Wolverine

 

Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Larry Hama etc. etc. Wolverine (1991)
Not a graphic novel, not a collected edition, just a big stack of comic books like you would read when in bed with the measles, or a hangover if you're a little bit older. The story, as I've definitely already mentioned on more than one occasion, is that I was once a massive sucker for caped comic books, then sold my entire collection during a sudden fit of what I imagined to be maturity. It's a decision I've always regretted and have finally set right, having spent the last couple of years buying them all back - mainly thanks to the fact that none of them ever ended up quite so collectible - and by association, expensive - as we were told would be the case.

When it finally happened, Wolverine as a regularly monthly title didn't make much of an impression on me, as is possibly indicated by my having re-bought entire runs of X-Men, X-Factor, and New Mutants* before I even remembered that there had ever been a regular Wolverine title, and one to which I subscribed and presumably read. Anyway, I picked up a few and realised that yes, I actually had enjoyed the thing well enough, thereby justifying another couple of hundred dollars spunked away at Lone Star Comics in the name of nostalgia, albeit an admittedly vague form of nostalgia.

Anyway, Wolverine was essentially everything Charles Schulz had warned us about in his Peanuts strip back in 1952.

Unfortunately, a homicidal nutcase whose superpower is stabbing people proved somewhat limited in terms of what kind of stories might be told, and so Wolverine was written as a man wrestling with inner demons, which at least allowed for bit more wiggle room. Frank Miller and Chris Claremont had already done a lot to flesh out the character both in the main X-Men comics and in related spin-offs, and Claremont got the regular book off to a fairly decent start, essentially turning Wolverine into a hard-boiled detective and letting him run loose in an old Terry and the Pirates strip. It worked well, and was at least more engaging than the endless cycle of growling and stabbing which it could have been, and which a few of the readers had seemingly expected.

That said, a few of Claremont's plot points were somewhat bewildering - possibly due to this being just one of fifty other books he was writing to a monthly schedule, and the whole thing came across as kind of dry at times what with the rigorous adherence to Wolverine as film noir. Peter David and then Archie Goodwin took over from Claremont after ten issues, roughly maintaining the same mood and general standard, even allowing for bursts of humour. Considering the vigour with which Marvel had been milking the X-cow at least since the second half of the eighties, the actual quality of Wolverine is surprising and impressive, although I suppose if they were throwing money at any title, it was going to be this one; and so the art is likewise mostly exceptional as one would expect of John Buscema, John Byrne, Klaus Janson, Marc Silvestri and others. However, I couldn't help but notice that this stuff reads a lot better when you sit down with a big stack of comics and binge the lot in just a couple of sittings. It played its cards just a little too close to its chest for a monthly schedule - as I vaguely seem to recall - which is probably why I'd forgotten so much of it, including even the point at which I gave up and stopped buying the thing.

Having no idea of where I'd originally jumped ship, and being reluctant to buy a run of back issues where the cut-off point might leave me hanging in the middle of an unfinished story, I re-bought the book up to and including issue fifty on the grounds of it being a round number and not too deep into the period beyond which these comics had mostly turned to shite in a grimacing cross-hatched effort to tap into some of that old Rob Liefeld magic. Now, having actually read the things, it seems I've made the right decision, both in drawing the line at issue fifty and in dumping the book when I did first time round. Larry Hama's run on the last twenty or so of these restores a lot of the humour and peculiar novelty which had either been missing or else was stood in the corner pretending to be Mickey Spillane during previous episodes. On one level, Hama turned Wolverine into sixties telly Batman, having Logan fight his own android double while trying to save the life of a bomb disguised as a cute little girl with pigtails and a lisp programmed to blow him into pieces; but for all Hama's wit and invention, it becomes obvious that all those letter-writing twerps complaining about the lack of stabbings have had their way. Various X-Men begin to turn up as crowd pleasing guests with increasing frequency, and by now it's the grimacing nineties X-Men in those bondage costumes covered in pockets, utility belts and holsters and all the women with massive tits and no waist; and inker Dan Green seemed to be doing his best to make Silvestri's pencils resemble something from the Image stable.

Wolvey's secret origin, you won't fucking believe it, deffo the real thing this time, not a dream, grimace grimace, black ops, even more fucking cross-hatching and random pockets, more black ops, clandestine government organisation, foil stamped edition also available blah blah blah…

Wolverine was never really in competition with The Taming of the Shrew, in case anyone missed that particular memo, but this was a decent, even classy book for a while, regardless of having sprung from Marvel's increasingly rabid attempts to take its readership for every last penny - although I gather much worse was to come, and a mere fifty new X-titles hitting the racks each week now seemingly represents a model of restraint by comparison. Inevitably there were lapses, notably the bewilderingly shit Lazarus Project issues featuring art by Barry Kitson whom I seem to recall as having contributed to my giving up on 2000AD back in the eighties; but these were exceptions rather than the rule. Otherwise, for my money, these issues belonged to the final flowering of the American superhero comic before it grew up and became an absolute fucking bore, having mistakenly assumed a massive body count and increasingly baroque forms of slaughter to be pretty much tantamount to adulthood. Those vicious little letter page gorehounds got their way, effectively killing off the thing they purportedly loved, then themselves most likely grew up to be cops, security guards and right-wing politicians, so I'd guess.

Still, it was nice while it lasted.

*: Well, entire runs of the readable stuff, my cut-off point being around 1991, beyond which most of them had turned to shite.