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Saying Goodbye To My Spirit Guide

Sam Johnson writes,

As a kid I was into comics, and then, as some do, I disconnected with them at some point in my teen years.

In the early stages of my so-called adulthood, something caught my eye that was to not only bring me back, but to become an almost-symbiotic part of my now to-be-rekindled relationship with funnybooks.

That something was Wade Wilson – a.k.a. Deadpool, the Merc With A Mouth.

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I was in a Virgin Megastore when I happened across their comics section and Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza's early issues of New Mutants, which introduced Cable and Mr. Wilson. These brought a new dimension to the usual good-versus-evil-mutants scenarios I was already very familiar with.

Cable, the Terminator-esque interloper from the future, and Deadpool – whose main characteristic was not-shutting-the-#%$!-up, in order to distract and throw off his opponents.

I was back into comics – and when I shortly later decided the writing-career-path I wanted to follow was comicbooks, Deadpool came with me. Joe Kelly's take on the character – that made Wade Wilson so much more the character we know today, and informed the movie incarnation, was one of my favourite comic runs, was inspiring, and after Kelly left (due to the-then-not-all-that-popular character's book being regularly threatened with cancellation), I continued to follow Deadpool. Though I did feel Wade gradually drifted from the – as well as being funny – dark, complex, and human characteristics that made me fully fall for the Merc With a Mouth.

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While this was going on, I was running with my own character, Cabra Cini: Voodoo Junkie Hitwoman. I wasn't consciously emulating Wade Wilson with the ex-crack-whore-turned-supernatural-gun-for-hire, but they had some similarities, and I referred to her as Deadpool's 'spiritual cousin,' and sent Deadpool editors copies of her annual appearances in H!M Comics' IF-X Halloween issue – forming part of my campaign to showcase my desire and, hopefully capability, to write the Merc With a Mouth. A desire which grew and grew…

I created my Deadpool Crew Facebook Group, and my Bootleg Deadpool Hearts Death strips, wherein I (with the artist's approval) took some panels from a couple of Deadpool pages, erased the lettering and made up my own, to make short, free online 'funnies' depicting Deadpool and the-love-of-his-life Death in sitcom style moments. I also wrote reviews of issues of Deadpool at my blog, to the point where the Top 5 most popular posts there were almost always Deadpool-related.

I later took an opportunity to try and work on the character fo' realz when the Deadpool Team-Up series came out (utilizing different creators with each issue) and wrote three pitches for the book. When the book got cancelled before I could do anything with them, I wrote a pitch for the actual series, and put it on the shelf, waiting for the time when a vacancy for a new MwaM-writer might open up, and when I would hopefully be of a high enough profile to be a realistic consideration for this. I also created the parody-of-a-parody character, Wayne Winston, in Mike Gagnon and I's superteam-spoofing The Almighties comic.

All the while this was happening, I was also working on my Geek-Girl comic.

Geek-Girl is the story of a popular college chick whom, on a whim, lands superpowers and then is forced to deal with what having them means (i.e. 'With Great Power…'), alongside the detrimental effect they have on her social standing.

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Ruby and her friend Stacey, drunk in a bar, overhear their resident college brainiac Trevor Goldstein and his pal Jeff talking about power-inducing super-tech glasses he's invented, Ruby decides she wants them, and they take advantage of 'the horny geeks' – getting them hammered – and Ruby wins the glasses off Trevor in a game of Strip Poker.

Not the most noble of beginnings for the would-be-heroine who would then be landed with the name 'Geek-Girl' – due to the look the glasses give her, and the klutziness that comes with her not being used to her now-super-strength. This causes her to knock drinks over her girl friends, beginning the end of her shallower-than-a-puddle relationship with the majority of them; the exception being her BFF, Summer. Summer's a decent girl amid a clique of mean girls, her Dad is a big comic geek, so she's grown up steeped in superhero comicbook lore – and it's Summer who pushes Ruby to use her powers in the way we, as comic fans, would expect (an ideal not so familiar to Ruby).

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This sets Ruby on a path out of the vapid 'popular girl' lifestyle she was living and down a road that just might be the making of her. …If she can survive it.

Geek-Girl #0 was released in 2009; it was a self-published, low-key b&w comic that established Ruby Kaye and her college world and set her on the road to becoming a heroine. The character caught people's imagination and we had a good run with issue #0, getting three printings out of it. But the Mini-Series that was to follow was going to be a bigger, full-colour, 'widescreen' affair, throwing Ruby headlong into the world of 'tights and capes'-proper, when she is forced to step up after her town's resident Big-Shot super-heroine gets (easily) taken down by mysterious new super-villainess Lightning Storm.

It took a long search, including a couple of false starts, to find the right artist – in Carlos Granda – for the Geek-Girl Mini-Series, and I wanted to have all four issues in the can before releasing issue #1, so as not to fall into 'When's the next one coming out?' syndrome; and all the while Carlos was working on that, my 'Spirit Guide' Deadpool remained with me and I worked on the Deadpool stuff I've talked about, trying to get my voice heard as one that might one day inform the voices in Wade Wilson's deranged head.

And then two things happened.

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Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan took over writing Deadpool, and brought back – and further developed – what Joe Kelly had done with the character – and I no longer felt the Deadpool I love was missing anything; something that, with my close connection to the character, had been a driving force in wanting to work on him.

And under the pencils of Carlos Granda – bringing so much to the visuals of Ruby, in terms of body language, facial expressions and character – Geek-Girl became fully realized. And I realized that Deadpool was going to be just fine on his own now, and that the character I want to fully invest in at this time is Ruby Kaye; whom from her not-entirely-endearing beginnings, I hope grows throughout her series to become a nuanced, heroic character – as Deadpool has.

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Based on the reviews the Geek-Girl Mini-Series has been getting, that seems to be coming across. We've made issue #3, which is is out now, a specially priced Jump-On issue that recaps issues #1 & #2, and it's where Ruby really tries to become a hero, ahead of the next issue of the 4-issue Mini-Series, which will see her faced with the daunting prospect of trying to take down Lightning Storm.

Geek-Girl's publisher Markosia have committed to a second series, so while I will continue to follow the adventures of Deadpool and still have a burning desire to write him one day, it's Ruby who needs my full attention now, to further develop her and her world – perhaps to the point where she becomes to someone else what Liefeld and Nicieza's creation became to me.

Geek-Girl #3 is Out Now and available at www.geekgirlcomics.com

To sign up to the Geek-Girl mailing list, send a blank email to geekgirlmarkosia@gmail.com


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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