When I was a kid, Wolverine was hands-down my favorit comic book character. He was Canadian, had a temper, took zero crap, and was one of the heavyweights of the X-Men, the biggest team in comics.
So, what happened? Was it just that I grew up?
Well I'm still blogging about comics, so....not sure that fits.
I think it's more that Wolverine moved to a place I had no interest in.
To me, Wolverine was a guy who was, to put it mildly, a bad guy. A justifiable one, but still a bad guy. Even he knew it, and hated it. So he constantly fought against his lesser nature - he wanted to be a samurai, no matter how impossible the goal was. He wanted to improve himself by being a better X-Man and someone that Kitty Pryde or Jubilation Lee could look up.
They don't really do that anymore. The Wolverine stories I've seen over the last 15 years have focused more on Wolverine doing awful things to people who incidentally were much more awful than him. So instead of him being a bad guy looking to improve himself, he's just a bad guy.
And I'm not interested in that.
2 comments:
I agree. About the only take on Wolverine I ever found interesting (as a female reader, granted) was him trying to figure out what to do about someone like Kitty Pryde following him around. ("Help ... I'm a badass and they're trying to make me a father figure!") Okay, that and Joss Whedon's "I really like beer" interpretation. But then Joss paired him up with Armor, and we were back in familiar territory. "You go one day without stabbing me, you get to pick my codename." Ha!
I wrote a top ten list for Top Tenz and I put Wolverine at #8 mainly for the idea of sticking him with teen girl sidekicks. :)
http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-anti-heroes.php
Okay, yes, I'm using this as an excuse to shill my top ten list. But I hope my comments still have merit.
I liked the Wolverine/Kitty pairing because I saw in it Wolverine softening around the edges from being the badass merciless killer, and Kitty looking for a big brother/father figure (or was attracted to Wolverine's manly scent and hairy chest). What annoys me is how Marvel keeps trying to strike lightning with having Logan "adopting" Jubilee and Armor (not sure about Pixie. He may have adopted Pixie. Or someone once said Pixie was this decade's Kitty Pryde).
I stopped finding Wolverine interesting the day he stabbed Rachel Summers in the heart to stop her from killing Selene, the Black Queen, and Kitty was angry with him for maybe three whole issues. Then the X-Men promptly (and conveniently) forgot Rachel even existed. I liked Whedon's run on AXM and thought his Wolverine voice was good, but really I don't find the cat all that compelling. Claremont ruined him for me. I also think his super healing factor makes him less interesting as well.
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