Wolverine

[The Laughing Fish]

I've been reading some Wolverine comics for quite some time, and I've come to realise I prefer to read him when he comes across as an outsider i.e. the 1982 Frank Miller four issue run or when he struggles to contain his animalistic side.

The biggest thing that made me fed up about the character was whenever he's written to have sexual tension with Jean Grey. I never bought it in the X-Men animated series or the movies and I can't buy into the comics either, I felt it was always a contrived attempt at a love triangle to build further hostility with Cyclops. I believe his relationships with Yukio and Mariko is more natural in the sense they represent one side of Wolverine, one is just as thrill-seeking and adventerous as he is and the other brings out his more gentler, humane, sensitive side. Putting that together in a story where he is in Japan fighting the Yakuza mob as Mariko was trapped in a forced marriage makes the character a lot more interesting. I realised the Miller run was partly adapted in that 2013 Wolverine movie as well as the Wolverine anime series I watched awhile ago, and while I thought the anime series was fine for what it was, the comics by Miller are better than both adaptations.

As far as Wolverine dealing with animalistic rage, I read a couple of stories, the first was under the Season One series - which was a retelling of his origin story and a partial retelling of Wolverine's debut appearance in The Incredible Hulk, where he fought Hulk and Wendigo as a military operative. He's found by a couple who would become members of Alpha Flight and became a government agent training to control his rage under Heather Hudson, but his impulsive animal instincts and endangering Heather puts Logan at odds with Guardian, Heather's husband.

Aside from a few goofy moments in the comic, such as Logan singing the same lullaby that Heather sang to him to calm Wendigo down, the comic does a pretty good job in retelling Logan's journey in controlling his animal side and becoming Wolverine, before he meets Charles Xavier and join the X-Men. Doing so enables him to pity and rescue from the Wendigo, as he sees the Canadian government using mutants and other beings abused for military gain and tries to do whatever he can to spare the same indignant treatment he had experienced. And of course, such a story would be incomplete without his arch-nemesis Sabretooth, taking advantage of an ambitious and ruthless Canadian government looking to cement itself as a world power at all costs to have his little vendetta against Wolverine.

In terms of stories that impressed me the most, however, is the one written by Tom DeFalco and drawn by John Buscema called Bloody Choices. It's the second chapter in a Wolverine/Nick Fury trilogy, where Logan and Fury are at odds with each other over a crime boss who is working as an an informant for SHIELD. Wolverine is thirsty for blood when he realises the culprit is responsible for child molestation, but faces resistance from Fury, because the crime lord's co-operation and testimony has potential to help SHIELD for a major drug bust. It's a pretty heavy and violent story, but I appreciate the differences between the characters' abiding to certain principles, even though they agree with each other over the despicable nature of the crime, and they have a great battle towards the end as Logan won't stop at nothing to avenge the kids, even risking going beserk on Fury. The book also has this ambiguous character called Shiv, another mutant who is similar to Wolverine and it implies for a moment the two may be brothers.

Despite the dark nature of Bloody Choices, my favourite moment in the comic is a light-hearted one, where Wolverine goes to a bar together with Fury in costume, and a drunk ridiculed his mask asking him if he was supposed to be a cheap Batman imitation, and Wolverine punches him in the gut saying "Nah, I'm a darker, grittier version of the Easter bunny, here's an egg for you". I'm aware there was some criticism about this comic because it supposedly undermines the character development that Chris Claremont went through to make Wolverine overcome his murderous instincts, but as a standalone story, I enjoy it.

Any other Wolverine stories and recommendations I should check out?

[thecolorsblend]

The movies always seemed reluctant to portray Logan as a caged animal. I can sort of see why too. The movies had to appeal to a wider audience in a time when comic book movies weren't the big deal that they are now. They dabbled with it at times when Logan would occasionally be out of his "right" mind, delirious or what have you. But they never showed him as the violent killer that the early comics showed him to be.

Still, you lose something when you show him as merely troubled or occasionally rude or offensive. It's fine for him to hone his animal instincts. But he has to HAVE those instincts first. And the movies never show much of that.

The comics tho, mmm hmm...

[The Laughing Fish]

The movies always seemed reluctant to portray Logan as a caged animal. I can sort of see why too. The movies had to appeal to a wider audience in a time when comic book movies weren't the big deal that they are now. They dabbled with it at times when Logan would occasionally be out of his "right" mind, delirious or what have you. But they never showed him as the violent killer that the early comics showed him to be.

Still, you lose something when you show him as merely troubled or occasionally rude or offensive. It's fine for him to hone his animal instincts. But he has to HAVE those instincts first. And the movies never show much of that.

Unsurprisingly, most of the cartoons tend to downplay his animal rage too. The only exceptions I can remember were the more adult-themed X-Men anime series, and the Weapon X backstory during the 2009 Hulk vs Wolverine short film. That film was pretty violent and Wolverine didn't hesitate to massacre an entire team of soldiers in the present day, but he was still nowhere near as feral during his Weapon X days.

Censorship did its best to avoid exploring that side of the character, although the Nineties X-Men show still managed to give you this uncomfortable feeling he could lose control at some points. I remember feeling very tense and scared as a kid when he escaped to Alaska, leaving behind his bedroom trashed and a photo of Jean Grey and Cyclops all tattered and torn. All because of his jealousy over their relationship.

The only times that I can remember Wolverine using his claws on others in that show - as in trying to inflict physical damage, not just destroy their weapons - were against robots such as Sentinels, cyborgs such as the Reavers and Lady Deathstrike, and a hologram of Cyclops on the day of Scott and Jean's wedding. It's unreasonable to expect a children's cartoon to show Wolverine inflicting bodily harm on people, but sometimes the censorship made him a little bit useless in combat.

The comics tho, mmm hmm...

I remember reading some of the Wolverine comics back in the Nineties, and they went a little too far and weird. Ever since Magneto had ripped the adamantium out of Logan's body at some point during Fatal Attractions, Wolverine became even more feral, both mentally - such as stalking a family because he wanted to kill the man of the house for being physically and emotionally abuse, and physically - to the point he was turning into a monster like Beast:



As a kid, it was difficult to read these comics because it was way too hard to keep up with continuing storylines spanning across from Wolverine's solo title to Uncanny X-Men and so on, and I thought this was the end of the old Wolverine as we knew him.

One of these days, I need to read Fatal Attractions and the complete aftermath of how Wolverine became more feral to get a better understanding why he became this way.

[The Laughing Fish]

I read this blog criticising Bloody Choices, giving a C- grade.

https://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronocomic/entries/wolverine_bloody_choices.shtml

I can understand the criticism over the idea that Shiv and Logan are brothers until the story cops out of it, and have no issues admitting the criticism is valid. And as I said before, I understand this comic may have been a departure from what Claremont had done with the character.

However, I take the scenario involving the depraved child molester as a reason for Wolverine going back to his urge to kill. The subject may be exploitative and perhaps too inappropriate for superhero comics' standards. But if there was some awful experience in Wolverine's life that would undo all of his progress to repress his bloodthirstiness that doesn't involve hurting anyone close to him, this would be it.

[The Laughing Fish]

Alleged leaked trailer for the Wolverine game by Insomniac, the same devs behind the Spider-Man series, was leaked online. It seems legitimate, because Logan's wearing the same clothes and drinking at the same bar as the announcement trailer. You can see fighting the Hand.

I think a Wolverine game set in Miller and Claremont's mini-series would've sufficed, but it seems they're going with a more original story. If this trailer is truly leaked and not fan-made, I suspect Wolverine's scent abilities are copied over from the X-Men Origins game made in 2009. Not a bad thing because that game was surprisingly good for its time.