Days of the dead

What do Wolverine, Punisher and Deadpool have in common? Well, apart from being anti-heroes, they also happen to fall into the cash-cow category – explaining their unlimited number of appearances and spin-offs every month.

While Wolverine was used sparingly in the 1980s to (re)ignite interest in lacklustre characters/storylines, the 1990s saw the House of Ideas opening the floodgates (and its cash register) with the shameless utilisation of the Punisher. The same now applies to Deadpool, who stars in four regular titles, an ongoing stream of limited series, uncountable cameos in almost all Marvel titles and even with time to spare as a “variant-cover” model.