Chris Claremont, Frank Miller & Al Milgrom
Wolverine (1982)
Kitty Pryde & Wolverine (1984)
As I may have mentioned, I was once something of a Marvel zombie, particularly where all those X-books were concerned. I bought and collected them religiously up until the point at which Rob Liefeld came on the scene and it all went down the toilet. Then, feeling a little uncomfortable about how much of the stuff I'd accumulated, I flogged the lot for not nearly enough back in the nineties, an act of Cromwellian reform which I've regretted ever since; at least up until about two years ago when I noticed how this shit is still pretty cheap and easy to find now that we've invented the internet. So I've re-bought more or less everything I once owned then sold, and filled in a few gaps along the way.
Accordingly I have a big stack of Wolverine back issues which I intend to tackle fairly soon, but I thought I'd start here for the sake of keeping things tidy - two limited series dating from before the lad graduated to his own regular comic book, four and six issues respectively, the earlier one having been collected during the initial excitement of the graphic novel, the comic growing up, and all of that good stuff.
At the heart of most superhero comics you'll find the world's biggest square wearing a fucking leotard and foiling a bank robbery, so those comics I'd consider the most successful have tended to work in spite of the genre, usually by doing things in such a way as to distract from the world's biggest square wearing a fucking leotard and foiling a bank robbery, or else by doing something slightly different. The X-Men comics, for example, border on science-fiction by focussing on the sheer weirdness of superheroes, emphasising their outsider credentials - potentially at odds with the status quo rather than necessarily supporting it through the foiling of bank robberies. Wolverine, as a character, took this one further through being a dangerous, homicidal nutcase, an outsider even amongst outsiders. I'm sure you all know who he's supposed to be and what he's supposed to do, but it's possibly worth remembering that initially, this was all he did - the unstoppable mutant dude who gets the red mist and stabs everyone in the room. It was one dimensional and somewhat limiting in terms of story because his response to any situation could only ever be to slice everyone into pieces, so Chris Claremont and Frank Miller decided to open things up a little.
1982's Wolverine sends our man to Japan and redefines him as a failed samurai, as a man striving to become something better than just the guy who loses his shit and slices everyone into pieces. Superheroes had come fitted with their own inner demons at least since the sixties when the Mighty Thor lost all faith in his own ability to select an insurance policy combining peace of mind with genuinely competitive rates; so Wolverine's hero journey was nothing particularly new but for the way in which it was told, borrowing from film noir and martial arts cinema which - again - if not exactly new, represented a refreshing further abstraction from the superhero genre. I'm possibly unique in having no particular interest in Japanese culture besides Godzilla movies. I therefore can't vouch for how well Claremont and Miller do Tokyo, and it may well be hokey as fuck given Claremont's version of London as seen elsewhere, but it works for me. It remains a kid's comic, or at least a precocious teenager's comic, but it does the job through never talking down and by maintaining a certain level of emotional intelligence, and Frank Miller's art is nothing if not cinematic.
Wolverine (1982)
Kitty Pryde & Wolverine (1984)
As I may have mentioned, I was once something of a Marvel zombie, particularly where all those X-books were concerned. I bought and collected them religiously up until the point at which Rob Liefeld came on the scene and it all went down the toilet. Then, feeling a little uncomfortable about how much of the stuff I'd accumulated, I flogged the lot for not nearly enough back in the nineties, an act of Cromwellian reform which I've regretted ever since; at least up until about two years ago when I noticed how this shit is still pretty cheap and easy to find now that we've invented the internet. So I've re-bought more or less everything I once owned then sold, and filled in a few gaps along the way.
Accordingly I have a big stack of Wolverine back issues which I intend to tackle fairly soon, but I thought I'd start here for the sake of keeping things tidy - two limited series dating from before the lad graduated to his own regular comic book, four and six issues respectively, the earlier one having been collected during the initial excitement of the graphic novel, the comic growing up, and all of that good stuff.
At the heart of most superhero comics you'll find the world's biggest square wearing a fucking leotard and foiling a bank robbery, so those comics I'd consider the most successful have tended to work in spite of the genre, usually by doing things in such a way as to distract from the world's biggest square wearing a fucking leotard and foiling a bank robbery, or else by doing something slightly different. The X-Men comics, for example, border on science-fiction by focussing on the sheer weirdness of superheroes, emphasising their outsider credentials - potentially at odds with the status quo rather than necessarily supporting it through the foiling of bank robberies. Wolverine, as a character, took this one further through being a dangerous, homicidal nutcase, an outsider even amongst outsiders. I'm sure you all know who he's supposed to be and what he's supposed to do, but it's possibly worth remembering that initially, this was all he did - the unstoppable mutant dude who gets the red mist and stabs everyone in the room. It was one dimensional and somewhat limiting in terms of story because his response to any situation could only ever be to slice everyone into pieces, so Chris Claremont and Frank Miller decided to open things up a little.
1982's Wolverine sends our man to Japan and redefines him as a failed samurai, as a man striving to become something better than just the guy who loses his shit and slices everyone into pieces. Superheroes had come fitted with their own inner demons at least since the sixties when the Mighty Thor lost all faith in his own ability to select an insurance policy combining peace of mind with genuinely competitive rates; so Wolverine's hero journey was nothing particularly new but for the way in which it was told, borrowing from film noir and martial arts cinema which - again - if not exactly new, represented a refreshing further abstraction from the superhero genre. I'm possibly unique in having no particular interest in Japanese culture besides Godzilla movies. I therefore can't vouch for how well Claremont and Miller do Tokyo, and it may well be hokey as fuck given Claremont's version of London as seen elsewhere, but it works for me. It remains a kid's comic, or at least a precocious teenager's comic, but it does the job through never talking down and by maintaining a certain level of emotional intelligence, and Frank Miller's art is nothing if not cinematic.
Kitty Pryde is a character who had been hanging around the pages of the X-Men books for a while, seemingly another abstraction from the conventions of the genre in her failure to have settled upon either an action figure super-identity or costume. Kitty Pryde & Wolverine approximately repeats the previous hero journey in the service of granting Kitty a little more substance than just reader identification. Al Milgrom has drawn some truly ropey stuff in his time, but sort of gets away with this, rendering a slightly sketchier version of what Miller drew in the previous book, albeit without quite the same fine-tuned sense of design, picture space, and so on. Kitty Pryde & Wolverine fumbles the ball a little compared with its predecessor, taking a little too long to do its thing then closing with a ludicrously generic slap-up feed, suggesting Miller's input was fairly crucial.
Neither of these titles were life changing, but they did what they set out to do extremely well for the most part, expanding the form into something a bit more engaging than foiled bank robberies. They were something with a sense of art beyond what one might expect from unit shifting entertainment factories.
I continue to find Chris Claremont's writing fascinating because what he does seems fairly straightforward and mainstream - nothing too avant-garde, nothing particularly weird, certainly no obscure references to Marcel Duchamp - and yet his style is distinctive, immediately recognisable, and it hooks the reader into whatever is going on like few other comic book authors have managed, hence, I would argue, the phenomenal success of all those X-books back in the eighties. Some of what he writes should logically be as corny as shit given the stories to which the words are applied, and yet he always finds a way around stating the obvious without even drawing attention to such dodges.
Neither of these two series were ever really examples of the comic book having grown up, but they didn't need to be, and they work just fine on their own merits.
Neither of these titles were life changing, but they did what they set out to do extremely well for the most part, expanding the form into something a bit more engaging than foiled bank robberies. They were something with a sense of art beyond what one might expect from unit shifting entertainment factories.
I continue to find Chris Claremont's writing fascinating because what he does seems fairly straightforward and mainstream - nothing too avant-garde, nothing particularly weird, certainly no obscure references to Marcel Duchamp - and yet his style is distinctive, immediately recognisable, and it hooks the reader into whatever is going on like few other comic book authors have managed, hence, I would argue, the phenomenal success of all those X-books back in the eighties. Some of what he writes should logically be as corny as shit given the stories to which the words are applied, and yet he always finds a way around stating the obvious without even drawing attention to such dodges.
Neither of these two series were ever really examples of the comic book having grown up, but they didn't need to be, and they work just fine on their own merits.
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