Joe Kelly Reminisces About His Deadpool Run

Marvel.com has posted an interview with former Deadpool writer Joe Kelly. The interview focuses mainly on his upcoming work on Amazing Spider Man, but there is one question that focuses on his run on the first ongoing Deadpool series.

Marvel.com: When Steve Wacker originally announced that you were coming on the book, he mentioned that one of the reasons you stood out for this gig was your work on DEADPOOL with Ed McGuinness. Since that original run came out, Marvel's given the character multiple series, and he's become one of the most popular new characters of the past 20 years. What's it like to have something you did become so big for the Marvel Universe and still be landing you gigs years later?

Joe Kelly: I certainly appreciate that. One of the cool things is that you play with these toys and ultimately they belong to somebody else, and to know that you did something that endures and was able to help keep the character afloat—that's really cool to me. What's nice about the DEADPOOL stuff specifically is that people remember the work that I did. It's not just "Why is this guy still around?" It comes back to "Oh yeah, Joe's run," and that's really cool because I love that book. That was my first real series that I felt ownership of. I had started doing DAREDEVIL right before that and never felt super strong ownership of that book, but DEADPOOL was all ours.

Specifically with [editor Matt] Idelson, we just thought the book was going to be cancelled at six issues and we could do whatever we wanted. Nobody was paying attention, nobody cared, and so it was a great time to experiment and goof around and ultimately write a book that I would like to read. It's great that it's still around and people still care. I think the nice thing, or at least I hope that when people look at the context of my writing career, it's not like "There was DEADPOOL and then 10 years of nothing else and now he's on Spider-Man." [Laughs] So the good thing is that it's a very cool benchmark of where I was and where I headed. I hope that more of those trades come out because I think people will enjoy those issues again.

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