Warning! This article contains spoilers for Deadpool: Bad Blood #1
While Marvel Comics is actually backing him up on it by finally having that seemingly pointless design make complete sense.
In Deadpool: Bad Blood #1 by Rob Liefeld, Chris Sims, and Chad Bowers, Deadpool is on a mission to stop some weapons smugglers who used to do business with his former boss, Mr. Tolliver. Before he began his reconnaissance, he alerted his X-Force ally Domino to the criminal activity as well. The two met atop a building in New York close to where the deal is supposed to go down, but before antiheroes were free to stop the bad guys, Deadpool had to lose a villain who has been consistently hunting him, a hulking creature known as Thumper.
The issue opens with Deadpool leading Thumper to the location where he has planned to meet Domino for their sting operation, which sounds like it would be problematic, but was actually the only way to lose him. Thumper has proven to be pretty much invulnerable, so the only way Deadpool can get the villain to stop chasing him is by letting Thumper kill him, which he has done many times before. However, Deadpool still does his best to kill Thumper before he has to endure dying and waiting for his healing factor to bring him back to life, so he decided that his best course of action was to blow up the villain and see if that finally does the trick. Lucky for Deadpool, Thumper carries exposed explosives on his belt which made for the perfect targets. Before Deadpool shoots the explosives to see if that’ll finally kill the seemingly unkillable villain, he comments on Thumper choice to leave his bombs exposed on his person, saying, “here’s a pro-tip: if you’re gonna have explosives on your belt – keep that $#!% in a pouch!”.
Fans have critiqued enemies can’t do what Deadpool does to Thumper and use his own weapons against him.
The pouches are a way for Deadpool to maintain an element of surprise as well as being a fairly responsible safety measure. If Wade carried around explosives that were exposed, he would risk being blown to bits any time he entered a firefight. With the pouches, Deadpool is safe from any unplanned detonations, a clever design choice he imparted on even his most vicious enemy. Deadpool’s most hilarious costume design finally makes sense, and is way more practical than fans ever gave it credit for.
