At Liberty Hall in Philadelphia, the presidents have convened for a meeting and have decided to destroy America and start over! Eek!

Frankly, I think that’s a really good idea.

Deadpool (Vol. 5), Issue #2 [January, 2013]
Written by: Brian Posehn / Gerry Duggan
“We Fought a Zoo”

“We Fought a Zoo” indeed. How is an elephant going to shoot a gun with a trunk? How is he going to shoot a trunk with a gun? I’m just asking questions here!

I like 2nd-issue recap pages for heroes I barely know, because then I can barely learn more about them! “Possibly the world’s most skilled mercenary, definitely the world’s most annoying, Wade Wilson was chosen for a top-secret government program that gave him a healing factor allowing him to heal from any wound. Now, Wade makes his way as a gun for hire, shooting his prey’s faces off while talking his friends’ ears off. Call him the Merc with the Mouth… call him the Regeneratin’ Degenerate… …call him… DEADPOOL!”

Very good. Our favorite moldy old half-deceased superhero lounges on the beach in his very revealing thong. He is flanked by the Invisible Woman (Susan Storm) and Emma Frost (Emma Frost), both wearing their own skimpy beach-going outfits. Deadpool’s head hurts. “I’m not surprised,” says Sue, offering the guy with the fucked-up wounds a can of beer, “Abe Lincoln gave you quite a shot to your handsome melon.”

“Get rid of that see-through soccer mom,” growls Frost. Now they both exchange barbs and start fighting in the sand. “Hey, Emma, Suzy – there’s more than enough Wade Wilson to go around. Hair gets pulled. Faces get shoved. Fighting gets dirty.

“Who invited you?” snarls Emma Frost.

“What are you – the world’s worst telepath? This great hero did.”

“Ladies,” Deadpool interjects, sipping his cold one, “I want a nice, clean but slow and enjoyable fight.”

While the two of them are preoccupied, a third woman arrives. Deadpool calls her Roller-Girl, but I don’t know who she is! Doesn’t matter, she quickly gets booted a mile into the ocean by She-Hulk. “You’re better than this, Wade. Look at these pathetic, over-sexualized fantasies falling over each other. This is gross,” she says, holding the guy up seven feet into the air by his shoulders.

Then she kisses him, which he happily doesn’t resist. Then it’s revealed that it’s a dream and he was actually kissing something else entirely!

“Huzzah! My ‘respitaroy message’ was successful!” Franklin jubilates while Deadpool sits up. He has a big hole through the head, exit wound at the left eyeball.

“I know you! You’re the president on that money I can never afford,” he says before stabbing the ghostly Founding Father through the chest with his katana. Franklin looks sad about this. “I was never a president. Nor am I undead. Just dead, I’m afraid.”

Deadpool is angry at yet another old dude walking around and talking when he should be very dead and not doing either. Franklin begs Deadpool to hear him out: his discoveries and experiments with electricity allowed him to develop a way to exist after death as a being of pure electricity! Electrons buzzing around! Usually, Franklin likes to stop by Liberty Hall once in a while to reflect and was DISMAYED to learn that his colleagues were being just a real barrel of sumbitches. He’s here to help! He swears on his mother’s dead son’s grave!

“My boy, the key to stopping the corrupted executives lies in corralling whatever misguided magic has brought them back,” Franklin tells him, smartly.

THIS IS WHAT I CALL A SMOOTH SEGUE! That necromancer dude is at a military graveyard getting bullied by George Washington and JFK to raise an army for them. “Make with the, ah… hocus pocus,” JFK demands, pushing the guy’s head to the ground. The necromancer doesn’t wanna! This has all been a very big mistake! He will never fool around with this monkey business again, pinky promise. Then he says some more rune-language and throws Kennedy to the ground. Then he burps fire into Washington’s face! “Damn you!” he shrieks, burning. “My teef are wood!”

Now’s the necromancer’s chance. He bolts, finds his large occult tome, and continues running out of the graveyard. He finds the spell of invisibility and starts tongue-twisting his way through it. The presidents catch up and detain an elderly couple.

“Have it, ah, your way, Magician. Looks like I can knock two elderly voters off Medicaid!” JFK yells as the necromancer hides behind a tree, invisible and frightened. “Damn,” he concedes and makes himself visible. He’ll do whatever they want him to do, ok? Just… just stop hurting the old people. I mean, come on. They’re old.

“I once fought for this country so that it might be free from tyranny. Now centuries later you’ve called upon us to fix what ails this country… and I shall once again wage war.” Washington draws a sword. “America’s greatest problem – is Americans.”

HERE HERE! I am with you 100% on that one, Chief! The worst! The WORST!

“That’s not true,” the necromancer responds meekly. The people are divided, but they will rise up against your aggression.”

Yeah, we’ll see about that, chowderhead. The spell is cast, the ground starts trembling and breaking. Washington’s army is rising, as is his wooden dick!

Back at Liberty Hall, Deadpool wrings out his bloody mask and dons it once more. His eyeball has already regenerated. Back to business. Ben Franklin hates to see his esteemed colleagues act like a bunch of nogoodniks, so he’ll help out the best he can. “How do I know you’re even really here? You could be a hallucination,” Deadpool says to the smelly old ghost, pointedly. “I’ve been prone to delusions, paranoid thoughts, hearing voices…”

“What does it matter?” Franklin throws up his hands. “Either I am helping you, or you’re helping you by imagining me.” And that’s a very fair point. Deadpool tells him to hold his horses, pulls out his iPhone 5s and contacts S.H.I.E.L.D. Here’s an update for those fine folks down at the HQ: a bullet in the head later and Deadpool lost the whole kit and kaboodle! All the presidents gone! Ben Franklin is here, though. He’s a buddy.

“Damn it, Deadpool. The longer this goes on, the worse it is for everyone,” Agent Preston says, brow furrowed and gripping the bridge of her nose in the universal sign for “this Deadpool guy is annoying me and it’s not looking good right now”.

“Deadpool, stand by for transport. We’re coming to get you. Teddy Roosevelt’s resuming his career as a big game hunter,” Preston tells him. And, verily, Roosevelt’s garbed up at the Los Angeles Zoo like he’s traipsing through the safari.

“ROARRRWR!” growls a large black bear.

“Indeed, Bear,” Roosevelt frowns. “I can hear the pain of captivity in your wounded bellow.”

The bear takes a swipe at the president, who throws down his gun and puts up his dukes. “Finally, a bit of a sport!”

This guy uppercuts the fuck out of this bear. One-hit knockout. Now onto the flamingos!…

S.H.I.E.L.D. is flying above the zoo in their S.H.I.E.L.D. jet, whatever it’s called. Deadpool leaps out and lands face-first on the ground within the lemur exhibit. Pffft, that’s nothing. Deadpool has landed face-first in many a snake pit and has lived to tell the tale! Obviously! Because he can’t die, right? Not even if he gets decapitated and his head kicked into the sun?

“Hi, watcha doin’? Deadpool asks Roosevelt, standing behind him while the Rough Rider aims at a group of camels and alpacas. Deadpool tells him to cut it out, you silly goose! Then he pops him in the head with this own gun. Roosevelt goes “AEEEERGH!” Then he calls Deadpool a scoundrel and challenges him to a Duel of Fists!

Teddy Roosevelt punches this guy right in front of an elephant. Ben Franklin encourages the weird deadish guy to harness the power of electricity to stop “the wraiths of the presidents”, but that’s not as urgent right now as the horrible goring that just happened! Intestines everywhere! How’s Deadpool getting out of this one alive?

“Bad elephant!” he says, very much still alive and spunky. Roosevelt busts a gat in the elephant’s ear, narrowly missing Deadpool’s head as he sits there impaled upon a mighty tusk.

Deadpool attempts to pump Roosevelt full of semi-automatic rifle bullets, but it serves to only make the guy angrier. Bully for him!

Meanwhile, the Pool of the Dead extracts himself from the tusk with a “SPLOORP”. “Gross,” he comments, “my body’s never gone ‘sploorp’ before.”

He kicks Roosy in the face. Before Roosy gets a chance to retaliate, the elephant wraps a trunk around his neck and hoists him up. Deadpool punches him in the balls, or as Roosevelt calls it, “the President’s Cabinet”. No time to waste now admiring double entendres! Deadpool finds a high voltage transformer box and unhooks the large, active cable. “Ben was right. This situation needs juicing!”

And lo’, he electrocutes Teddy right in the chest. He is reduced to a charred skeleton. The elephant, unfortunately, is collateral damage.

“Should we talk about the elephant in the room? ‘Cause it’s on fire,” Deadpool quips, obviously uninterested in the creature’s immense pain, suffering, and gruesome death! The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are only sort of alarmed at the blazing elephant inferno two feet away. They need more help from Deadpool now, he’s obviously very good at solving these problems with grace and poise. But they need to involve someone else at this point…

The agents escort Deadpool back to Manhattan (and Franklin, too, who hitched a ride). Approaching a giant door with a giant knocker, Preston sulks and already anticipates getting no help from the only other person who can help. Deadpool is like “relax”.

Behind the door is Doctor Strange. Let’s get Benedict Cumberbatch in on the action!

Final Thoughts

What better to stop a bunch of sorcery than with more sorcery, I always say! It must not go well, since there’s four issues of the story left. Methinks Doctor Strange is gonna get gored up the ass himself. And it’s not gonna be from an elephant.

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