Namor and Deadpool X-Men connection

[CTTT]

So, I was trying to come up with a reading order for the X-Men. It's a little daunting with all of the different spin-off teams and characters but fun. So, I came across a site that had Namor and Deadpool included in his reading order. So, how do these two connect to the X-Men books?

[Askani's Flame]

So, I was trying to come up with a reading order for the X-Men. It's a little daunting with all of the different spin-off teams and characters but fun. So, I came across a site that had Namor and Deadpool included in his reading order. So, how do these two connect to the X-Men books?

Deadpool was introduced as a mercenary that tangled with Cable and the New Mutants then X-Force becoming the ally and close partner of Cable.

Namor was the first mutant introduced in Marvel comics. In the early 2000's the X-Men welcomed him into the fold and he was on the team and a leader til the events of AvX. He then went back to his antagonistic ways for the most part, but occasionally being an ally again.

[Grunty]

Namor the Submariner first appeared in the 1939 in Marvel Mystery Comics #1, which was at the time published by Timely Comics (which would later become Atlas Comics in 1950 and then Marvel Comics in 1961).

So he predates the X-men and the idea of mutants as "people with natural super powers" in the Marvel universe by several decades. However he would eventualy be retconned into having been a mutant all along, from the human part of his mixed ancestry.

With that he got the title of "First Mutant" (by character publication history), which retroactively and from there on frequently gave him some degree of relevance in the X-men comics. Also he had a relationship with a member of Alpha Flight for a while, which in turn is an X-men related series.

Deadpool meanwhile first premiered in X-force and became a series regular. His powers eventualy got revealed to be the result of scientist of a Weapon X offshot project, infusing him with Wolverine's cells, which ended up bonding and fusing with his cancer cells, resulting in them becomming symbiotic with his body and granting him a massive healing factor.

He is essentialy a successfull artifical mutant and his status as such has become a running gag in the comics (he claims to be a mutant, the X-men reject him not only because he still isn't but also because he is repulsive in terms of mental state and actions)

Besides his stint in multiple X-force books, he also had a relative long running series with Cable in the early 2000s helping boosting his profile as well as Cable's (in part inspiring both Deadpool movies).

Since then Deadpool has remained a character with heavy ties to the X-men line of comics, if not an independent X-men characters entirely.

[salarta]

Just to add to what Askani said, the short of it seems to be that Deadpool is so heavily active around the X-Men franchise that he's considered part of it despite not being a mutant.

Namor was created long before X-Men, but started getting described as a mutant really early on in the X-Men franchise. That makes Namor into Marvel's first mutant by publication date of when characters currently considered mutants were published in comics. In other words, if Marvel decided to make a character that was published before Namor into a mutant, that character would take his place as Marvel's first mutant.

[CTTT]

What book or books covered Namor being established as a mutant? Cause I know for the longest time he was established as an Atlantean

[salarta]

What book or books covered Namor being established as a mutant? Cause I know for the longest time he was established as an Atlantean

His Wikipedia page has a section about it that mentions X-Men #6 as the first time it came up. That section doesn't give any other specific issues. It does mention they seemed to try to keep him separate in the 60s and 70s, then apparently turned around and embraced it in the 90s, leading to confirmation in a later miniseries (I don't know when the five-issue Illuminati miniseries happened, but appears to be after 2000 at least).

[Krakoa]

What book or books covered Namor being established as a mutant? Cause I know for the longest time he was established as an Atlantean

To be clear, he's never not been an Atlantean, he's just also a mutant. He's half-human, half-Atlantean, and has the X-gene on his human side (explaining why he has some powers that don't correspond to humans or Atlantans, like flight and invulnerability).

[Drexelhand]

His Wikipedia page has a section about it that mentions X-Men #6 as the first time it came up. That section doesn't give any other specific issues. It does mention they seemed to try to keep him separate in the 60s and 70s, then apparently turned around and embraced it in the 90s, leading to confirmation in a later miniseries (I don't know when the five-issue Illuminati miniseries happened, but appears to be after 2000 at least).

It was mentioned again in the early FF annual where he invades the surface until Krang and Dorma abandon him - he himself speculated that he was the first mutant in it. After that, it was kind of dormant and they called him a hybrid instead until the 80s when he got his second volume.