Slapstick (Steve Harmon)
Alter Ego: Steven Winsor McCay "Steve" Harmon
Notable Aliases: Deadpool
First Appearance: Slapstick #1 (November, 1992)
Steve Harmon is the classic class clown, devoting his life to pulling pranks, telling tasteless jokes, being generally irritating and dreaming about the prettiest girl in school. One evening, in an attempt to get revenge on a classmate who blew the whistle on one of his pranksnote , Steve dresses up as a clown and sneaks into a carnival passing through town. As it happens, the carnival was a trap created by the Evil Clowns from Dimension X in a scheme to kidnap people and enslave them for their Overlord. Seeing the clowns drag his friends through a magic mirror portal, Steve follows them through, just as the portal closes...
Steve is rescued by the Scientist Supreme of Dimension X, who explains that the incident caused a freak accident which has turned his body into "electroplasm", an indestructible and infinitely malleable substance. Using his circus mallet and his indestructible body, Steve smashes the Overlord's Mediocritizer, rescues his schoolmates, and destroys the mirror portal. As the dust clears, Steve is found by his friend Mike Peterson, who notes that he obviously just had an origin and thus should start fighting crime. Steve compromises by offering to play cruel tricks on it instead and dubs himself Slapstick.
After his original 1992 series, Slapstick briefly appeared with the New Warriors, appeared regularly as a recruit in Avengers: The Initiative, then was a regular member of Deadpool's Mercs for Money. In 2017, Slapstick appeared in Slapstick: Volume 2, a six-issue series created by Reilly Brown, Fred Van Lente, and Diego Olortegui.
Slapstick's primary ability is his highly agile and indestructible body, which gives him the composition of a living cartoon. While he can be burned, shot, smashed, crushed, twisted, and anything else, he recovers almost instantly with no harm. Slapstick's clown gloves have (or had) a molecular stabilizer to allow him to change to human form, and a sub-spacial storage pocket to allow him to hold a single item in Hammerspace. Slapstick can also get a temporary boost in size and strength if he is zapped with electricity.
Slapstick (the character) provides examples of:
- Amusing Injuries: Slapstick's electroplasm body is effectively immune to harm, but he can be given momentary pause by attacks in ways that play off of his Toon Physics body.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: He has no genitals and is depressed about the fact he'll never have sex.
- Berserk Button:
- During Civil War, insulting Slapstick's friends who were members of the New Warriors after their deaths is a good way to set him off.
- From 2015 on, reminding him that he has no genitalia also has this effect.
- Beware the Silly Ones: While undergoing training at Camp Hammond with other former New Warriors, Steve took offense at an insult the drill instructor laid against his deceased friends note , so he attacked him when he was alone and savagely beat him into a coma. With his giant mallet.
- Gets even worse after he joins Deadpool's Mercs for Money, where he gouges a man's eyes out while doing a 3 Stooges style eye poke and attempts to crush his skull in with a sledgehammer. It's heavily implied that the Stamford Incident, money troubles, and his inability to get laid have made Steve VERY jaded.
- Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: When Steve turns into Slapstick, his clothes disappear into an interdimensional pocket.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Steve was always a prankster. When he's turned into Slapstick, he upgrades into a superpowered prankster.
- Darker and Edgier: After his return in Initiative, he starts showing elements of Monster Clown in his personality.
- Dream Sequence: Steve's frequent daydreams.
- Evil Laugh: In the original series, Slapstick would sometimes laugh evilly before messing with someone.
- Fun Personified: Slapstick is a goofy and fun-loving hero.
- Four-Fingered Hands: Happens to Steve when he's in his Slapstick form since he was wearing his oversized four-fingered toon gloves when he got his powers.
- Genre Savvy: "You've just had an origin."
- Hammerspace: Slapstick's giant hammer mentioned above can be conjured to his hand at any time.
- Hyperspace Mallet: Slapstick's primary method of attack is to hit people with his mallet being pulled from nowhere.
- I Call It "Vera": Slapstick calls his mallet Gertie.
- Kryptonite Factor: The only thing that can hurt him is a specific frequency of energy that disrupts the molecular bonds of his electroplasm body, and that only works temporarily.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: Slapstick has been shot with bazookas, burned with fire, zapped with electricity, twisted into a knot, and kicked across New York City with no ill effects. The only thing that can hurt him is a specific frequency of energy that disrupts the molecular bonds of his electroplasm body, and that only works temporarily.
- Ordinary High-School Student: Steve Harmon was just another teenager before he became Slapstick.
- Rummage Fail: Done with "infinite pockets" in Avengers: The Initiative #10. Rage specifically told him not to fool around, but...
- Sanity Slippage: It's revealed in "Deadpool & The Mercs for Money" that Steve's emotional and mental health has taken a serious toll due to the Stamford Incident and his inability to change back into his human form or have sex.
- Shapeshifter Baggage: Slapstick becomes stronger and larger when he gets zapped with electricity, with no explanation for the extra mass. Of course, he's based on Saturday-morning cartoons, which are equally guilty of abusing physics. Plus, he has the power to store mass in another dimension, so it's not implausible for him to take some into himself.
- Shapeshifter Mode Lock: As of Avengers: The Initiative, Slapstick is unable to return to his human form.
- Slapstick: True to the hero's name, Slapstick often fights criminals by inflicting humiliating injuries upon them.
- Toon Physics: Slapstick can freely abuse Toon Physics, making him a Nigh-Invulnerable minor Reality Warper, and can bounce back from any injuries almost instantly. He's also performed otherwise impossible feats, such as swallowing a box of bullets and rapidly firing them by spitting them out like a machine gun.
- You Need to Get Laid: Frustration at getting no sexual release is heavily implied to be the reason for Slapstick's more violent personality in Deadpool's 2015 series.
