One of the things I enjoyed about Deadpool was the "misguided villain trying to turn his life around" angle that had become such a core piece to the character. This type of character role is nothing new but when paired with Deadpool it always seemed more interesting and fun. I have enjoyed reading Deadpool go from a near cut and dry Deathstroke stand in against the New Mutants to a unique persona of a man whose past has left him with many difficulties and even more unanswered questions. What takes this to another level, for me at least, is that the character was not some stereotypical "what happened to me?!", monotonously serious badass, but rather a man who still laughs and derives what enjoyment he can from whatever situation he happens to be in, all the while trying to better his life one piece at a time.

Another great aspect was the way the character dealt with his past full of fragmented memories, morally corrupt choices and personality disorders: by cracking jokes. As his character was more fleshed out this funny banter was shown to be more of a coping mechanism to the litany of personal problems he suffers from. Many other characters use funny one liners, but what always made it special for Deadpool was that there was actually this reason behind his doing it.

However, since the Marvel Now! line has come the character seems to have regressed to that of an apathetic thug role with bits of comedy forced in.

The problems I have with this "new Deadpool" are numerous. His combat skills for one have seemed to all but drop off: getting beaten routinely and handily by the ghost presidents and his being easily handled and restrained by Daredevil (not a knock against Murdock, just that Wade should be represented much better) are just the two that strike me the most.

As for his personal relationships where are Bob, Weasel, Outlaw, Blind Al or Alex? These characters melded greatly with who Wade is and the life he leads. We do see Taskmaster briefly and only as an enemy character who also seems to be a shadow of his former butt kicking self these days. What we now have in place now are the new Thunderbolts lineup where he has so far been little more than "The red masked mercenary who tells jokes." A shame.

The progression the character has made in the past 20 or so years in bettering himself and the way others see him seems to have been thrown out the window and replaced with a bland killer-for-hire who tells inappropriately timed jokes and shoots big guns. I feel this is such a waste of a great character. I write this thread to ask if any of Deadpool's other fans feel the same way.

YES!!

Absolutely yes, Deadpool used to be a great character. A man who hid his insecurities through humor, and was constantly trying to better himself as a human being. Which is when someone or something happens to push him deeper to the dark side (Like Typhoid-mary), it makes his regression that much harder because we know how badly he wants to be good but how good he is at being bad.

This regression happened due to Way's run, which is one of the many reason's I despise that run. Although I like the new Marvel NOW series. Probably because after years and years of nothing but this neutered version of Deadpool, we have a series that is actually going back to being a step in the right direction. That is why I like and support the Marvel NOW series, it's been too long since we've had a Deadpool that has actually been written well. We have foreshadowing to future stories, some character moments of Deadpool actually getting serious for a second, and a Deadpool who is at least somewhat skilled in hand to hand combat (he did beat up Batroc the leader, and several other highly talented mercenaries. He also held up a decent fight with Daredevil even though he was distracted).

i always liked that he shows the world that he is a clown and cannot be taken seriously and he ends up turning it around on his opponents . the recent book is just crap to me . anything bad that people who do not like about the character has shown up in his recent title .

Such as?

Thank GOD Deadpool Corps will be killed and part of Daniel Way's sins will be washed away.

He sucked so much in writting Deadpool that I need my daily dose of Joe Kelly.

You see this new run as more of a soft reboot than anything else? I hadn't thought of it like that.

In a way, yes. Compared to Joe Kelly's run or Cable and Deadpool....it's far from that level of good. But it's definitely closer to those series than Daniel Way's series or The Deadpool Corps series, or anything between Now and Cable and Deadpool's last issue.

That was a period of nothing but garbage.

The Marvel NOW series is kind of like.....meeting an old friend who's been in an abusive relationship for years. You can still see small bits of the old person in them, but the scaring from before still remains. That's what the Marvel NOW series feels like to me. It's still a great book, but it's far from the level of before. I'm sure around issue 20 or 30, Gerry and Brian will reach a level on par with some of Gail Simone's stuff or maybe even surpass it.