Get ready to lower the tone, because the black-and-red sheep of the X-Men universe is about to become to first character besides Wolverine to get his own standalone movie. Production on Tim Miller's Deadpool is well underway, with Ryan Reynolds reprising his role as Wade Wilson from X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Deadpool is known for his general insanity, his trademark wit and dark humor, and his tendency to break the fourth wall. In the recent Deadpool video game, for example, the character can call up his own voice actor to discuss the prospect of making the video game - and a new image from Reynolds teases a similar trend of meta-humor to come in the movie.

Posted on Twitter, the picture shows Deadpool indulging in a bit of private time and is captioned, "Smells like someone died up in here. #alivepool." There's actually more to this than meets the eye, since Deadpool is reading the latest and final issue of his comic book, which is titled "The Death of Deadpool". Three guesses what happens in this issue.

As Reynolds' use of the hashtag "#alivepool" would suggest, the character's death is almost certainly not going to stick, especially since comic book deaths are notoriously impermanent. There has, however, been speculation that Marvel Comics is intentionally attempting to sabotage Twentieth Century Fox's Marvel movies, after X-Men writer Chris Claremont said in a Nerdist podcast last year that "the X department is forbidden to create new characters... There will be no X-Men merchandising for the foreseeable future because, why promote Fox material?"

Smells like someone died up in here. #alivepool pic.twitter.com/sZqvmagVND— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) April 8, 2015

If killing off characters like Deadpool and Wolverine really is part of an ongoing effort by Marvel Comics to avoid promoting Fox's movies, then it's more of a token gesture rather than a practical one. The vast majority of people who go to see X-Men movies do not read the comics and are therefore very unlikely to be impacted by the discontinuation of a series like Deadpool.

If this wink from Reynolds is anything to go by, he and the rest of the team behind the upcoming Deadpool movie aren't particularly worried by the move on Marvel's part. Don't be surprised if some allusion to the Fox/Marvel rivalry ends up making it into the movie, though.

Deadpool arrives in theaters on February 12th, 2016.

Source: Ryan Reynolds