Deadpool & Psylocke #3!

Posted on by phil.wrede
On the cover, Deadpool crawls along the ground in front of the guy with boxing gloves who knocked him down at the conclusion of the previous issue. Though this guy wears boxing gloves, and is a G.I. Joe action figure, I’m going to refer to him as Van Damme. A spectral image of Psylocke hovers in the background, a miasma of purple and white light. The title of this series - “Deadpool & Psylocke” - is visible at the top of the image, and the issue numbering (this is issue 3).
2. Deadpool continues to struggle to his feet as we enter into the issue itself. In a text box in the upper left corner, the comedic preface is explained: “Mutants! Feared and rejected by a world they have to live in. Some tread the path walked by Charles Xavier (Rolled? Floated?), while others find their own ways. Others, like… Deadpool & Psylocke!” The title of this comic - “Show Me What You’re #+%&ing Made Of!” - is visible to the bottom left of the image. In the bottom middle of the image, the setting is described as, “Deadpool’s dated, dystopian sci-fi mindscape.” At the very bottom is the comic’s primary credit, “A toy comic by Phil Wrede.”
As he springs to his feet, Deadpool mentally calls a sawed-off shotgun into his right hand, and he waves it in Van Damme’s face.
Nonplussed, Van Damme punches Deadpool in the stomach so hard that it lifts him off his feet, and then sends him flying with another punch across his face.
Deadpool falls back and lands right on his neck. As his body falls, his head twists around nearly 180 degrees, looking straight up into the sky, though his body lays on its chest.
Standing again, Deadpool pushes his head back into the correct direction. As Van Damme squares up for another round of fighting, Deadpool summons a tactical shotgun into his hands.
After a little taunting, Deadpool fires a blast directly into Van Damme’s face.
Aghast, Deadpool stares at Van Damme, watching as the smoke clears and the Terminator endoskeleton (complete with glowing eye) beneath his obliterated skin is revealed. Van Damme remarks, “(%/( you, $+#hole,” in a quotation of a line from the first Terminator film.
Deadpool directly addresses the comic’s reader about this discovery, and hypothesizes that the “predictable reveal” of Van Damme’s Terminator identity is probably because the comic’s creator only recently obtained a Terminator endoskeleton action figure for inclusion in the comic. Van Damme doesn’t understand what Deadpool is doing.
Deadpool draws his trademark swords; he and Van Damme rush at each other.
Deadpool block’s Van Damme’s first punch with his sword blades, but gets his head rocked by two more punches that rain in faster than he can react to them.
A punch to the face and a kick to the stomach cause Deadpool to drop his weapons. Van Damme brings both his fists crashing down on Deadpool’s head, knocking our hero to the ground again.
Van Damme declares that he hates Deadpool more than he hates John Connor, and this, for a lifelong Terminator fan like Deadpool, is the last straw. He summons a pair of grenades into his hands, and stuffs them into the straps Van Damme wears around his chest.
“Eat me, dickwad!” are Van Damme’s last words before the grenades explode (a callback to advice the child John Connor gave to the Terminator in T2 about how to combine insults into one sentence). The explosion causes Van Damme to fly high into the air.
“You’re terminated, &#%*-er!” Deadpool tells Van Damme (quoting Sarah Connor’s taunt before crushing the Terminator in the original film). Deadpool lifts and replaces his swords as a secondary explosion rises up from Van Damme when his body hits the ground.
As Deadpool runs away from the scene, a pure Terminator endoskeleton crawls out of the smoke and fire left behind.
We pivot to Psylocke’s side of the story, with a series of caption boxes that read, “The real world. Where people stop being nice. And start destroying public property.” Psylocke drives through the streets of the city around Deadpool’s apartment in her white Nissan Leaf, headed for some vague address that she was able to peel out of the mind of the Mauler (the character with whom she fought in the previous issue).
As Psylocke turns onto another street, she notices a muscle car painted in camouflage, with an open mouth full of teeth grinning near the front wheels. It’s obviously pursuing her, and being driven by the man Deadpool called, “Magnum, %)(-guzzling, P.-&#%@ing-I,” in the first issue. For clarity’s sake, I’ll be referring to him as Magnum for the duration of his stay in this story.
Psylocke hits the accelerator, making her electric car’s acceleration work in her favor, as she leaves Magnum behind, and tries to hide on the other side of a slow-moving garbage truck. Magnum lifts a hand to his mouth and speaks into a little transmitter: “Drone car, cut her off!”
A driverless red and blue car speeds onto the road from out of nowhere, and quickly starts overtaking Psylocke, attempting to pass the garbage truck on the right. “Clear the obstacle!!” Magnum orders.
The drone car smashes into the garbage truck and drives clean underneath it. As the truck hits the street on its side, and something in it explodes, Magnum and the drone car start to close on Psylocke again.
Psylocke takes a sharp turn off the main road, momentarily losing her pursuers.
Magnum and the drone car follow just slightly behind Psylocke, but that moment appeared to be all she needed to sneak out of their sight again.
Magnum spots an armored car, and orders the drone to scout what’s in front - sure enough, it spots Psylocke’s Leaf hiding in front of the armored car!
As the drone approaches, Magnum can see through its onboard cameras that the front windows of Psylocke’s Leaf are down, and she’s nowhere to be seen inside. When Magnum looks up, he notices she’s standing on the roof of the armored car, having clearly engaged some kind of self-driving feature on her vehicle.
Psylocke leaps off the armored car and shouts, “Maximum &(*)ing effort!!” before she crashes into, and through, the windshield of Magnum’s car.
They exchange a few punches in the front seat of Magnum’s car before he loses control of it. Psylocke barely manages to dive out the passenger window before it crashes and flips over. Finally, a police car enters the fray, with its lights flashing and siren blaring.
The drone car engages in evasive maneuvers, and speeds away from the crash site, with the police car in hot pursuit. Psylocke stands on the sidewalk as her Leaf slows to a stop in front of her as she remarks, “Maybe Beast’s auto-drive experiments weren’t as stupid as I said they were!”
The credits for the comic strip, citing the Unsplash users whose photographs were the background art, the use of fonts by Blambot, the ownership of Marvel by Disney, the creation of Marvel characters by actual human beings, the use of stock visual effects by Action VFX, the creators of The Terminator and, finally, that the figure photography/script/lettering were by me, Phil Wrede.

Well, I fell pretty far under the weather during the month of February, so I’m getting this comic (plus blog post) uploaded just under the wire (it’s the night of Monday, March 10, 2025, as I write this). It wasn’t COVID; I tested myself several times, just to be sure. I just managed to catch two aggressive, but run-of-the-mill, colds. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but when I’m sick, I just want to drink water (or tea, or hot Tang) and watch cartoons. But, in spite of that significant obstacle, I still got this month’s comic done before my self-imposed deadline! And, I’m pretty far along on my latest rewatch of the reboot Ducktales!

Anyway. Deadpool. Psylocke. Third issue! Go back and read the first issue, and the second, if you feel inclined!

I haven’t engaged with any new-to-me Deadpool material since the last installment went live, so… I suppose I can write about some of the moments in this comic that I liked making! Like the endoskeleton reveal, and Deadpool mocking me for not having that figure ready to go when I started this series (he’s right. I don’t like admitting it, but he’s right).

It’s been quite a while since I tried to do a car chase in a comic; I think this one an improvement over the last attempt, at least! I stuck Psylocke in a Leaf because it’s the kind of car I own, and I’m a big fan of it. I reckon a Leaf modified by the X-Men would be a pretty strong performer in any kind of road race/chase.

I didn’t really know where this comic was going, when I sat down to start taking the base pictures that become the character poses in each panel, but it all just kind of came together, when I started laying the figures and their props out. I’m pretty pleased with this comic, and I sure hope you enjoyed reading it, too! Next month will, I’m pretty sure, be a break from this story, as I’ve been scratching out a lot of ideas for the second chapter in my latest Star Wars tale…

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