‘Deadpool’ Co-Creator Rob Liefeld Is Done With Marvel After This ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Slight

It’s only fitting that the father of the most meta character in the Marvel comic book and cinematic universes would crash out over a credits crawl.

If your only experience with the superheroes and super-anti-heroes from the comic book kingdom of Stan Lee was through the mega-budget movie adaptations of such classic nerd texts, you’d probably assume that Ryan Reynolds created the character of Deadpool. After all, nobody in all of multimedia superhero entertainment has been more publicly associated with the wise-cracking, fourth-wall-breaking assassin than the A-lister who spent a decade trying to get an R-rated Deadpool movie greenlit before turning the character into a veritable Fox-to-Disney film franchise in its own right.

But no, the Mint Mobile mogul and Wrexham A.F.C. co-owner cannot count “comic book writer” among his many hyphenates, nor does he take credit for the creation of Wade Wilson, also known as the Merc with a Mouth, the Regenerating Degenerate and Deadpool. Comic book writers Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld have that distinction, and the latter has bigger beef with Kevin Feige and the MCU than the one Reynolds has with his wife’s old boss.

Liefeld, who also co-created Deadpool’s sometimes-ally-sometimes-nemesis Cable with comic book writer Louise Simonson, explained at length that he is severing ties with Marvel after 30 years of service in a recent episode of his Robservations podcast. Despite making a cameo appearance in the first Deadpool film back in 2016, Liefeld says his distaste for Disney’s approach to adapting Marvel works for the screen grew nearly unbearable when they added a co-creator credit to the character of Wolverine in 2023, which Liefeld says went against the wishes of his friend Christine Valada, the widow of late Wolverine co-creator Len Wein.

But on a personal level, Liefeld’s list of grievances with Marvel’s movie bosses centers around the New York premiere of Deadpool & Wolverine back in July. In his 90-minute podcast breakdown, Liefeld alleges that, leading up to the event, he had emailed Disney to ask for a more significant credit than the typical end-of-crawl recognition the MCU usually gives character creators, telling them, “Marvel’s treatment of creators has never been their strength,” and adding, “Without the worlds, the characters and the concepts that we create — and in this specific case, the world of Deadpool — there are no films to shoot. … I am not the easy button at Staples. I am the human imagination behind it all.” 

Liefeld also inquired about other promotional opportunities related to the premiere, but, he insists, he never asked Disney for extra money.

Liefeld says that his email was not well-received by Marvel movie brass, but when Deadpool & Wolverine finally had its world premiere on July 22nd at the David H. Koch Theater, Liefeld was, indeed, a guest of honor. However, Liefeld alleged that Disney executives, including the famous Kevin Feige, didn’t acknowledge or greet him when they were on the red carpet together. Then, following the screening, the movie execs didn’t put Liefeld and his family on the guest list for the swanky Hollywood afterparty as they had been for previous Deadpool premieres.

“It was meant to embarrass, diminish, defeat me,” Liefeld claimed. “Kevin Feige does not treat comic book creators well. That is my personal experience.”

So far, Liefeld’s public disowning of the Disney/Marvel movie machine has generated a mixed reaction from comic book fans, many of whom believe that Liefeld takes a little too much credit for the character now inexorably identified as Ryan Reynolds. 

In a Reddit thread about Liefeld’s podcast accusations against Feige and the rest of Marvel, one Deadpool fan wrote of Liefeld’s contribution to the comic canon, “He barely created Deadpool. His Deadpool was him plagiarizing Deathstroke (Slade Wilson vs. Wade Wilson? Cmon). It were other writers who actually made Deadpool the character we know.” 

Other fans echoed the sentiment that Liefeld’s Deadpool was more a rehash of existing archetypes than the anarchic meta-humorist that he would become in the hands of other writers. “I can’t speak for the broader comic community, but I’ve personally never taken this guy seriously,” another fan wrote of Liefeld. “This is a non-story. His contributions to Deadpool are, from my understanding, a personality he didn’t keep, a costume he didn’t keep, but a name he did maintain that was a direct rip of a popular DC character.”

Nevertheless, the issue of proper accreditation for comic artists who preceded the MCU by multiple decades remains a hot-button issue among the Marvel fandom, and many MCU-watchers agree that Feige doesn’t do enough for the OGs, especially when it comes to opening night. “Studios suck with premieres. You can be credited as a writer on a script and not even get a ticket while everyone else is dragging along 20-man entourages,” one user opined. “I’ve actually seen negotiations hit a wall because they don’t want to let authors of bestselling books they’ve adapted attend, let alone pay a few hundred dollars for a flight or a hotel.”

But in all the online discourse over the strained relationship between the MCU and the artists whose work serves as its foundation, one central figure has stayed uncharacteristically quiet: Reynolds. Now that he’s both the face and mouth of Deadpool, Reynolds must be able to elucidate the drama for his fans, even in some small way. Maybe he can parody both Liefeld and Feige in the next Deadpool movie, assuming Justin Baldoni hasn’t bled him dry over the whole Nicepool thing.