Deathpool

Wade had conflicting memories of his childhood. He once recalled that his father abandoned his mother while she was pregnant with him and she took out her anger on him until, as an adult, he beat her instead. He later recalled that his mother died when he was five and that his father, an army officer, became abusive, causing Wade to grow up to be a thug and criminal. When his father got his act together and tried to rein in his son, one of Wade's friends shot and killed him. However, he told a writer that his father was a teller of bad jokes who abandoned him and his mother while he was a boy. His mother turned to humor, alcohol and home shopping networks as a coping mechanism. He believed that he ran away from home so that his mother wouldn't need to spend what little money she had left on him.

However, it was eventually revealed that his parents were still together, living in Canada and had kept Wade's room as he had left it but Wade himself did not recognize the house, his parents or his room when he returned there as an adult.

After leaving home, he joined the U.S. Army Special Forces but despite his superior skills, he was drummed out for not following orders that conflicted with his moral code. After a failed suicide attempt just before his nineteenth birthday, Wade was invited to join a clandestine group of CIA-sponsored mercenary assassins called Team 7 thanks to his military record, a team created to secure The Majestic Project- a plan to control future metahuman threats. He was assured that his targets would all deserve death.

Little is known of Wilson's subsequent activities with this group. At one point he was active in Tangier, Morocco where he romanced a woman named Francie. When this relationship soured, he traveled throughout Asia, and was hired in Japan by a crime lord, the Boss, to infiltrate a sumo-wrestling ring owned by a rival criminal, the Oyakata. Wilson spent three years as a wrestler under the Oyakata's tutelage and became romantically involved with his mentor’s daughter, Sazae. When the Boss finally ordered the Oyakata's murder, Wilson refused to complete his assignment, allegedly the first time he had ever done so, and relocated to the United States.

In America, Wade met and fell in love with mutant teenage prostitute Vanessa Carlysle, with whom he shared dreams of a better life. Wilson was subsequently hired by Middle Eastern interests to assassinate a blind British Government operative named Althea, also known as Blind Al. Upon arrival to the Zaire base where she was stationed, he killed everyone except for Al who had fled.

Those who put the contract out on Al sought vengeance for his failure by targeting Vanessa, who was rescued by Zoe Culloden, an employee of the inter-dimensional firm Landau, Luckman, Lake, and LeQuare. Culloden was keeping Wilson under surveillance, believing he was destined to play a vital part in a potential threat to the world. Learning that he had developed 34 inoperable cancerous tumors, Wilson broke up with his girlfriend Vanessa rather than force her to remain with a terminally ill man. He even gave up his chemo treatments, not wishing to prolong things.

Back in Canada, he was offered hope in the form of Department K, a special weapons development branch of the Canadian government. Wilson became a test subject in Department K’s branch of the joint U.S./Canadian superhuman enhancement project, the Weapon X Program; his cancer was temporarily arrested via the implantation of a healing factor derived from another Department K agent, the mutant adventurer Wolverine.

Wilson was active in a covert field unit alongside the near-invulnerable Sluggo and the cyborgs Kane and Slayback. Vanessa herself was later affiliated with the team after having manifested mutant shapeshifting abilities, calling herself Copycat.

During one mission, Wilson killed his teammate Slayback. Shortly thereafter, his healing factor began to destabilise, bringing his cancer back from remission and causing deformities in his flesh. As a result, he was rejected from the Weapon X Program and sent to the Hospice, allegedly a government facility where failed superhuman operatives were treated. However, unknown to the Canadian government, the Hospice’s patients served as experimental subjects for Doctor Killebrew and his sadistic assistant Ajax (known then as the Attendant), with the patients placing bets in a "deathpool" as to how long each subject would live. Killebrew subjected Wilson to various torturous experiments for his own deranged satisfaction.

In due course, Wilson formed a romantic relationship with the cosmic entity Death, who regarded him as a kindred spirit. Wilson started trying to kill himself, to join Death - going so far as to start taunting Ajax by saying his real name (Francis) over and over, which earned him the respect of his fellow Hospice patients. Then Ajax, angered by Wilson’s taunts, lobotomized Worm, the closest thing Wilson had to a friend. At Death’s prompting, Wilson killed Worm to end his suffering.

However, under Killebrew's rules, any patient who killed another was to be executed; Ajax subsequently tore out Wilson’s heart and left him for dead, but Wilson’s thirst for vengeance was so strong that it jump started his healing factor, regenerating his heart, although not curing his scarred body. Wilson then escaped the now-empty room and attacked the guards, making his way to Ajax. Wilson shot him in the chest with two automatic rifles, leaving him for dead. Taking the name Deathpool, he escaped from the Hospice with his fellow patients.

Following his escape, Deathpool served for a time as an enforcer alongside the surgically altered criminal Hammerhead. He soon returned to his freelance mercenary activities, donning a costume in keeping with his new identity. At some point during his mercenary career, he was employed as an assassin by Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of crime. He also clashed with Wolverine, at that time a spy for the Canadian government. At some point during these years, Deathpool caught up with Blind Al and kept her a prisoner in his home. Al’s attempts to escape only resulted in death for those whose help she sought, leaving her no choice but to resign herself to captivity.

Some years after escaping the Hospice, Deathpool, perhaps seeking compensation for the injuries inflicted upon him by Killebrew, returned to the Canadian government and was treated by Doctor Walter Langkowski, the bestial Sasquatch of Canada’s super-team Alpha Flight. He also acquired a teleportation device around this time.

Deathpool soon found government work unsuited to his temperament, and he abandoned this endeavor. Hired by the criminal genius known as The Wizard, Deathpool at first went to the wrong address and received a job impersonating the criminal Hobgoblin. When again contacted by The Wizard, he joined with fellow criminals the Taskmaster and the Constrictor (Frank Schlichting) in a short-lived version of the Frightful Four.

## Personality

Deathpool is very comedic, although this appears to be caused in part by his mental illness. He is quick to act without thinking and is very impulsive. Deathpool used to present a morally grey personality, with no problem of disregarding other people. However, as an after effect of the inversion spell, Wade regained his conscience, to the point of even feeling bad for somebody being verbally abused.

Deathpool has friends, such as Weasel and Blind Al, that he was loyal to and cared about. Due to his variety of mental problems, he would mistreat them at times, such as stabbing Weasel in the leg over the last Cheesy Puff or confining Blind Al in a room filled with sharp objects.

Deathpool commonly develops obsessions with words and people, repeatedly mentioning the words duodenum and chimichanga, the phrase "Sphincter says what?", and is frequently preoccupied by thoughts of Bea Arthur and the Olsen Twins.