Marvel Doesn't Want Movie Deadpool or Ryan Reynolds in Marvel Comics

You would think that there would be some open borders between what fans see in Marvel movies and what they see on the pages of Marvel Comics – but that’s not necessarily the case. The legal hurdles between how a Marvel character is depicting on page versus onscreen can be high obstacles to clear – as has been the case with Deadpool, recently:

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Someone asked if I’d ever drawn Deadpool in his movie costume, and I actually did once, for an issue of Spideypool. In this story, Wade got a part in a Deadpool movie playing as the stunt double. For the scenes on set, I thought it would be fun if he wore the actual movie costume, so that’s what I drew. I didn’t think anyone would notice or care, since the difference is just a couple of straps and some knee pads. But they did notice, and made me change it back to his typical character design, because the lawyers wouldn’t allow them to use the movie costume for some reason! So weird. So I had to redraw that Deadpool in all those scenes. I ran into a similar lawyer-induced problem with Marvel a few months ago when they asked me to do an ad for some smart phone drawing software. I was going to draw Deadpool, but it turned out they weren’t allowed to use him for the ad, so we figured Spidey would be safe, and I did a drawing of him. Turned out, they weren’t allowed to use Spidey either! So I had to do it again. This time I used Iron Man, and there was a long conversation and lots of phone calls before we figured out which Iron Man costumes would be safe for me to draw! The moral of the story: study your licensing deals! #dailydeadpool #spideypool #deadpool #costumes #freelancelife #reillybrown
A post shared by Reilly Brown (@reilly_brown) on Apr 9, 2018 at 6:58pm PDT

Here’s another correction from the same issue I talked about yesterday. In the comic, there was an actor who was playing Deadpool in a movie, so I figured I’d make him look vaguely like Ryan Reynolds. The guys at Marvel thought this looked too much like him, so I had to make a change at the last minute. So I put a mustache on him. Heh, honestly I don’t even blame them for this one, sometimes you just have to see what you can get away with 😉 #dailydeadpool #ryanreynolds #deadpool #lookatmybutt #comics #reillybrown
A post shared by Reilly Brown (@reilly_brown) on Apr 10, 2018 at 8:32pm PDT

That’s artwork by Reilly Brown, who has done artwork for Marvel comic books such as Deadpool and Spider-Man / Deadpool. As Brown details in his caption anecdotes, he tried to sneak both the Deadpool movie costume and a picture of Ryan Reynolds into the books, only to have Marvel lawyers come down on him like a ton of bricks, in both instances.

Without knowing the intricate details of the legalities surrounding all of this, it’s safe to presume that there are probably a lot more hangups in a Marvel comic trying to depict a character from a 20th Century Fox movie. No doubt it’s a lot more porous when it comes to Marvel Comics using Marvel Cinematic Universe likenesses.

The ironic thing is that now 20th Century Fox and Disney have struck a deal that, when completed, will allow the Marvel Cinematic Universe to use every Marvel character, including the X-Men and Fantastic Four rosters that currently belong to Fox. So, in the (near-)future, we’ll probably get to see all kinds of Easter egg references to the movies in the comics – the question is, will Ryan Reynolds still be in the man in the Deadpool mask at that point.

X-Men movies continue with Deadpool 2 in theaters on May 18th. X-Men: Dark Phoenix opens February 14th, 2019, followed by The New Mutants on August 2nd, 2019.