Cody Ziglar Talks Taking Over Deadpool, Wade’s Daughter and New Villain Death Grip (Exclusive)

It’s a great time to be a fan of Marvel’s Deadpool. The Merc With a Mouth is returning to the big screen later this year in Deadpool & Wolverine, which pairs Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. While all eyes were on the Deadpool & Wolverine trailer that dropped during the Super Bowl, Deadpool‘s solo comic is also relaunching this year from writer Cody Ziglar and artist Rogê Antônio. The team has a lot of exciting adventures planned for Wade Wilson, as well as a new nemesis named Death Grip that’s sure to be a thorn in Deadpool’s side.

ComicBook.com spoke to Cody Ziglar about what fans expect in his upcoming run on Deadpool, what it’s like to craft stories for the Merc With a Mouth, the presence of his daughter Ellie, Deadpool starting a new business, guest stars, and more. We can also exclusively reveal the first look at pages from Deadpool #1 by Rogê Antônio and Guru-eFX.

Wade’s World

ComicBook.com: You’re jumping onto Deadpool at an interesting time, with the Deadpool & Wolverine trailer dropping, and with the movie coming out later this year. But I wanted to find out what’s it been like to put yourself into Wade’s world and his headspace while crafting these new stories.

Cody Ziglar: He was one of my favorite comic book characters up until Miles [Morales] was created, so I’ve always enjoyed his stuff and I love the movies as well, so it’s more like I’ve always had, for better or worse, a voice for Wade Wilson in my head and getting this was just the perfect opportunity to get that out. The first taste was them letting me write a short for the Seven Slaughters miniseries, and I had so much fun doing that that I think they saw that and then they came to me offering the Deadpool ongoing.

I told them I was a really big fan of Alyssa Wong’s run. I’ve loved every Deadpool run, but I really, really loved what they did with that last one, with the introduction of Valentine and Princess and doing a romantic comedy was such a fun premise for a book. A lot of my pitch was based on the question, “What does Deadpool do now that he’s a struggling businessman?” He owns his own business and finding my angle in that way, so a lot of it was based on that and just being such a big fan of Wong’s run.

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New nemesis

Does Deadpool’s healing factor and seemingly unkillability make him more or less challenging to write?

It can be a challenge for sure. There’s this thing that I always noticed when I first read Deadpool is that his fights always follow the exact same structure where he’d show up, he’d get absolutely annihilated, arms shot off, head blown off, and then he’d beat the bad guy a couple of issues later. I thought that was so funny that you never get to see that in any other comic book besides maybe Wolverine, where they get absolutely molly-whopped for the first couple of issues and then they come back and fight stronger.

So it was difficult in that regard, but also that does play into what this first arc is about. It’s an unkillable killer fighting someone who is in love with the idea or has built a religion around death, so that definitely plays into the struggle between Deadpool and his nemesis for this first arc, Death Grip, and the cult that sprung up around them.

Deadpool’s relationship with his daughter

When people typically think of Deadpool, the first thing that comes to mind usually isn’t his daughter, Ellie. It seems she’s going to play a big role in this series. What’s their relationship going to be like when the series picks up in the first issue?

There’s a whole run where they covered this, but his approach has always been like, “I don’t want you to be a part of this life that I do.” He’s always been keeping her at arm’s length because of that. And my point of view of that was like, “Well, what if Ellie’s like, ‘I don’t want to do that. I should have my own agency. I am at this point a 13 to 14-year-old daughter, I want to hang out with my dad.’” Wade sets up this boundary, and then Ellie immediately crosses it and is like, “No, you have to be a father. You have to be here for my life.” 

It becomes a workplace comedy where he has to take his daughter to work essentially, which is running a mercenary and assassination bureau. It is a little contentious at first, but Wade realizes that one thing that’s been missing from his life has been Ellie and being a father, and what’s it like being a father when your day job is being a hired assassin.

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Death Grip

What you can tell us about Death Grip? I noticed you did the same thing in the Miles Morales series by introducing Rabble as a new character to be a problem for the protagonist. I wanted to find out what brings Death Grip and Deadpool into conflict and how does it feel to be able to add these new antagonists into the Marvel Universe?

I love that. Nothing to me is more fun than seeing a Wikipedia entry for a new character or villain. Obviously, that was so fun and seeing little created bios. Honestly, that’s one of the funnier things. Without spoiling anything, Wade’s unkillable, he has a pretty laissez-faire attitude towards anything, and Death Grip is a character that has a unique approach to that stuff. He’s a guy that, we get into it later in this series, but he has studied the Mystic Arts, like a Doctor Strange-type academy. Only he failed out. He’s a mix of mystic with someone like Shang-Chi or some of Iron Fist’s abilities.

Someone who has a touch of mystic abilities, but also martial arts prowess who has built a cult-like religion around the concept of chasing death and finding an avatar for death and what is more enticing to him than someone who is “unkillable.” A lot of the conflict is based around Death Grip trying to find this unkillable person and seeing what he can learn from someone who’s unkillable. If your pursuit in life is learning deadly martial arts, what better than practicing on someone who seemingly can’t be killed?

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Collaborating with Roge Antonio

Roge Antonio seems fit for Deadpool after seeing what he has done on Venom and Carnage. What has that collaboration been like, and is there anything he’s drawn that you can’t wait for fans to get a look at?

Yeah. He’s super funny. There’s some stuff in the second issue that I don’t want to spoil, but just like how he poses Deadpool, it is very funny to me and it’s the small things. Like if Wade takes a picture, how he poses Wade taking a picture, he’s nailed that stuff 1000%. It’s so fun how he can make that character sing and just the way that he takes a selfie is very funny to me. He’s also really, really into the inspirations. A big inspiration for Miles Morales has been a love for me and the artist, Federico Vicentini, a love for Manga and anime, and definitely, this is more toned down, but a lot of the choreography, I really enjoy the choreography of Manga and that’s also some inspiration into how Wade does his fights. It’s definitely some fun action, then also adding in some fun stuff that’s actually interesting for the artist to draw.

There’s a really cool double spread in the first issue that is a mind-bender and really fun. That’s definitely a big inspiration from Manga, but also inspiration from Kelly Thompson. I think she does some of the coolest, most intricate spreads in comic books right now, and the use of the De Luca effect and all that stuff has been a huge influence on the choreography and staging for this book. And Roge has absolutely nailed it every single time, so I’m really excited for people to see what he does when it comes to just letting him cut loose.

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Guest stars

Aside from Ellie, I imagine fans will get to see Deadpool interact with some other characters in the Marvel Universe that he’s been associated with. Just off the top of my head, thinking about Wolverine, his interactions with Captain America, and even Spider-Man. Is that going to continue in the new series and are you looking forward to having Deadpool interact with some other off-the-wall characters that fans wouldn’t expect?

Yeah, absolutely. This is my first time writing an X-Men adjacent book, so being able to use characters like Wolverine is going to be really cool. Without spoiling anything, there are definitely some arcs for one of the Wolverines to show up. Provided they’re still alive. I know what’s going on in Wolverine #43 right now. It seems like everyone’s gotten murked, but if they come back, we’ll like to use them.

The premise for this run is that Wade starts running his own business. It’s a workplace comedy, and he brings in Taskmaster to be the boss head of operations, so it’s a lot of Wade navigating stuff with Taskmaster and now Ellie is there and Taskmaster has his own circle of friends like Black Ant. That’ll be fun to bring in and there may be some other characters that I have created in other books that show up to connect some of that stuff without spoiling anything. But I’m definitely looking forward to, once the book is off the ground and running, having him do more fun team-up stuff. That’s something I’ve really enjoyed with the Miles book is having characters that I’ve always wanted to write pop up and that is going to continue to happen in Deadpool as well.

What to look forward to

Just to wrap up, is there anything else you want to leave fans with what to look forward to or to look out for in the new Deadpool run?

Yeah, there’s going to be some fun stuff, but also there’s going to be a lot of emotional stuff, a lot of character development between him and Ellie, and I’ve been really looking forward to that. I hope it resonates with readers as much as it resonates with us on the writing and the editorial staff, and I’m excited to see Ellie grow and see her powers develop, and hopefully people will resonate with that and we’ll see her popping up in more stories and books across the Marvel Universe as well.

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