Friday, February 19, 2016

Copy, Paste, Print

I bet you film-junkies think you know everything about Deadpool after seeing his movie, but alas, you only know so little. One example of your botched education of The Merc With The Mouth is his love interest, Vanessa. Who is she really? I'll tell you with this Week's Z-Lister Copycat!
Created by Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld, Copycat first showed up using the disguise of established character Domino in "The New Mutants #98" in 1991, but showed her true form in 1993's "X-Force #19". Vanessa Carlysle was a young mutant who fell into the life of prostitution in Boston, one fateful night she met a mercenary named Wade Wilson and the two fell in love. Sound familiar? After Wilson discovered he had cancer he left Vanessa to spare her the heartbreak of his death, but rather than returning to her smutty career she too became a mercenary and was hired by a man named Tolliver to destroy a team of mutants called X-Factor.
Vanessa-or Copycat as she was called-has the ability to copy people on a genetic level. All she needs is details on someone's biology and she can mimic their appearance, voice and even their skills and powers. Her natural state appears to be blue-skinned, white-haired, and black-eyed. Because she's blue and can shape-shift, it's possible she was considered to similar to Mystique and received little use.
As the mutant Domino she sneaked her way onto X-Force, but ended up taking a liking to the team and refusing to fulfill her mission. Tolliver hired Deadpool-who was unaware of Vanessa's new position-to destroy Copycat and The X-Force. Luckily, the team got away and Deadpool believed they had all died in an explosion. Years later Vanessa was captured by Weapon X and received upgrades to her abilities, however by copying others she would lose more of her memories as a side-effect. Vanessa lost her memory and broke out prompting Weapon X to hire Deadpool, Sabretooth and Kane to find and kill her. However, Deadpool found Copycat and tried to remind her of who she was and warn her of this attack. Sabretooth and Kane fought Deadpool while Copycat to turned into a gorilla and hid in a zoo. After Deadpool killed Kane, he returned to find all the gorillas at the zoo slaughter by Sabretooth. Deadpool found Vanessa and held her in his arms as she slowly died. Unknown to our Regenerating Degenerate, his blood leaked into Vanessa's wounds and she involuntarily copied his healing factor. While Deadpool believed Vanessa died, she had actually survived and used her powers to disguise herself as a vendor at a chimichanga stand.
Knowing all this now, can we assume the Deadpool sequel-please be titled "Deadpool-er"-may reveal Vanessa having powers or gaining them in some way? Should we upset that I may have spoiled the plot with this Z-Lister Bio? It's tough to say. Vanessa is a character who only really matters to Deadpool and with so many other plot possibilities I doubt we'll see Copycat come to the screen. Regardless, you can't make expectations with a franchise like Deadpool and whether we see Vanessa get powers or not, both her comic and film portrayals at least do her more justice than obscure characters usually get!
Thanks for reading!

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