dead baseball players start coming out of the cornfield, my sister and I glance at each other like what the...? A little later, Grandma says "Wait, that's not right..." She was a little concerned about her friend after that.

Panels from Deadpool #12-13, "Drowning Man, parts 1 and 2" 'A Kelly/Woods/Massengill/Wong/Tinsley/Comicraft/Idelson/Harras Production.' Issue #11 is the slaphappy fun Spider-Man mashup, but these issues show glimpses of Pool's darker side and the goal of redemption slipping away from him. But with a very cartoony style, because that really helps make Deadpool what he is. I mean, if, say, Bill Sienkiewicz drew him...OK, that would be pretty sweet. But it might over-emphasize the violent aspects of the character. Not that the violence isn't always there, but the comedy might not work as well. And then you have panels like this...

Try to imagine Greg Land or Jim Balent drawing that one. I think you'd feel a little like, well, this:

Uh-huh. Weird to remember that Deadpool was based in San Francisco years before the X-Men headed west; although I guess Daredevil did that first anyway.
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More X-Baseball, and probably not even all of it.

Before we get going on the next one, the ever-sharp Sea of Green pointed out to me another game of X-Men baseball, from Uncanny X-Men #201. Which I should've remembered: it's on my desk at work! It was reprinted for the Toy Biz Marvel Legends Cyclops figure, which is kinda mean, since in said issue Storm whups him good and Cyke is shamed off the team. Still, more baseball! Panel from "Duel" Written by Chris Claremont, pencils by Rick Leonardi, inks by Whilce Portacio; and I still miss getting action figures with reprinted comics. (If I were a He-Man fan paying $30 a pop for the new figures, I would raise bloody hell until I got a comic out of the deal, but that may just be me.)

But, here's another fun-filled, heavy-hitting, bases-loaded...I'm out of baseball references. Steroid-juiced? Look, here's some panels from X-Men Evolution #7, "Beast of Burden" Written by Devin Grayson, art and colors by Udon with Long Vo, Charles Park, and Saka of Studio XD. That's a lot of art crew, but they do a helluva job keeping the comic looking like the cartoon, which is more than can be said for just about every other Marvel adaptation of their own shows. This issue fits in right after the Beast joins the school, and the young X-Men play a (mostly) friendly game with the younger New Mutants.

The game starts sans powers, but after Scott Summers joins in, the game goes inside to the Danger Room. It's not stated outright, but apparently indoors powers are fair game, which would make most hits easy pickings for fliers like Cannonball. In fact, Jubilee appears to be pitching while flashing fireworks at the batter. The X-Men would appear to be outgunned, but manage to pull out a last minute win, because the name of the book isn't New Mutants Evolution.

Once again, I still don't see how DC can have so much more success with their adaptations, and Marvel can't even seem to keep a pretty decent one like this going.
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