Deadpool Dunks on Joker The Walking Dead & The Batman Who Laughs

Deadpool: The End #1 throws some major shade at the comics and films of the DC Universe, in addition to a few more general jabs.

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Deadpool: The End #1, by Joe Kelly, Mike Hawthorne, Victor Olazaba, Ruth Redmond and VC's Joe Sabino, on sale now.

Marvel's various The End one-shots have imagined the final stories of the publisher's top heroes. However, in a manner befitting the Merc with a Mouth's meta-nature, Deadpool: The End imagines multiple endings for the title antihero. And, in the book's "Distinguished Competition Ending," Joe Kelly and Mike Hawthorne throw some pretty major shade at DC.

Only lasting two pages, Deadpool first appears in a style greatly reminiscent of The Batman Who Laughs. Created by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo in 2017's Dark Days: The Casting #1, that villain is an evil version of Bruce Wayne from the Dark Multiverse where the worst possible outcomes for various situations indeed happened. The Batman Who Laughs is a version of Bruce that killed The Joker, thus being exposed to the maddening Joker Toxin. Deadpool's despairing tone in the first panel reflects the hopeless nature of The Batman Who Laughs.

Deadpool then makes reference to Todd Phillips' Joker film, specifically a scene in which Arthur Fleck dances in a bathroom following his first murder. The nods to Joker don't end there, though. The Merc With a Mouth repeats one of Heath Ledger's most iconic lines in The Dark Knight, asking Spider-Man, "Why so serious?"

However, the references here aren't just made by Deadpool. The entire scene has a grim tone, with characters acting hopeless and nihilistic throughout. In addition to making a passing allusion to The Walking Dead, Spider-Man says, "We have to grow up and accept the world is a dark, terrible place where heroes snap necks and misery is Oscar bait." These are references to Zack Snyder's Man of Steel and Joker, respectively.

Spider-Man's lines don't just refer to those movies, though. What the Wall-Crawler says is also reminiscent of controversial remarks Snyder made in early 2019 about his comic-book movies. During a Q&A, the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice director said, "It’s a cool point of view to be like, ‘My heroes are still innocent. My heroes didn't f*cking lie to America. My heroes didn't embezzle money from their corporations. My heroes didn't commit any atrocities.' That’s cool. But you’re living in a f*cking dream world.”

The section itself is mostly dedicated to making fun of the idea of deconstructing superheroes and the trend of making them dark. Another major reference is to 1986, a pretty major year in the history of comics. It saw the release of such important, dark comics as Watchmen, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and even Marvel's "Mutant Massacre" storyline.

As the two-page section wraps up, Deadpool unzips his Batman Who Laughs suit and and snaps away the world, seemingly making reference to Watchmen's Doctor Manhattan and his penchant for wiping out universes -- though there's something of Thanos in the action itself. This results in the creation of the "Defective Comic" multiverse, which puts an emphasis on fun. However, this decision is eventually undone by "The Crisis of Infinite Crises," a reference to 2005's Infinite Crisis event that changed DC's continuity in a massive way.

Kelly and Hawthorne don't just skewer DC Comics, though. Before the section ends, Deadpool makes a comment about Spider-Man choking "on his own webs out of guilt because... foil holographic covers." This is reference to such comics as Web of Spider-Man, which used foil holographic covers to sell issues, a controversial practice that was huge in the '90s.

Pretty much every line in this section of Deadpool: The End #1 finds a way to skewer some element of comics, though DC definitely takes the brunt of the Merc with a Mouth's metatextual wrath. Considering Deadpool started off as a Deathstroke rip off, dunking on the DC Universe is a pretty solid ending to his story.