Tag: wolverine

What’s your general sense about Wolverine? As a character, an X-Man and how he fits with the mutant metaphor, whether the origin they finally decided for him was good or not (or if he should have an origin)?

My general sense of Wolverine is that, like most people I fell in love with the character at this exact moment…

image

…right before he solo’d the entire Hellfire Club from the sewers up to the upstairs rooms where the Inner Circle were holding the X-Men prisoner, and providing the crucial distraction that allowed Jean to free them and save the day.

As a character, before the rush of imitators in the Dark Era of Comics and Wolverine’s own massive over-exposure in the 90s, Wolverine was the original anti-hero. But rather than being driven solely by ANGST and MANLY RAGE, Logan had a lot more going on that made him a fully three-dimensional character: while a staunch individualist, he was also fiercely loyal to his friends; while hot-tempered even when his berserker rage wasn’t at issue, he was also a snarky jokester; and most important and most enduringly, he was a protector and a mentor to children. (Something at the core of both Death of Wolverine and one of my all-favorite series, Wolverine and the X-Men.)

image

As an X-Man, he was absolutely crucial to the dynamic of Chris Claremont’s X-Men: he was the raging yang to Cyclops’ repressed ying, constantly questioning and pushing. Without him, there is none of the drama or conflict that distinguished the rowdy, more adult All-New X-Men from their milquetoast, demerit-fearing OG counterparts. And while it’s been somewhat blown out of proportions, he was the third leg in the Scott-Jean triangle that played a major part in the Dark Phoenix Saga, the alternative partner who was A. into Jean, B. anything but repressed sexually, and C. a little bit dangerous and spicy (and thus a “gateway drug” for a Jean Grey looking to explore those parts of herself given life by the Phoenix).

On a deeper level than the romance-comics-inspired love triangle, I think the key to Wolverine’s popularity was that he was a better fit for the 1970s than the late 50s/early 60s A-Type Cyclops: 

image

In terms of the mutant metaphor, once you get to the early 90s and the truth of Weapon X gets fleshed out by Barry Windsor-Smith, Logan is the epitome of mutant oppression, having been almost completely dehumanized by a military-industrial complex that tried to turn him into a living weapon, erased his memories and implanted false ones, conducted medical experiments on him, and on and on until he rebelled. And this was a key part of what made him tick as an anti-hero – rather than simply indulging in violence purely hedonistically, for Logan, resistance means rising above the level of the animal, of the weapon. 

image

In terms of origin stories, well, there’s been some better and some much, much worse. If I had to choose, I like Barry Windsor-Smith’s ambiguous version, where you get the sense that he definitely had a life before Weapon X, but where you can never be sure what’s real and what was a simulation that Weapon X implanted in his mind. 

A People’s History of the Marvel Universe, Week 2: John Byrne’s Hatred for Pierre Trudeau

Face front, true believers!

Welcome back to A People’s History of the Marvel Universe, where I explore how real-world politics (and weird bits of pop culture) was presented in some of my favorite bits of classic Marvel comics.

Today, I’ll be exploring how real-world politics intersected with Chris Claremont’s classic run on X-Men. Now, Claremont X-Men is some of the richest source material imaginable, given the way that the mutant metaphor has been used to address contemporary social issues facing different minority groups.

So what ripped-from-the-headlines issue will be looking at this week? Canadian politics from the 70s!

As many Marvel fans know, long-time X-Men artist John Byrne was a huge Wolverine fan who lobbied to keep him in the X-Men because he wanted to keep a Canadian superhero in the group, and who created Alpha Flight, Canada’s own superhero team.

What you might not know is that John Byrne really did not like Pierre Trudeau, who served as Prime Minister of Canada from 1968-1979 and 1980-1984. Indeed, I would go as far as to say that, judging from his artwork in X-Men #120 from April of 1979, he hates the man:

Start with the visuals – from the orange leisure suit/striped open-collar shirt combination (while Mr. Trudeau was a bit more of a “swinging young bachelor” than your average Canadian prime minister, I’ve yet to find any images of him in that ugly of a suit) to the rapidly-retreating hairline to the fearsome conk, the suggestion of the buck tooth and the Hapsburgian jaw, this is less the somewhat naturalistic Marvel house style (especially when contrasted against the Marvel house styled Guardian to his left) than a political caricature.

But let’s move on to the text, where the Prime Minister of Canada, a country that abolished slavery in 1833, is arguing that (because Wolverine’s adamantium-laced skeleton was funded by the Canadian government, or the US and Canadian governments) Logan should not be allowed to resign a commission in the Canadian military (even though James MacDonald Hudson’s response suggests that he should be able to). Following his orders, Alpha Flight basically kidnaps a commercial aircraft transiting between Alaska and the continental U.S, assaults a number of foreign nationals in the middle of Calgary International Airport and downtown Calgary, all to put Wolverine into a literal cage (X-Men #120-121).

So why is Canada so evil that John Byrne depicts Canadian military backing up Alpha Flight in the same uniforms as the Death Star technicians? If I had to guess, I’d say that John Byrne was among those who objected to Pierre Trudeau’s decision to invoke the War Measures Act during the October Crisis in 1970, where Canadian military were put on the streets of Montreal and almost 500 people were arrested and held without charge.