Wolver-History

Those of you who have read my other blogs should be well and tired of the "my grandpa bought me my earliest comics" stories. Well, this is one of those, so...sorry.

As I've stated in the past, the earliest comic that made a real impression on me was Uncanny X-Men #149. Released in 1981 (I'd have been either 6 or 7 depending on the month), the cover alone, depicting the team members featured in the issue searching apprehensively through a cave while a monstrous visage glares down upon them, had me completely sold. It showed a younger girl in a shiny costume and roller skates (Kitty Pryde... I shit you not), a sexy white haired lady in a leather bikini and thigh boots (Storm...my second comic book crush), a metal guy in a goofy looking costume (Colossus), a blue fuzzy elf (Nightcrawler, of course), and this really intense looking guy in a brown and tan costume with these cool funky wing/fin things on the sides of his mask. This was my first exposure to the X-Men in general and Wolverine specifically.

Compare Wolverine - not his powers, his attitude, or his abilities, just his over all look - to what seven year old me knew of superheroes. I was used to (or at least familiar with) characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman (the brightly hued Super Friends version), the Flash, Spider-Man, and Captain America, characters that all wore combinations of red, blue, and/or yellow, inspiring and dynamic primary colors. Here was a guy who wore brown. Who wears freaking brown?  Oh, the guy who isn't screwing around trying to be a symbol, a guy who's just here to take care of business, that's who.

Additionally, all of those other heroes we're pretty. Wolverine was this short, kind of ugly looking guy we're crazy sideburns and this truly bizarre haircut. He was like nothing I'd seen in comics before. Not knowing about the whole metal skeleton thing, I spent the next two weeks running around the house in a pair of winter gloves, pretending that three blades could pop out of each of them.

To be totally honest, though, Wolverine didn't do much in this issue. Against a giant monster made out of crystal and volcanic rock, it was actually Kitty who saved the day (forever cementing her in my mind as one of the best characters in comics). Wolverine just kind of looked cool.

It wasn't until, a little over a year later, when I got ahold of Uncanny X-Men #162, that I figured out exactly how dangerous Wolverine could be. The very first page shows a much battered Logan fighting his way through an extremely hostile alien jungle, hunted by scores of deadly otherworldly creatures. Through a series of flashbacks it's shown how the X-Men were captured by the alien Brood and implanted with eggs that would transform them into young Brood drones, their perceptions altered to make them unaware of their fates. Only Wolverine, due to his heightened senses is able to see through the illusion (though Kitty is able to somehow sense that something isn't right, and is terrified). The other X-Men, as well as a depowered Carol Danvers, dismiss Wolverine's findings as paranoia, leading him to escape on his own. After taking out a Brood hit squad, as well as a number of the local carnivorous fauna, the egg inside of him begins to "hatch", triggering his transformation. Wolverine's healing factor, his unalterable Adamantium skeleton, and his sheer will power prevents the transformation, effectively killing the young Brood to be. As his stands triumphant, weary, and defiant, he vows that he won't let his friends become Brood, one way or the other. 

This was when I realized how deadly, how unstoppable, how completely relentless Wolverine could be. Still, is looking really cool, is being really dangerous, something worth obsessing over?  Not for me, not really. Spider-Man's black costume remains one of the coolest visuals of all time, but I've never been a big Spidey fan. Powerhouses like Superman, Thor, and Captain Marvel (Shazam) can certainly deal out more damage than Wolverine, but I've never been into any of them either. For a few years then, while I certainly liked Logan better than a lot of other superheroes, he was never really my guy. After all, I was into characters at the time that most would consider unrelatable - artificial men, muck monsters, and the like - and for all that he could do, Wolverine was still just a tough dude with a funny haircut.

I honestly didn't read much of the X-Men for a while after issue 162. I picked up comics maybe once a month, and got whatever hit my fancy out of whatever was available at the local spinner rack. My best friend from fifth grade on, though, had parents that we're unbelievably tolerant of our shared hobby, and would drive him the hour from our isolated little rural Ohio town to Columbus to raid a comic book store every weekend with a budget that was quite generous for a ten year old in the mid-80s. I ended up living most of my comic book hobby vicariously through Wade, and since Wade was more of a DC than Marvel guy, I tended to get more Outsiders, Infinity Inc, and Teen Titans in my life than X-Men for a while.

In August of 1987, however, as I was walking around minding my own business, I developed an acute case of becoming a hit and run victim. Obviously the doctors thought it might be wise to keep me under observation for a while, just to monitor my condition, you know. While Mr and Mrs Grant's Genetic Donors made use of that time to take a vacation in Mexico ("The tickets are nonrefundable kiddo. You understand right?"), my grandpa came out to the hospital every day to hang out with me. On one of those trips he brought me a random batch of comics he picked up along the way. One of those comics was Uncanny X-Men #222.

The plot of 222 is divided into two halves. The first is that of the X-Men battling the Marauders in San Fransisco to rescue Madelyn Prior, who had been targeted by then for assassination. The second is that of Storm and her guide Naze' fighting a pair of owl/bear/snake demon shape shifters as they search for Forge in an effort to restore her lost powers. While this is a great issue, with spectacular art by Marc Sylvestri, it's not the plot of the book that hooked me; it was the subcontext.

Inserted throughout the issue are instances of anti-mutant prejudice and hysteria. When a battered Dazzler uses her powers to recharge herself on a crowded beach she sets of a panic, with people running in fear and screaming "MUTIE!". A local police detective who's partner has agreed to help the X-Men makes openly bigoted remarks to Havok and Psylocke, stating how he believes that "If it was up to me I'd  lock all you Muties up and throw away the key". The presence of the Marauders alone reminds us that, a short time prior, an entire micro-civilization of mutants was massacred in the sewers beneath Manhattan (though the impact of this was later lessened by the revelation that it was a mutant who had ordered their deaths). Although I'd been away of anti-mutant sentiments in the Marvel universe, this was the first time it really hit home to me what an allegory this was for the isolation and marginalization of people who feel like, and are treated like, outsiders. Also, for a kid laying injured in a hospital and feeling severely butt hurt that the 'rents had skipped town, the tough as nails guy who tended to take younger team members under his wing made a nice head canon surrogate role model.

Let's jump ahead thirty years. That goofy kid who read comics is now a husband and dad who reads comics. With the brief exceptions of Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men and Claremont's concurrent return to Uncanny, I hadn't touched the X-franchise since 1992. A couple of weeks ago, however, favorite podcast of mine inspired me to go back and re-read Claremont's work on the X-Men from the 80s. Taking a deep dive into the beautifully melodramatic pool of Claremont, taking in bits and pieces of everything from the original Excalibur team to the X-treme X-Men, I found myself in some previously uncharted waters, the four issue Wolverine solo series from 1982.

If you're not familiar, in the very first issue of the series, when Logan's girlfriend Mariko Yashida returns his love letters unopened, he heads to Japan for answers. He quickly learns that Mariko's father, a powerful crime lord, has married her off to settle an old debt. Logan confronts Mariko, only to be drugged and severely beaten by Mariko's father, Lord Shingen. Disturbed by Logan's reversion to his savage nature during the fight, Mariko openly rejects him. The issues that follow are a tale of loss, humiliation, betrayal, duty, and honor.

The Universe rarely cares of what we need to do, if our own personal responsibilities, run counter to what we would like to do or would make us feel happy at the moment. A great deal of what I appreciate at this point in my life about Wolverine is his attitude of putting the needs of others, the needs of the greater good for his friends, teammates, and students over his own, of doing what needs to be done, no matter what.