Gwenpool (Gwendolyn "Gwen" Poole; "GwenPool"; "Pink Slayer") is a fictional character by Marvel Comics. Her physical design originated as an amalgam of Gwen Stacy and Wade Wilson. Gwen Poole was obsessed with Super Heroes, who were all fictional characters in her world with origins and stories printed in comic books. When she wound up in the Marvel Universe, she put on a costume and became a mercenary as Gwenpool. © ©

"You're all just comic book characters in my world!"

My dearest!!.. I originally discovered Gwenpool in 2019, I cant remember how anymore though. I remember that I read The Unbelievable Gwenpool and West Coast Avengers (2018) which she starred in, but I honestly forgot all about her until a few months ago. All I could recall about her was that she had funny lines and an adorable character design. Now, I reread both of the comics mentioned recently and ohhh.. She is so real to me..

Gwen is a normal teenage girl who literally gets isekai'd into Earth-616. Her superpower is that she knows everything about the Marvel characters, and she uses that to navigate being a merc while learning to develop her 'powers'. At first, Gwen seems to have no care for the lives of the humans in 616, as to her they were just fictional characters. However, she grows a lot from her nonchalant attitude and learns to care for Earth-616 and the friends she has made.

"So that's my boring origin story. No horse aliens. Just a slow, creeping feeling of isolation."

What makes me so drawn to Gwenpool are her fears, anxieties, and doubts. Prior to being isekai'd into Earth-616, Gwen was a high school dropout struggling to find a job, and her friends had moved away from her after graduation. These factors led her to escape from her life by sinking into fictional comics and fantasizing of being in them to have a better reality. Without spoiling too many details of later issues, she basically erases her future and shortens her series to a few issues before its end. So, she decides to something grand, something that will ensure her a legacy and relevance that is enough for her to appear again someday.

Basically, Gwen is terrified of being irrelevant and having her comic series discontinued, because to her it is the equivalent of her death. The way these fears are portrayed in The Unbelievable Gwenpool make me resonate with her greatly. They are relatable and quite humuorous, but not so much that it makes her feelings lose meaning. They feel just like the anxietes of a teenage girl trying to find a place in the world, and as a girl who deals with the same fears, seeing my feelings fleshed out in an enjoyable and realistic way makes me really like her.