Deadpool vs Wolverine: Those Who Will Not Die

About
Latest Posts

Bryan's creative career has taken a lot of inspiration from the world of comics. As an esteemed fantasy writer and a lover of fantasy gaming. Comics have helped strengthen the powers of Bryan's imagination, entertained him endlessly, and now he uses these new superpowers to write incredible content for Comic Fan Club!

Tale of the Tape

Wolverine AKA Logan

Abilities: Enhanced Strength, Durability, Heightened Scent, hearing, Incredibly fast regeneration, retractable claws, berserker rage, and an indestructible adamantium skeleton.
Damaging Victory: Daken. Wolverine once had to kill his own son. A son with similar powers and trained from birth at combat, by drowning him and keeping him drowned. It was a hard-fought battle, but nothing about it felt victorious for Logan. He could only imagine the life he may have had as a better father if he had been given a chance.
Crushing Defeat: Omega Red. Though Wolverine has come out victorious against the Soviet Super Killing Machine, which boasts both adamantium and a Healing Factor, they once fought for 18 hours straight. Pushed to their limits and barely moving, Omega Red’s coils were able to subdue the Canadian Hero for the count in the end.
Characteristics: Hard-headed, cocky, a hopeless romantic, and plagued with guilt.
Main Advantage: Better hand-to-hand combatant and a quicker healing factor as well as heightened senses.

Deadpool AKA Wade Wilson

Abilities: Super Fast Regenerative Healing, Slightly Increased physical attributes, including enhanced strength, toughness, peak human speed, and agility.
Damaging Victory: This is a hard one. Deadpool makes even the tragic cheery. Sometimes his comics can be so tongue-in-cheek that seriousness can’t be taken into account. So, I am going with North Korea. Yeah, he, Captain America, and Wolverine took on all of North Korea and a villain called the Butler. What did it cost him, though? The mother of his child actually died in the gunfire. In canon, his own healing factor blacks out this memory due to the pain.
Crushing Defeat: I’m going with Carnage. Many fights have not gone the Merc’s way, but Carnage was one where he came back at it again and again and again, only to lose each time. To literally be torn to pieces and admit that nothing he possessed could win the fight. He does merge with four symbiotes to overcome Carnage, but it isn’t him anymore. It’s one of the first examples of Deadpool feeling incapable of victory.
Characteristics: Always cracking jokes, actually insane, a decent sense of loyalty, breaks the fourth wall.
Main Advantage: More comfortable with a larger variety of weapons, a by-any-means-necessary approach to the fight, cursed with magical immortality, and aware of the power gap.

Shared History

Wolverine and Deadpool have a bloody history. On the page, in cartoons, and even on the big screen, if you count that fake Deadpool, they created in Wolverine: Origins…which I’m not actually counting for this article’s sake. The number of times they have stabbed each other may be going into the literal hundreds.

Back to Deadpool and Wolverine’s first-ever meeting resulted in a fight. In Wolverine #88, in 1994. Deadpool won that fight, using his mouth and wits to throw off the Ol’Canucklehead and take advantage of Logan’s whacked-out healing factor due to losing all his adamantium.

While that may be their first meeting, it is still not the shared history that ties them together from the hip. That would be the Weapon X Program.

Deadpool wasn’t born with a healing factor. No, he was a mercenary, though. Upon learning he was dying of cancer, he signed up for some tests, and low and behold, while trying to make a Wolverine of their own, they gave Deadpool his powers.

Wolverine’s genetics and the same cruel intentions that stripped him of his countless loves are the foregrounds for Deadpools very existence.

On top of this, they share several tragic truths. They outlive people they love, constantly have to watch people they care about die, and are often used as weapons for someone else’s benefit.

They deal with these traumas differently, obviously. Deadpool becomes legitimately insane, and Wolverine’s own healing factor continuously buries the wounds of his past. That or he gets insanely drunk and treats people like crap. It depends on who’s writing, I suppose.

See also: Watchmen Universe Guide

Previous Encounters

As already mentioned, Deadpool took home the first fight when he was trying to find someone and Wolverine mistook his intentions. They share victories time and time again. Here are some of the best canon fights, and team-ups, of these Canadian Killing Machines.

They meet again, and this time Wolverine brutalizes him after Deadpool punches Kitty Pryde. Wade did it to antagonize a fight with a Superhero he can go toe-to-toe with and release some stress. He is insane, after all.

This Wolverine was still struggling with his healing factor and had no adamantium. Still, his rage over Kitty getting hit was enough to nastily murder Deadpool.

Deadpool is thankful for the help, and they have a stab each other often relationship from here on out. With a few awesome team-ups along the way.

Perhaps the most notable team-up is in “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” comic issues. Where they fight against North Korea for a sad war in which Deadpool believes both the mother of his daughter and his daughter are killed in the gunfire. Wolverine and Captain America have to restrain a truly enraged Wade Wilson. His jokes gone, his humor muffled, and violence the only thing on his mind. It’s quite a harrowing read.

Their shared history also reveals a clear difference in the two’s placement on a team. While both are unstoppable killing machines, their equal use comes more in one-on-one encounters. When outnumbered, Logan goes red-eyed. Even Deadpool recognizes to get out of the runt’s way when he is in Berserker Mode. In Old Man Logan VS Deadpool, this is on full display. He takes the kid their saving out of harms way while “Grandpa” does that thing where an entire army of enemies becomes bodies beneath his claws.

Wolverine’s claim to be “the best there is at what I do” is put to the test by Deadpool time and time again. In Wolverine #154, at the behest of a lot of money, Deadpool manages to do something few have ever done. He puts Logan out. How? Enough tranquilizers to take down a T-Rex. Sometimes the Merc with a Mouth is a Merc with a Brain.

Wolverine once hired Deadpool to kill him in the Wolverine: Origins comic run, and for five issues, they have one of the most enjoyable, artistic spans of violence ever laced to page. Deadpool tries to do everything to take out the cigar-smoking X-Man but is about to be wholly incapacitated because Logan’s eyes go red.

“Luckily” for Wade Wilson, a woman cries out from her vehicle for help. This snaps Wolverine out of his Berserker Rage as he rushes to save the woman and her child instead of shredding Deadpool into pieces. It turns out to be a trap set by Deadpool. It snapped him out of his rage, the fight was on equal terms, and they slashed the hell out of one another. Wolverine got the upper hand, but Deadpool used his wits to keep Logan talking until one of his fingers regrew. He blows a hole into Wolverine’s brainpan.

See also: Best Deadpool Shirts for Fans

How? Through the bottom of the jaw, ignoring that pesky adamantium. Yes, Wolverine comes back. It turns out he wanted Deadpool to be successful. It was to draw out his own son from hiding. It gets pretty dark and depressing after that. Come to think of it, it seems they were both present for the most depressing victories.

They team up on the X-Force for a while and takedown assassins together on more than one occasion. They have a hilarious team-up you can check out, and once Wolverine dressed Deadpool up as Jean Grey to lure out a cosmic robot. That got pretty weird and made little sense, but it was a fun read.

To top off this section, the real-life actors Ryan Reynolds, who portrays Deadpool, and Hugh Jackman, who portrays Wolverine, often feud on Twitter. Constantly playing up the Wolverine VS Deadpool argument and teasing a possible movie where it happens. As Hugh Jackman has called Logan his swan song with the character, this is sadly likely never to happen.

Still, one can imagine. No, the Wolverine: Origins movie doesn’t count. Stop that.

Important Defeats

Wolverine VS World War Hulk

While in other articles, I articulate how they both have beaten the giant green monster, they’ve both been decimated by him in different ways as well. Wolverine has done it more often, wearing out and tearing down the Grey Hulk in comic lore. He has even used Deadpool as fodder in the cartoon Wolverine VS Hulk by tossing Wade at the rampaging green giant. Deadpool has had less luck in the fight. Still, his win against Hulk without powers is always an impressive victory, even if only temporary.

Wolverine once had his head repeatedly smashed until he was catatonic, he did recover in hours, but he was still wobbly and useless. Being tossed away for bigger prey to be had.

Deadpool VS Garrison Kane

Who is Garrison Kane? Well, adamantium arms before they were cool, no, they were cool when he did it in hindsight, are the signature tool of Kane. He is someone from the Weapon X program that was given adamantium arms. Formerly, a member of Cable’s team, Six Pack.

Kane doesn’t defeat Deadpool by using superb weaponry, not out-healing him, he could never, and it isn’t due to having better powers. Kane utilizes his surroundings and his adamantium arms; in perfect combative form.

He handily defeats Deadpool in a fair fight during their first encounter. He’s going to throw him in jail to rot before someone named Bridge makes the save by “appearing” to kill the Merc with the Mouth.

Trouble Dying

This is key to the final verdict. To go beyond the fact neither seems capable of actual death no matter how far you go with damaging their bodies. They are the only written characters (except for X-23 now) that can regenerate from a drop of blood. So, let’s look at more specific factors.

Wolverine’s adamantium skeleton is canonically unbreakable. So as long as it remains, he can constantly regenerate. When death is plausible, he must fight against spiritual representations of his own past. Winning will have his soul return to his body and regenerate from any injury, even near atomization. Pretty trippy stuff and quite relatable by Mr. Wade Wilson.

Deadpool is cursed with immortality, magically, by Thanos. This means he is just living while being murdered, time and time again. Before that, however, he had a similar problem to Logan, drifting into the land of death when enough damage was dealt. It shows that he could allow himself to die or even be killed, healing factor be damned. It was revenge that pulled him away from the courting Lady Death and eventually led him to be cursed.

Both do die in the comics, eventually. Deadpool gives up living when his daughter stops him from being a tyrant in the far future in a very touching moment, and he accepts Lady Death’s embrace.

Wolverine has a less satisfying ending. He is drowned in adamantium which is then hardened. This encases his body in a permanent, unbreakable statue made from the very thing that made him unstoppable.

Considering the Scars

The list of emotional scars on these two is long and could take a whole article. Instead, I will list two significant points that combine them.

The people they love most, their “soulmates,” are always out of their reach, leave them, or die. Killed because of someone else wanting to kill them.

The way they deal with this is essential. Wade wants to overcome this. He wants love; he wants his happy ending. It’s apparent in every instance it’s taken away from him, his own attitude sometimes getting in the way of him having it, followed by instant regret. We see the most dangerous version of Deadpool when he is face to face with the things that have taken this away from him.

Logan is driven by a sense of responsibility toward life. Perhaps it’s how he deals with the guilt of all the life he’s taken. Because of this, he often feels he doesn’t deserve love or rages against in enemy because he can’t have it. Begrudgingly carrying sadness but never buried by it, almost empowered by the turmoil.

Perhaps the mutual respect for one another comes not from their abilities but the understanding of their shared tragic lives. Their inevitably very, long lives.

Final Verdict

Let’s walk these two living weapons into the arena of fair combat. Looking back at all the history and battles we’ve read of them. It’s time for them to have a fair fight within the confines of their more consistent writing.

Not to be intentionally controversial, this is a pretty even battle. At the very get of the confrontation, Deadpool will use his knowledge of their pasts to his advantage if there is money involved. In other words, heavy amounts of tranquilizers prepped for as painless a battle as possible from every angle he can hit Logan with.

Suppose Deadpool’s immortality is gone, and it currently is. In that case, Wolverine wins almost every time, if only after a fierce, beautiful, gore-heavy battle.

If Deadpool sets traps and tranqs in every arena corner and covers Wolverine in prepared, hardening magma. That would net him a victory now and then…except there is still the matter of Wolverine’s heightened sense of smell. Deadpool may find a way to potentially hide the scent of the tranqs or use subversion and maybe, just maybe, overcome Logan.

Sorry, Wade. There’s no money in this. This is a fair fight to the finish by a writer’s will. That means he’s more likely to do what he always does in this situation, go for the kill. Slash for slash, blast for roar.

These two characters embody our deepest desires for immediate justice against the violent villains of the world, are now committing unlitigated acts of violence against one another. Every moment is clinical precision with claws and sword, and blood stains the ground until the only color is red. Everywhere, remnants of gored body parts, intestines, and innards lace the floor of this brutal battle.

Logan goes into this knowing that letting loose his Berserker State is his eventual path to victory. Berserker Wolverine decimates Deadpool. Perhaps Wade can keep him out of it. In that state, all the weapons, all the tools that Deadpool brings, they do not damage him faster than he heals. There is nothing like him.

To keep him out of this, Deadpool would have to hold back. As we see with Kane, he doesn’t fare so well in a fight against someone like Logan when he holds back from ultra-violence.

As we learned from their losses against The Hulk, it took the might of someone who could crack a planet repeated punches to the skull to put down a Berserker Wolverine. That’s an insane amount of power. With all his tricks, Deadpool cannot mimic this.

Deadpool is no slouch when it comes to healing, though. He knows to win, he has to rely on more than what he possesses. Acting as if his immortality is still on the line, this battle could go on for an insanely long time. Eventually, Deadpool leads Wolverine away from the field, Wade’s weapons all destroyed, and his options limited.

So, the fleeing and planning occur. Here’s where Deadpool does get his edge and could plausibly pull out a win.

For the requiring victory to occur, Deadpool will draw on their history. Number one, use his mouth. Yelling no longer insults but words to bring Wolverine out of his rage, Deadpool begins using one of his most underrated strengths. The one that really gets him the love: jokes. Joke after joke after limb after limb. Fleeing and healing and fighting, Deadpool is aiming for water.

Once even the trickle of laughter occurs and those red eyes calm, Deadpool wraps himself around Logan and plummets them both to the bottom of the sea. Neither will heal from being drowned, but both come back from death. The edge? Deadpool still has his immortality, and his return is nearly instant; Wolverine has to fight a battle for his soul.

Given the time, Deadpool can recall his knowledge of how Wolverine was actually killed. The following long-term goal is to bury him in cement or iron or the like at the bottom of the ocean. Since Wade came up first, I’ll give him the victory in this scenario.

The more likely scenario, yea, sorry Wade, is that rage-filled Wolverine lives up to his once promise and rips Deadpool to shreds. Taking his pieces, bit by bit, and disposing of them so there is no ‘body’ to resurrect.

Though I suppose if he does try to eat him, Wade may go Old Man Logan on Logan himself. So, that’s a possibility…yuck.

Trivia

Neither Wolverine nor Deadpool started off as popular characters or heroes.
Deadpool has been married multiple times, none of which worked out. Wolverine shares this history, but unlike Deadpool, most of his previous brides are dead.
Wolverine defeats Deadpool in Deadpool’s comic, while Deadpool defeats Wolverine in Wolverine’s own comic. Commonly the writers of a comic give their character an edge, so this is a friendly show of respect between the caretakers of these two icons.
Both Deadpool and Wolverine hold Captain America and Spiderman in very high regard.
The Punisher has won an encounter with both of them in an expectantly violent fashion.
A new series was announced for 2022 by Marvel where Deadpool and Wolverine will team-up.

FAQs

Question: Who heals faster, Wolverine or Deadpool?

Answer: According to Marvel, Wolverine has the better and quicker healing factor.

Question: Did Deadpool kill Wolverine?

Answer: Yes, in Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe, he beheads Logan with a blade made from metal that is supposed to cancel Wolverine’s healing factor. However, it isn’t a canon comic, and technically Deadpool kills everyone in it, even the writers.

Question: Did Wolverine kill Deadpool?

Answer: No. Wolverine beheaded a false version of the Deadpool character in the movie Wolverine: Origins. Thankfully that version is gone forever.

Question: Is Wolverine stronger than Deadpool?

Answer: Yes. Wolverine technically has enhanced strength, if not from his mutation. His body has healed its muscles to be adjusted to moving 400 pounds of adamantium around as if he is still an angry cat.

Question: Will there be a Deadpool VS Wolverine movie?

Answer: There may be a good chance at a cartoon of this cinematic idea, but there are no current talks about a live-action film.

To Summarize

This is one of those fights that happens so often in the comics because it is such an evenly contested affair. There is only one style of fight these two can have, and it’s the brutal kind. I hope the history, the lore, and the connections make our conclusion feel logical and not biased to you.

As for me, I have to go into hiding a bit until I can pick up an article where Deadpool clearly wins, so he doesn’t jump off the page and murder me. Take care, faithful readers.

Recommended Reads: