In this feature I spotlight changes made to comic book characters that are based on outside media, as well as characters who entirely came from outside media. I’m sure you can think of other examples, so feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you want to suggest some other examples for future installments (as an aside, if I’m reading this correctly, it’s almost been a YEAR since I’ve last done of these – that can’t be right, can it? How odd). Today, we look at how Deadpool helped Negasonic Teenage Warhead come back to comics.
The character of Negasonic Teenage Warhead debuted in New X-Men #115, where she is a nameless student in Emma Frost’s class who has a premonition of the impending attack by the Sentinels (who Cassandra Nova sent to destroy Genosha and the millions of mutants who lived there).
In the following issue, we learn her name, and it is the awesome name that only a teenager would come up with for their own superhero name (it is a Monster Magnet song). The name sells the sequence beautifully by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and Tim Townsend of a girl taken far too soon from this world and her teacher who is distraught to learn that there is nothing that she can do to save her student.
It’s such a beautiful moment. It, of course, just adds to the levels of guilt that Emma Frost feels over what happened to her former students in the Hellions and Generation X. Few X-Men characters have dealt with quite as much grief and guilt as Emma Frost.
Emma’s guilt over Negasonic Teenage Warhead’s death was reflected when Cassandra Nova used her powers to mess with Emma’s head and manipulate her into freeing Nova and giving her a new body to possess (initially, Nova was planning on taking Kitty Pryde’s body but then changed her mind and wanted Armor’s body). Among the delusions that Nova placed inside of Emma’s mind is that she saw a new Hellfire Club made up of Emma and a bunch of other characters, including Negasonic Teenage Warhead…
Oddly enough, eventually Negasonic Teenage Warhead WAS brought back to life during the “Necrosha” storyline in the pages of X-Force #21 (by Craig Kyle, Chris Yost and Clayton Crain)…
However, within a matter of issues, almost all of the mutants who Selene had brought back to life died in Selene’s rise to power (she needed all of their deaths to help power herself up).
And that was it for the character…until the Deadpool movie. The makers of the film planned to have one younger X-Man and one older X-Man get involved in Deadpool’s story. Colossus was the veteran pick and the younger X-Man was initially Cannonball, but budget concerns made it so that his powers were probably too cost prohibitive to depict. Instead, they liked the name of Negasonic Teenage Warhead so much that they adapted her into the film, changing her powers so that they could work as a substitute for Cannonball’s powers (she now had some sort of kinetic energy force field).
The 2016 movie was a huge hit, which meant that it was only a matter of time until she returned to the comics, as well…