Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

Reading a comic by blowing through 94 of its issues in three weeks gives one an unusual perspective on the work as a whole. You’re more forgiving of the occasional bad issue. You can appreciate a writer’s narrative in total. Patterns emerge. You begin to notice things about how the characters are used, and how they change over time (or don’t).

Then you reflect. You write about how Marvel impacted your childhood; you write about Gay Colossus. Inevitably, without even really meaning to, you think about Wolverine. Then the thought becomes obvious: Marvel loves Wolverine more than any other character it has ever created, ever.¹

While gorging my mind on Ultimate X-Men, I couldn’t help but notice the sheer number of Wolverine glory shots. It seems like every issue has at least one pose of him with teeth grit, claws out, ready to lunge into battle. In group shots Wolverine is almost always the front-most figure, hunched in a menacing stance and eager to do some slashing. Out of 94 issues, Wolverine appears on 35 of the covers.² Cyclops, the purported battle general, mind you, just barely makes it to 20.

Marvel’s obsession is understandable. Wolverine is one of their best characters. He has a layered, often conflicted personality, a legitimately mysterious origin story, awesome powers, and body language that leaps off the page the way no psychic bubble ever will. A lot of great stories have come from Wolverine over the years, and it’s easy to see why it’s so hard for Marvel to resist going back to the well.

But, Marvel, you must stop. For the love of God, control yourself. You are addicted to Wolverine, and it’s time for an intervention. Cool it with this Wolverine business.³

Just how popular is Wolverine? I was ready to mount my own investigation, using my Powers of Internet to determine just how many of Marvel’s many X-Men offshoots have featured him. As usual, Wikipedia ruins the suspense:

“Wolverine is the only X-Men character to be included in every media adaptation of the X-Men franchise, including film, television, computer and video games.”

This to say nothing of the comics that are based exclusively around his character, the feature-length origin story currently in production (starring Hugh Jackman), and an upcoming X-Men cartoon entitled Wolverine and the X-Men. That’s right, he now gets top billing over the group that spawned him.

Wolverine’s domination of the X-Men has come at a price. His powers, for instance. Wolverine’s powers and abilities are traditionally limited to rapid wound regeneration (the much-abused “mutant healing factor”), the claws, an indestructible, adamantium-plated skeleton, and heightened senses. As time goes on, these abilities become more and more exaggerated. His adamantium skull conveniently protects his brain from all harm while the rest of his body can simply recover from anything else, including burns from orbital re-entry. Apocalypse rips Wolverine’s arm clean off at the shoulder and it barely slows him down. He’s sent to kill an unfortunate young mutant whose power instantly and horrifically poisons everyone around him, and Wolverine doesn’t so much as cough (actually a great issue, notwithstanding the gripe about Wolverine’s complete immunity). When Nightcrawler abducts Dazzler and returns to Xavier’s mansion for food, it takes Xavier and Wolverine all of three seconds to sense the truth–Xavier because he is psychic, Wolverine because he picked up Dazzler’s scent. For those of you keeping score, this gives Wolverine intuitive powers to match the world’s most powerful telepath. In essence, Wolverine now suffers from Superman’s main problem: nothing is a real threat. Presumably he could be drowned or completely incinerated, but I’ve never seen it. Decapitation might work, but who knows how potent that mutant bone marrow really is?

Problems with the powers, and how those powers are used, lead to problems with the character. Wolverine throws himself into the fight with reckless abandon not because he’s reckless, but because he knows he’s essentially invincible. You can’t maintain a reputation as a risky loose cannon when there’s never a real risk. At the same time, his increasingly large leadership role moves him ever farther from the dark, murderous past that defined his character. The longer he stays with the X-Men, the more he becomes their Joey Fatone, claiming to be a bad-boy with nothing to back it up. There’s one moment in Ultimate X-Men⁴ where Wolverine does something truly, horribly evil—the kind of thing that leaves you with your mouth hanging open in amazement—and it did more for his persona in one panel than a dozen empty lines about how your constant talking is making his knuckles itch.

While we’re here, there’s no denying that Wolverine has gotten prettier as time has worn on. His squat, slightly ugly frame used to be part of the character, if I’m not mistaken, but now Hugh Jackman has clearly had his influence. By the way, have you read about the increasing incidence of body dysmorphia among men? Have a look at the future. Jesus.

Other characters suffer mightily for Wolverine’s increased power and appeal. Case in point? X-Men 3. The climax comes when Wolverine single-handedly faces down the cosmically powerful Phoenix. Forget the fact that there is absolutely no way that Wolverine could handle the Phoenix on his own, and that this flies in the face of 30 years of comic book precedent. In order to guarantee a one-on-one battle, both Professor Xavier and Cyclops had to be incinerated early in the film. The tragedy is that these are the only two people—Xavier the father figure and Cyclops the love of her life—who have half a prayer of appealing to the remnants of Jean Grey’s humanity, which often made for some of the most powerful moments in the comics. Instead, you’re treated to five minutes of Hugh Jackman and Famke Janssen staring and grunting at each other, before Wolverine staggers his way up to to Phoenix and pops his claws through her chest.

As writers continue to go out of their way to make Wolverine even cooler, everyone else gets the shaft. When Colossus finally gets some real attention it practically destroys his character (or literally destroys him, thanks, Legacy Virus!). And Cyclops! Poor, poor Cyclops! Supposedly he’s the leader of the X-Men, a brilliant tactician with one of the best mutant powers in existence. You’d never know it from the way his character gets treated. He gets pegged as the “boy scout” of the group, solely so that Wolverine can act as the alluring other man for Jean Grey. The mistake being made over and over is that there is nothing boring or boy scout about Cyclops’s character. Super-powerful lasers pour out of him every time he opens his eyes. Unable to control this—either due to brain damage or a psychological issue, depending on who you’re reading—Cyclops overcompensates by disciplining his life in every other conceivable way. Where’s the issue where he finally gets impatient and nails some overconfident supervillain to a wall with a crimson energy beam?⁵ Where’s the issue where he storms out on Xavier and rediscovers himself on his own terms? For that matter, where’s the issue where Wolverine’s recklessness finally backfires?

It’s never fun when one character gets all the glory. It gets tiresome when he never seems to make a real mistake. His fights are worthless if there’s never a direct threat. I, like many, have always enjoyed Wolverine. I mean, black ops mutant killing machine or not, he’s awfully likable. I just wonder how long that affection can last under the weight of constant exposure and limitless power.

1. Ever! ∧
2. 36 if you count the cover with Cable, who in this instance is Wolverine from a future timeline. ∧
3. But, business being the optimal word here, I doubt you will. ∧
4. Issue #29. ∧
5. We’re getting there. When Wolverine does that previously mentioned horrible thing, he does it to Cyclops, and it does great things for his character. Likewise, the only thing I like about the recent Banshee story arc is the slight change to Cyclops’s origins. On the day his powers manifested, he accidentally evaporated his foster parents. ∧