Back in like 1992 or 1993 is when I got into comic books. Naturally, like most kids of that era, it was X-Men that proved to be the gateway into comic-nerd-dom forevermore, and it wasn’t really long before I would blow loads and loads of my parents’ money on comic book related shit, in hopes of getting X-Men related crap.
I bought the entire set of X-Men Series One trading cards (minus the oddly-rare Iceman card) from a classmate for $15, which was a gargantuan amount in the fifth grade. I remember being all thrilled to seeing all the cards of the characters I recognized like Gambit and Wolverine, as well as the lusty excitement to see how disproportionately sexy Jim Lee drew women like Rogue and the White Queen, but all in all, of the 208 card set, there were a fuck ton of characters that I had never seen in my life, because the set encapsulated all sorts of villains that weren’t Magneto, and all of the B-characters that were a part of X-Force, X-Factor, and Excalibur. Regardless, being the inquisitive wannabe comic nerd poser, that didn’t stop me from reading all the cards’ bios and examining each and every one of them at some point.
It was during this time that I discovered the existence of Deadpool. From what his bio revealed, he was a guy mired in the X-Force storylines, entwined with whatever Cable was doing. The mention of Weapon X meant nothing to me at this point of my comic noob-ness, since I was that new to comic books at that time, and was unaware that Weapon X meant Wolverine, which meant something that ultimately the entire company revolved around. But for the most part, he was a negligible character that seemed to look too close to Spider-Man to my earlier comic days.