Marvel Comics

Joe Kelly's Deadpool run is the creative moment that transformed a 90s mercenary character into something genuinely literary — Kelly introduced the fourth-wall awareness as a systematic device, gave Deadpool his signature voice, and wrote the first truly great Deadpool story in issue #11's time-travel team-up with the Golden Age hero, which remains one of the most moving single issues in the character's history. Kelly balanced comedy and tragedy in a way that no subsequent writer has fully replicated, and his Deadpool is the template against which every later run is measured.