Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars #2

History

The four-issue miniseries was written by Cullen Bunn — the same writer behind Deadpool Killustrated — with interior art on issue #2 penciled and inked by Matteo Lolli, colors by Ruth Redmond, and lettering by Joe Sabino; the main cover was painted by Tony Harris, and the issue was edited by Jordan D. White and Heather Antos under editor-in-chief Axel Alonso. The series was published as a Warzones!/Battleworld tie-in to Marvel's 2015 Secret Wars event, though its narrative concerned the original 1984 Jim Shooter/Mike Zeck Secret Wars rather than the contemporary Jonathan Hickman event — a deliberate bit of tongue-in-cheek misdirection baked into the book's marketing from the start. The Gwenpool variant cover by Chris Bachalo was part of Marvel's June 2015 'Gwen Variant' initiative, a line-wide celebration of Spider-Gwen's breakout popularity in which every Marvel title that month received an alternate cover reimagining its protagonist as a Gwen Stacy mashup; the Deadpool title's iteration proved so resonant with fans that editor Jordan D. White subsequently commissioned writer Christopher Hastings and editor Heather Antos to develop Gwenpool into an actual in-story character.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published June 17, 2015 (cover-dated August 2015); issue #2 of a 4-issue limited miniseries.
• Written by Cullen Bunn; interior art by Matteo Lolli (pencils and inks); colors by Ruth Redmond; letters by Joe Sabino; main cover by Tony Harris. Editors: Jordan D. White and Heather Antos.
• The Bachalo Gwenpool variant cover marks the first appearance of the Gwenpool character design — an amalgam of Gwen Stacy and Wade Wilson created by Chris Bachalo as part of Marvel's June 2015 line-wide 'Gwen Variant' program celebrating Spider-Gwen's popularity.
• Gwenpool's cover appearance here preceded her first in-story appearance, which came in Howard the Duck Vol. 6 #1 (November 2015), after fan and cosplay enthusiasm for the cover design prompted Marvel to develop her into a full character.
• The issue's story continues Bunn's retroactive-continuity conceit that Deadpool was secretly present during the original 1984 Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, inserting Wade Wilson into scenes alongside the X-Men as they deliberated which faction — Captain America's Avengers or Magneto — to align with on Battleworld.
• Issue #2 also depicts the healer Zsaji curing Deadpool — not of battlefield wounds but of the scars that have defined his appearance, giving Wade a briefly restored face, a plot point with significant character resonance for the series.
• The series as a whole (with issue #3 carrying the symbiote thread forward) retroactively established that Deadpool bonded with the alien symbiote on Battleworld before Spider-Man, and that the symbiote's corrupted, aggressive personality was influenced by Wade's own nature — a retcon that directly seeded the later Deadpool: Back in Black miniseries.
• The full series (issues #1–4) was collected in a trade paperback that also reprints the original Secret Wars #1 (May 1984) by Jim Shooter and Michael Zeck, and the issues were additionally reprinted in Deadpool Classic Vol. 19.

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