Logan /// Weapon X /// Wolverine

The best there is…

Wolverine is returning to comics this September — he died in 2014. Check the link for thorough explanation if you care. Carry on if you don’t. This isn’t about that.

Wolverine is my favorite comic book character. By far. I think Batman is objectively the best superhero, but Logan is my favorite and I vastly prefer Marvel to DC. It’s not even remotely close.

Wolverine #17 (Vol. 2) was the first comic I ever bought. I saved for some time and made the purchase entirely with pennies. An older boy on my street, whom I idolized, told me about the character when I was 7 years old. He gave me a mission to read Wolverine and I tracked it down and succeeded.

The cover (above) features Brown and Tan Wolverine (best costume) in a classic pose, arms pointed in a semi circle, full costume, claws out, medium growl. I studied that image relentlessly. I remember the story inside being one of the Madripoor, film noir/Casablanca stories and I remember being disappointed that the issue didn’t feature Logan in costume. I can picture the images but not the story, I couldn’t even really make sense of it at the time but all I needed was that cover image and I was in.

After a little more exposure via the quarter eating X-men Arcade game and an impossible to play NES game — there were way more of those than there should have been in that era — Logan was with me to stay. By the time the 1992 X-Men cartoon came out I was primed and ready. That cartoon plus the Jim Lee era comics sent me on my way to more than 27 years of fandom.

After enjoying 2/3 of ‘The Wolverine” and 6/3 of ‘Logan” I tried to determine, what works for me about the character? What hooked me initially and what keeps me coming back? There has to be more there than nostalgia, so I started writing.

Designing a Weapon

The design is a great starting point. Logan’s design is awesome either in costume or out. His powerset is creative and obviously badass, and there’s something about the length of the claws that is a big draw. These aren’t kitty cat claws, they are longer than knives and just shorter than a sword. They are animal, samurai, and assassin all put into one. Even machine. All the things that Logan is.

The costume also. It has many variants but those extended ears that make it clear he isn’t Batman just work for the character. They also hysterically approximate his wild hair shape. He is really pointy and triangular. The points on his head, boots, and the claws expand the squat square frame of his body and focus your attention on the page. I also think the “claw housings” on his gloves are an inventive touch. His uniform has always been individual enough to keep his loner/ronin spirit while blending seamlessly with other X uniforms.

Outside the costume, it’s all animal. I’ll let Barry Windsor Smith do the talking.

…and the X-Men

Many X fans hate Wolverine, but he is really kind of an embodiment of what that book is about. Isolated, persecuted, tortured people who from this cohesive group. He’s not OG X-Men but I feel as an individual he’s a pure metaphor for the mutant struggle. What would happen if humanity ran unchecked on these people? What would they do? They would tinker and torture and experiment. What is humanity’s greatest fear of what mutants could become? Unstoppable killers that could erase them from existence.

Logan Stories

This leads me to story. Because to stay with a single character like this for so long, there has to be some depth to the stories and also the character himself that keeps you coming back. For example, I’ve come and gone from Avengers books based on arc or lineup or writer. I like Miles Morales and Peter Parker but don’t feel obligated to read Spider-man like I am drawn to Logan. Logan joining the team brought me to the Avengers and made me read New Avengers for almost a decade start to finish. So what is there? What is a Wolverine story? What are the defining elements of that character that create a rewarding repeatability? Why do those things appeal to me (and many others) as an individual?

Logan stories are always violent, but Wolverine is really about pain. Wolverine is about physical, mental, and spiritual pain, inside and out. That is a great hook. Great character suffer and Logan suffers constantly. His body is basically indestructible but his mind has been gutted and emotionally he’s bearing the scars of centuries of death, betrayal, and loss. This makes Logan’s pain broad and more universal than a character like Batman, whose pain is very specific. Both are identifiable from an empathetic perspective, but the length, frequency, and variety of Logan’s painful experiences give a number of points of attachment to his suffering.

Although it is Logan’s body that can physically repair itself, it is his soul that is the most resilient. His mind is weak in many ways — it has been wiped multiple times and is capable of being reprogrammed. He also isn’t a think first type of guy, he’s a gut reaction, punch your way out because that is what he is best at. He’s not stupid by any stretch — centuries of experience would hardly make a dumb person — but his mind is more of a liability at times than it is an asset.

But that spirit, the will do do “what’s right” by his obfuscated moral code is indomitable. It gets the better of his mind and drives him to quick action. He has seen over many lifetimes the worst horrors the world can muster, but he can’t stop from doing what he feels is right. It’s just in him. So great Wolverine stories are about taking everything they can dish out and more and choosing to keep going, it’s about never giving up.

The Past

Great Logan stories are also about the past and specifically the impact the past has on our present. For Logan, the past is inescapable. For many years he had no recollection of his history, but he has been so many places and done so many things that the past is a minefield. This is a great storytelling vehicle — an indestructible man who has been alive for almost 200 years is such a wide open play in field. You can easily seed new ideas and place him at any historic place. One of my favorite stories in that vein is a Mark Millar one shot where Logan is in a Nazi concentration camp and they constantly execute him and he just keeps coming back. He drives the commanders to insanity and they eventually burn down the entire camp.

This expansive past is something that constantly infringes on Logan’s quest for peace and goodness. He is always rectifying some past wrong and it seems he can never escape who he is — even the parts of him that were forced upon him by others. But he is resilient. In a history and a world that wants him to be this “bad thing,” he just keeps fighting to be something better. This idea is probably best embodied in the 2017 film “Logan,” when he says to his young daughter, “don’t be what they made you.”

It is the thing that he has tried to do for centuries and he has only been able to touch on occasion. Like any parent, he hopes there is something better for his daughter and imparts this lasting lesson. In the comics, Laura takes that to heart and that becomes her moral code. She’s older, takes on the Wolverine mantle, but refuses to be the mindless killer she was built to be.

That’s one of the reasons the movie works so well — an Oscar nom Best Adapted Screenplay suggests there’s some decent work — it nails the core of what that character is and puts it on display in touching fashion. It’s a man who has seen more pain than anyone could possibly imagine and he still chooses to love.

That’s a lesson we can all take to heart.

Call to Action

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