"The End" Week: Deadpool #63!

I honestly thought I had done this one already: from 2012, Deadpool #63, "The Salted Earth, part three: Conclusion" Written by Daniel Way, pencils by Filipe Andrade, inks by Sean Parsons and Jeff Huet.

Deadpool had often lamented his burden of being potentially unkillable, so he jumped at the chance to take a serum that would remove his healing factor: it worked on Evil Deadpool, a Bizarro-version of him made of collected bits that had been chopped off of him over the years. While it had brought back his pretty face, he had got a pinky shot off and burned quite a bit, as T-Ray, Slayback, and Allison Kemp had banded together to finish him for good. (Hey, Pool lost a pinky when his healing factor wasn't working way back in Joe Kelly's Deadpool #2!) 

Who, who, and who? T-Ray may or may not be the Seymour Skinner to Wade's Armin Tamzarian: Deadpool may or may not have stolen his identity, and no one likes to talk about that! Slayback was another psycho from a Weapon H program that hated Pool; but Allison Kemp was an undercover fed paralyzed after an encounter with Pool. She was the brains of the operation: when Wade sabotages their helicarrier-style ship, she lets Slayback make a run for the parachutes. When he pulls his ripcord, it's the pin to a grenade! T-Ray is furious at the sacrifice of his partner, but Allison notes "he was going to die, regardless." She knew Wade would restore the helicarrier, since without his healing factor, he wouldn't survive a crash, and T-Ray goes to beat his ass in with a barbell.

Pool looks like a 98-pound weakling that lost weight next to the massive T-Ray, but is nonchalant as usual. "Funny you should mention 'working out,' he says; leading T-Ray to realize his weight bar was a pipe bomb. With his finger on the detonator, Pool tries to get the name of the boss out of T-Ray. T-Ray realizes, Pool can't blow him up that close, and beats the tar out of him and takes the detonator.

Bringing him up top so Allison could see and confront Pool, T-Ray wraps Pool up in the barbell, then T-Ray clicks the detonator--which was actually the bomb! Psych! Allison had not been fooled, but is more than willing to die to kill Pool. Questioning her story, Pool wonders how the hell he was supposed to know she was a cop? He's not particularly sympathetic, but she seemingly relents, disarming her bomb, lamenting it had all been for nothing. Not because revenge is inherently a futile pursuit, but because Evil Deadpool was there: "Even if she killed you, sooner or later, you'd just come back. Y'know...like herpes."

The serum that had disabled his healing factor was temporary: Evil Deadpool had come back, and Deadpool was realizing, so would he. Which means...what? Evil Deadpool wonders what's in his counterpart's head, and opts to take a look. 

The issue ends with a text page from Daniel Way, who notes when he was given the title, Deadpool's profile was at a record low; and both he and Pool were gung-ho for attention. I've read a good chunk of it, but not quite all. The Institutionalized/Evil Deadpool run wasn't bad.