Deadpool / Wolverine #4

History

The Deadpool/Wolverine ongoing series was announced in late 2024 and launched in January 2025, conceived explicitly in the wake of the record-breaking Deadpool & Wolverine film as a way to channel that cultural moment back into the periodical comics. Writer Benjamin Percy and artist Joshua Cassara were reunited specifically for this project, building on their prior collaboration on X-Force and X Lives of Wolverine during the Krakoa era. The series was designed by Percy and Cassara to be unusually self-contained — deliberately avoiding the tie-in web that can make Marvel's X-titles impenetrable — while still honoring post-Krakoa continuity (such as Logan's repeated resurrections purging Legacy 2.0 from his system). Issue four, titled 'A Time of Stryfe' and released April 23, 2025 with a June 2025 cover date, represents the midpoint escalation of the arc's first major storyline.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Released April 23, 2025 (cover date: June 2025); written by Benjamin Percy, interior and cover art by Joshua Cassara.
• Story title: 'A Time of Stryfe' — the fourth chapter of the opening arc of the 2025 ongoing series.
• Key plot event: Wolverine is successfully infected by Legacy 2.0 (a weaponized evolution of the classic Legacy Virus) and falls under Stryfe's mind-control at the issue's end, completing Stryfe's goal of having both Deadpool and Wolverine as his 'X-Cutioners.'
• Issue delivers Stryfe's origin exposition: he reveals he traveled back in time from a ruined future, was captured by Nick Fury and kept in an adamantium coffin, and that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s dismantlement left him trapped in bureaucratic limbo before his escape.
• Late-issue reveal: Apocalypse is shown to be the true architect behind Stryfe's plan — a significant escalation that broadens the threat from a single villain to one of the X-Men's most enduring enemies.
• Maverick functions as a secondary POV character, navigating between O*N*E (Office of National Emergency) and his loyalty to Logan and Wade, adding a spy-thriller layer to the otherwise action-horror premise.
• The bulk of the issue's central set-piece involves Wolverine and Deadpool barricading themselves inside an abandoned bar against hundreds of Legacy 2.0-infected zombies — a survival-horror framing that critics compared to Resident Evil 4.
• The series — and this issue within it — was deliberately designed as an accessible entry point for readers who saw the 2024 Deadpool & Wolverine film but had no prior comics experience, a rare editorial priority acknowledged in multiple reviews and retrospective write-ups.

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