Death and the Wolverine (from September 2014)
Another blast from the past, where I share something I wrote when Wolverine went and died that one time. Again.
Death and the Wolverine
Wolverine is a character that has been through quite a lot since his debut in 1974’s Incredible Hulk #181 and now, forty years later on the anniversary of his first appearance, he’s scheduled to die in Marvel’s new event, Death of Wolverine (imaginative!).
There used to be three constants when it came to death in comics. Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, Jason Todd (the second Robin) and Captain America’s partner Bucky Barnes would never come back from the dead.
Of the three, only Uncle Ben hasn’t clawed his way out of his grave (yet!). Jason Todd returned as the Red Hood in Judd Winnick’s Under the Hood arc that ran in the main Batman title from 2005 to 2006 (I loved that run by the way, Doug Mahnke’s arc was sublime). Bucky Barnes returned as the Winter Soldier in Ed Brubaker’s stellar Captain America run in 2005. Is nothing sacred?
Another good example of never being able to keep these characters down is the entirety of 1993 over at DC Comics: in the Knightfall event, Bane snapped Batman’s back, but the Dark Knight was walking and crime fighting within a year. Thank God Azrael was around to step into Batman’s shoes in the meantime, right? Anyone? Right? Hello?
Over in the Superman family of books, in the Death of Superman event, Doomsday appeared from nowhere and it took all of Superman’s might (and his life) to save the day. Again, [the real] Superman was back within a year but in the meantime, we got Cyborg-Superman Superboy, the Eradicator, and Steel stepping in and proving that no one can replace the true Superman!
Heck, even Barry Allan, aka The Flash, returned to the land of the living after sacrificing his life in the 1985 mega-event Crisis on Infinite Earths. Is nothing sacred anymore?
To get back to why we’re here; Wolverine, on the other hand, is a different kettle of fish.
Wolverine is-- or was-- a functioning immortal up until the start of this year. In Paul Cornell’s Wolverine run, the titular character was stripped of his healing factor by a sentient virus from the Microverse (don’t ask, just read his run across Wolverine, Vol. 5 and 6, from 2013 onwards). This newfound vulnerability meant Wolverine had to re-evaluate everything about his life, and, to Cornell’s credit, the stories that followed were exactly what they needed to be. No longer could Wolverine’s hack and slack and take all the damage like he used to. No more could he take a bullet to the head and not worry about possible concussion and brain damage. This is a big change from a man who used to ask his big metal mate Colossus to chuck him really hard and things (did you know that Colossus died in 2001’s Uncanny X-Men #390? Joss Whedon wrote the character’s return in 2004’s Astonishing X-Men #4. I didn’t realise this was ten years ago and now I feel really old).
Sure, Wolverine still had his claws and his enhanced senses, but without that healing factor every day was pain for the man, and every time he popped his claws he risked infection, and a slow, painful death. I remember an arc from the early 2000s that ran through Uncanny X-Men #379 to #380, where the X-Men-- and the rest of mutantkind-- were stripped of their powers. Wolverine experienced metal poisoning from the adamantium lining his bones, and he was close to death. To me, that was my first viewing of a vulnerable Wolverine. After I started reading more and more of the character, and the changes he’s been through, he’s been down, he’s been brought low by others (Magneto stripped his bones of adamantium back in the Fatal Attractions event from 1993, that could have been it for the character, but instead we got bone claws, and another wrinkle in Wolverine’s mythology).
In Cornell’s Wolverine run, each problem raised by the loss of his healing factor was met with a ‘practical’ solution. Hank McCoy, aka Beast of the X-Men, created a drug that would prevent Wolverine’s bones from killing him from the inside out. Wolverine eventually started wearing an armoured costume, started using a gun, started moving away from the version of the character we all grew up with, but in the final issue of Cornell’s run, he was back, redeemed, a hero until the end.
Personally, I grew up reading Wolverine in a disjointed manner. When I was a kid, my dad bought me the Essential Wolverine and Essential X-Men collections, the burly black and white reprint books that gave me entry to dozens of issues from before I was born. Essential X-Men was all Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum and John Byrne, classic, quintessential X-Men, the best kind, before the books became bloated with off-shoots and spin-offs.
Essential Wolverine was a bit trickier. The first one I had was Vol. 3, the Larry Hama and Marc Silvestri issues. Very nineties, very hard to get in to, EXTREME! art and darker inks. Vol. 1, on the other hand, came soon after, with Claremont and John Buscema working together on some of the best, purest Wolverine stories ever, set in the criminal island nation of Madripoor, introducing us to characters like Viper, Tyger Tyger, and providing us with some beautiful art and character work. I love those books and value them still today.
Eventually, I started reading the Panini collections of nineties X-Men and Wolverine stories (also called Essential…, go figure) and I couldn’t stop. I read everything I could with this character because he was cool and dangerous. This is a guy who became the premiere X-Man, ahead of Cyclops and the rest of the original five. This character is a dynasty, with connections to Captain America, Black Widow, with the Marvel Universe from his ‘birth’ in the late 1800s / early 1900s, to the present day.
So why are they killing off their cash cow?
The cynic in us all says it won’t last. In an interview with USA Today earlier this month, Charles Soule, the writer of Death of Wolverine, argues that this is an "event that's designed to stick.” But this is Wolverine. This is the role Hugh Jackman made famous, that took the character from being badass to being the badass. This is a character who brings in so much revenue to the company, that they would be mad to throw him by the wayside.
Thing is, I trust in Marvel, I trust in Axel Alonso, the current Editor-in-Chief, so I won’t dismiss it as a pointless story arc. Charles Soule is writing some brilliant stuff right now, including DC Comics’ Red Lantern and Oni Press’ Letter 44 (the man is writing eight plus titles a month, and is a practicing lawyer. The man is busy.), titles I look forward to every month. I’ve read Death of Wolverine #1, and it was… okay. Steve McNiven’s art is beautiful, but there are some questionable exchanges throughout the book.
Spoilers ahead…
Reed Richards, the Fantastic Four’s own Mr Fantastic, makes an appearance. He’s wearing blue, therefore removing the event from current continuity as the Fantastic Four are currently sporting red, and based in the Baxter Building, which the Fantastic Four are currently banned from being in, long story, read James Robinson and Leonard Kirk’s Fantastic Four run. Mr Fantastic tells Wolverine not to pop his claws. This is fine, because Wolverine is a samurai. A master of martial arts and close quarters combat. So, to win a fight he doesn’t need to pop his claws. So, you know what you can expect by the end of the issue…
Oh, and he also tells Wolverine not to get a concussion because if he does get a concussion, the usual course of action is to remove a portion of the skull to relieve pressure, but because of the adamantium, Wolverine would be screwed. So, my prediction for what does Wolverine in? Concussion! Don’t mention in act one if you’re not going to follow through with it in act three! CHEKHOV'S GUN, GUYS!
I’m not going to get into the rest of the issue, that’s for you to do. Personally, I have an issue with Nuke appearing after Rick Remender using him so well in his Captain America run. The two versions of the character are so different, but I can understand why it happened. Death of Wolverine is weekly, so I anticipate it being completed a while back, and there being lack of communication between the Wolverine and Captain America editorial teams, whatever, whatever…
I can believe that when October comes calling, Wolverine will be dead. How long will he be dead for? I don’t know. The character will be back, probably in time for the next X-Men film. Or, he’ll die, and then be resuscitated at the end of #4. Meh. A cop-out, maybe. I don’t know. I enjoyed #1 apart from the issues I raised above, and I trust in Alonso, I trust in Soule, and I love McNiven’s art. Wolverine is one of my favourite characters because I’m an X-Men mark, and I don’t believe they’ll do away with their cash cow, but I think they’ll do something big and different, and I think that’ll be exciting.
Wolverine will be dead in October, but don’t be sad, true believer. Back in 2009 Marvel ran a storyline in the main Wolverine title called The Death of Wolverine, wherein… well, I won’t spoil it, but if we’re having another event five years later, guess what happened when the story wrapped?
Excelsior!
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Hi, it’s present day Charlie again. I thought I’d follow up with some points from this article, with 2023-hindsight. Nine years later, and, of course, Wolverine is back…
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Firstly, It wasn’t a concussion that did Wolverine in! More fool me. In Death of Wolverine #4, Logan sacrificed himself to prevent a new version of the Weapon X Program from creating super soldiers with powers like the ones he used to have. He was covered in molten, liquid adamantium, and died in what looked like one of the most painful ways possible!
That didn’t mean the Marvel universe was without a Wolverine. Due to some multiversal madness, we had the Old Man Logan version of the character land in the present day, in anticipation of James Mangold’s Logan coming out in 2017. This Logan didn’t take up the name of Wolverine again-- that’s a major part of that version of the character’s story-- but he was there, he was clawing around the world, so thank goodness for that. So, who was Wolverine?
No, it was Laura Kinney, FKA X-23-- and Logan’s clone / daughter / clone daughter-- that took up the mantle of Wolverine, and from 2015-2018, she ran around doing good in a kick-ass costume. Her solo title, All-New Wolverine, written by fan favourite Tom Taylor and with the likes of David Lopez and Leonard Kirk on art duties, ran for thirty-five issues. It’s great. I highly recommend it.
And finally, yes, it took four years, but in 2018 Marvel released Return of Wolverine, again written by Soule, with art duties split between a returning McNiven and where it was revealed that Logan had been removed from his adamantium tomb and laid to rest… only for his body to be stolen by a villain that proceeded to resurrect him in an attempt to use him as a weapon of mass destruction. This story also introduced the concept of Logan’s hot claws, so…
Also, while I’m here, it’s worth mentioning that in Return of Wolverine, even more so than Death of Wolverine, McNiven channels one of the greatest artists of all time in Barry Windsor-Smith, who was responsible for the thirteen-part serial that ran in Marvel Comics Presents #72–84. Simply titled Weapon X, this seminal tale revealed the story of Wolverine’s abduction and transformation by the Weapon X Program.
Despite it being a perfunctory story with a foregone [eventual] conclusion, the Death and Return of Wolverine stories were a fun experiment in storytelling, so kudos to them for that.
To Be Continued…