Rob Liefeld’s The Pouch: A Joke That Turned Into An Actual Character

Rob Liefeld’s The Pouch is a bizarre in-joke that evolved into a real character. Cool as The Pouch might be, Rob Liefeld’s most popular creation is easily Deadpool. He first made an appearance during an issue of The New Mutants comic, with the character being a play on Deathstroke; even his real name Wade Wilson is a parody of Deathstroke’s name Slade Wilson. Deadpool soon proved popular enough to earn his own comic series and was fittingly dubbed the “Merc with a Mouth.”

Ryan Reynolds first became interested in starring in an adaptation of Deadpool in the early 2000s and spent years trying to get it made. This included committing to a widely mocked cameo in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, where the character was horribly redesigned. The negative reception to both Origins and Deadpool’s appearance put a solo movie on hold again, but it finally arrived in 2016. Despite its modest budget and R-rating, the movie would become the highest-grossing of the X-Men franchise. Deadpool 2 was equally successful and introduced other Liefeld creations like Cable (Josh Brolin) and Domino (Zazie Beetz).

Rob Liefeld has a distinctive style as an artist, with recurring traits such as characters wielding massive guns, having small feet or and being adorned with lots of pouches. This includes Deadpool and Cable, and his enthusiasm for pouches had become so widely mocked that Liefeld went ahead and created a character known as The Pouch. He posted a sketch of The Pouch on social media and the character is exactly what the name implies – he’s a sentient stack of pouches that wields a massive gun that is also made out of pouches.

The fact Liefeld was so willing to make have fun at his own expense struck a chord, as did the genius pun “He’s always packing.” This outpouring of love for The Pouch saw the character making a cameo appearance in Bloodstrike #23, where he appears in an all-too-brief solo adventure. This involves defending his city from bad guys – apparently by absorbing them into his pouches – and he even punches out Magneto is one panel.

While this might have felt like a one and done gag, there’s a future for Rob Liefeld’s The Pouch. The creator confirmed in 2019 he’s planning a cartoon featuring The Pouch and is talking to an unidentified comedian about voicing the role. He wants the series to be bizarre and unconventional, namechecking shows like South Park that broke the mold. It remains to be seen what lies in store for The Pouch, and while he’s unlikely to front his own Deadpool-style franchise, it’s nice to see how one little gag can snowball into bigger things.

About The Author

Padraig Cotter
(3485 Articles Published)

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It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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