Copycat has existed in Marvel Comics in some form for roughly the last 27 years, but she hasn’t become one of the biggest names in mutants. Instead, the sometimes villain has remained a supporting player in the stories of Deadpool, Cable, and X-Force since her debut.
Thanks to an increased presence in the live action Deadpool movie, though, there are plenty of fans who want to know more about her.
If the name Copycat doesn’t ring a bell for you, that’s because on the big screen she’s still using her given name instead of her mutant codename: Vanessa Carlysle.
Vanessa became known as Copycat in the comics as a result of a powerset that allowed her to copy the appearance of others.
As a shapeshifter, Vanessa’s powers allow her to do even more than most other mutants with similar skills. Her ability to shapeshift knows almost no bounds. That ability, though, comes with a whole lot of crazy and tragic comic book circumstances.
Despite the kind of power that allows Vanessa to literally become anyone she wants, she has a habit of finding herself in sticky situations.
Whether she’s being kidnapped, used as bait, betraying someone she cares about, or all of the above, her time in the comics has been fraught with one hardship after another.
With Deadpool 2 just around the corner and the character getting another shot on the big screen, we’ve got Vanessa’s backstory covered for you with the 20 Crazy Things You Didn’t Know About Copycat.
She's More Powerful Than Mystique
Funnily enough, Copycat shares more than just a power set with the X-Men character Mystique. Both shapeshifters have distinctive blue skin and eye colors that the usual human being wouldn’t have.
When it comes to shapeshifting, though, Copycat has the edge.
Mystique is capable of copying the appearance of human beings (and fellow mutants), but her copy is only skin deep.
Although she can appear to be anyone else, she can’t copy anything outside of their original makeup, giving a limit to what she can do. With Vanessa, there’s almost no limit.
Vanessa can copy the appearance of someone just like Mystique can. When her powers are at full strength though, she even starts doing it involuntarily. Just being around someone for long enough causes Vanessa to begin to shift in small ways. She also can copy something Mystique can’t: abilities.
Most comic book shapeshifters have no way of mimicking powers of the people they copy. Not so for Copycat. She can get right down to the person’s DNA and psychic makeup, allowing her to not only look like them, but virtually become them.
That’s why she was able to fool X-Factor into believing she was Domino for over a year -- she had Domino’s power set as well.
Mutant Or Not?
Comic book fans who saw the first live action Deadpool movie will have noticed one big difference between Vanessa Carlysle on screen and Vanessa Carlysle in the comics: she doesn’t have her trademark blue skin.
To be fair, Vanessa doesn’t have blue skin in the comics when she’s busy pretending to be someone else.
So far, though, there’s been no indication that Vanessa has her shapeshifting abilities in the movie other than a line about her “playing many roles” that fans took as a nod to the source material.
Instead, it appears she won’t be a mutant in the movies any time soon.
Writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick had a good reason for not making Vanessa a mutant right off the bat though: they didn’t want every character in the movie to be part of a mutant backstory.
Audiences were already seeing Deadpool’s origin, a pair of X-Men, and villains with mutant abilities in the big fight. It was important for at least a few of the characters to be average human beings who got caught up in the world without making the storyline cluttered and more confusing.
Fans hoping that Vanessa’s mutation will be triggered and she’ll go blue one day can hold on to that though.
Reese and Wernick shared in an interview with Cinemablend that if they’re “afforded the opportunity to move forward,” that seeing Copycat in action is something “worth exploring.”
Fans can just keep looking for clues in Deadpool 2 to see if Vanessa is on the Copycat track.
Her Unique Comic Book Debut
With most comic book characters, fans can point to one specific issue where they made their big debut. Vanessa Carlysle is so unique that she has four issues that mark her big debut!
Technically, the first time the character appeared on the page was in New Mutants #98, though you’d be hard pressed to find any evidence of her there. That actually marks the debut of the Marvel character Domino, whom Vanessa pretended to be, a reveal made long after that first appearance.
Her second big debut occurred in X-Force #11. That’s where readers got their first look at Vanessa -- quite literally -- as her name appeared in print for the first time.
Deadpool was sent after Vanessa while she was pretending to be Domino to check on the status of her mission, one which she was actually being blackmailed to complete.
Eight issues later, readers finally got to see what the woman underneath the Domino persona looked like. Once Vanessa’s treachery was found out and the real Domino was back in the picture, Vanessa was forced to leave X-Force behind, and the experience left her shaken.
Finally, her fourth comic book debut saw Vanessa Carlyle become Copycat. She was finally her full self, though she could become anyone she wanted.
In Deadpool: The Circle Chase, Vanessa had the chance to be her own person and choose the path she took.
She Was An Unplanned Character
With her strange history of comic book debuts, it’s probably safe to say that Vanessa Carlysle might not have been the original plan for Domino/Copycat.
Her behind the page history makes it all the more difficult to tell just what the original plan was.
When Domino and Deadpool were introduced in the New Mutants comic book following the debut of Cable, Fabian Nicieza was the writer behind the stories.
Nicieza is credited with the creation of several of the characters associated with New Mutants, and later X-Force. He brought Feral, Husk, Garrison Kane, and Weasel to the page. He’s also credited with the creation of Copycat and Domino.
At the time that Domino was introduced, though, Rob Liefeld was the artist, not to mention story plotter, and he was in the process of leaving Marvel Comics behind.
He shares credit for Copycat, Domino, Feral, Garrison Kane, and more with Nicieza. He’s also the person behind Deadpool, Cable, and many of the other big names in Copycat’s early story arc.
The question has lingered with fans as to whether Liefeld plotted out the Copycat reveal, or if it was something Nicieza opted to change while writing the New Mutants book as Liefeld left to pursue other opportunities.
Fans may never know.
She Had A Difficult Life
Vanessa might have seen a lot of difficulty in her professional life -- working as a mercenary for a man who continued to blackmail her into jobs she didn’t want -- but her personal life wasn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows either.
Vanessa’s history didn’t get fully revealed until Marvel began putting out “minus” issues that acted as flashbacks for popular character’s. In Deadpool’s Minus 1, fans were finally able to learn more about what made Vanessa Copycat.
When Vanessa first manifested her mutant abilities, her parents were less than pleased. They kicked her out of their house, not wanting to have anything to do with a mutant.
With nowhere else to go, Vanessa became a street worker. Her ability to shapeshift gave her an edge over some of the other women.
That line of work is actually how she crossed paths with the mercenary Wade Wilson, and the two started dating.
It could have been a Pretty Woman fairytale for Vanessa if Wade wasn’t training for an elite program and if he didn’t contract cancer.
Ultimately, the cancer diagnosis set Wade on a new path, just like audiences saw in the Deadpool movie, but Vanessa’s life took an even darker turn in the comics.
She didn’t keep up with her old line of work. Instead, she got into the mercenary life herself, which set her on a collision course with Deadpool and left her with some lasting trauma.
She Was Saved By A Time Traveler
When Vanessa and Wade Wilson (who wasn’t yet Deadpool) started dating, there were quite a few people who were interested in where their relationship was headed. Surprisingly, those people weren’t just comic book fans.
The interdimensional firm of Landau, Luckman, and Lake had employees across different realities and timelines. They held assets for dimension hopping customers, had a stake in which heroes survived to stave off an apocalypse, and stationed their employees wherever, and whenever, they believed they’d be able to do the most work.
One of those employees was Zoe Culloden. Zoe happened to be stationed in the time and place where Vanessa and Wade started dating.
Unfortunately for Vanessa, Zoe didn’t think the relationship was good for the future hero. She believed that Wade Wilson was meant for bigger and better things -- Vanessa was just a distraction.
Zoe’s mind was changed when she repeatedly tried to set up situations to make Vanessa angry enough to leave Wade and the young woman never did.
Vanessa and Zoe found themselves on common ground when they were attacked in an alley and had to team up to save their own lives. Zoe saved Vanessa and decided that she was the kind of woman who deserved Wade Wilson.
Of course, because Marvel Comics loves a tragic backstory, Vanessa and Wade didn’t get a happily ever after following the time traveler’s blessing. Instead, Wade left Vanessa when he found out about his cancer diagnosis, got an experimental treatment, and became Deadpool.
Some Of Her Abilities Require Touch
If a character has a particularly strong power set, they might not want to get too close to Copycat. A touch allows her to have more access to just what her person of reference can do.
Even though Vanessa can copy someone’s appearance just by knowing what they look like, not every aspect can be copied just based on her knowledge of them.
Sometimes, she has to be a little less casual than just seeing them walk by. In order to become someone right down to psychic patterns and superpowers, Vanessa has to physically touch them.
In case that wasn’t made clear to readers, the Deadpool miniseries The Circle Chase had Deadpool say it outloud.
During the miniseries, Vanessa put herself between a fatal blow and Deadpool to save his life. The two might have had their ups and downs over the years, but she wasn’t about to let him die for no reason (The truth is, she’d probably rather do the job herself.)
Though there were other options to save her life, It was Wade Wilson who tore off part of his Deadpool costume to make sure Vanessa could touch his skin and copy his healing factor, saving her life faster than any of those other options could.
She Can Copy Animals
In addition to being able to copy human beings, mutants, and their abilities, Copycat has yet another edge over other shapeshifters. She can also copy animals.
Just which animals she’s had the fun of copying throughout her life is unclear, but in Deadpool #59, when Wade tries to save her from the Weapon X team trying to kill her, the duo end up in a fortuitous location - the Bronx Zoo.
At this time in her life, Vanessa had been given a bit of a power boost by Weapon X, but the boost made it difficult for her to control herself. Though she could change shape quickly, it became harder and harder for her to hold a solid form.
She also started losing her memories. When she wanted out of the program, it was Deadpool who tried to come to her rescue.
While on the run from Garrison Kane, the two found themselves at the Bronx Zoo. Deadpool stashed Vanessa in the gorilla habitat, hoping she could shapeshift and stay safe, while he took on Garrison Kane alone. It was a good plan, and it would have worked just fine, if Kane didn’t have backup.
When Deadpool returned from his fight, he found the gorillas slaughtered by Sabretooth, and Vanessa bleeding out. Even when she shed her human form, Vanessa couldn’t catch a break!
She Had A Relationship Garrison Kane
Garrison Kane and Copycat met through their time with Cable. Both were members of his various teams in the comics, and they wound up bonding.
They lived together for a while, trying to live a normal live instead of taking out other people for money.
Kane was a good hand-to-hand fighter, but having both his arms and legs removed in a massive fight sent him to Weapon X for treatment.
Just like Deadpool, Weapon X offered to “fix” Kane, and he wound up with cybernetic limbs and a whole lot of tech in his body. His first major mission with Weapon X was actually hunting Vanessa down because she was a loose end.
Vanessa was no stranger to betrayal, but considering she’d spent years with Kane before that, and he called her “the glue that held his life together,” the hurt cut deeply.
With her powers out of whack when he finally closed in on her, she couldn’t even properly fight him, and it was another ex boyfriend - Deadpool - who defended her.
Some readers were disappointed that Vanessa didn’t get the chance to take Kane out herself, but instead, her pain and frustration were voiced for her by Deadpool during the fight while she fought Sabretooth off panel.
It was just another stepping stone in the tragedy that is the path of Vanessa Carlysle’s life.
The Deadpool History
Deadpool pops up in a lot of significant moments in Vanessa’s life. He might have broken her heart when he was still just Wade Wilson, but he also saved her life as Deadpool. The two have also been sent after one another more than once on various missions.
It’s Deadpool who is responsible for revealing to the reader (and the team) that Domino isn’t really Domino a year after she’s introduced in X-Force.
Deadpool, while working for a villain named Tolliver during his mercenary days, is sent to keep Copycat in line specifically because of his history with her. He even carried out her mission of bombing the team when she couldn’t do it.
Following that, Deadpool was sent to take her down, and he didn’t seem to have any problem doing it at the time. Of course, he didn’t really destroy her as she was in hiding as a friend’s “twin,” and Deadpool took down the wrong one.
It was then that she was dating Garrison Kane, but after breaking up with him, she and Deadpool were on good terms, and they moved in together, and even attempted another relationship.
Of course, it wasn’t always Deadpool who was sent after Copycat. At one point, she was hired by Taskmaster to impersonate someone else in an effort to gain Deadpool’s trust. While it appeared like she had the upper hand, he somehow knew it was her the entire time.
It was even Vanessa who recruited Deadpool back into Weapon X.