So Marvel is Going to Kill Wolverine

Off Topic
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I read a good amount of comics. Not as many as I once did though, as I can see the obvious cash grabs, and too many writers on one character screwing things up, that either I once didn’t, or simply wasn’t done as badly as it is nowadays.

Anyway, I pretty much quit X-Men and Wolverine when everything just seemed to get silly IMO (bone claws?! Sabertooth is Wolvy’s brothers?! Claremont must have been rolling over in his recliner -lol)

Still, anyone who has been to comic shop recently will see countless titles all with the furry little mutant in them, even with his name headlining what should be a standout title all on it’s own (“WOLVERINE and the X-men?”)

I do think the idea of a ‘time out’ might be good, how are they going to pull this off in a sensible and respectful manner?

S

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They killed off Superman, and look he is still around.

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I was cool w/ when they killed superman… and, tbh, I agree that wolverine is kind of played out. They could just take away his powers, and he becomes just Logan… which would make it inevitable that he gets his powers back at some point.

I haven’t kept up either (though, I actually liked the story arc where wolverine gets his adamantium removed). If anyone knows of good online sources for comics, holler.

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It’s funny that in the comic world now everything has to be “The Storyline Will Change the Universe Forever!” or “The Biggest Event in Comic History!”. It’s all this huge world changing storylines that used to be noticeable but now that they happen so often, it gets tiresome. I mean, for Marvel, they went from Civil War to the Skrull War to the whole Phoenix Saga to Age of Ultron to Infinity…and so on. And don’t get me started on the whole sadness that is the New 52 over at DC

So killing Wolverine becomes essentially a flash in the pan. As someone said, when Superman died it MATTERED. Heck, people were lined up to get the comic, they wore black armbands, and those weren’t even the huge comic fans. When Jean Grey died(the first time) it MATTERED. You believed the characters were dead, their deaths rippled out and caused plausible changes in the lives of the people around them. But contrast that will the “death” of Captain America. Or the “death” of Bruce Wayne. I mean, did anyone actually believe they died? Not for a second. So “killing” them is pointless. Much like this will be. It won’t “Change Everything!”. Getting rid of a cash cow like this is impossible for a company for any length of time. I think Marvel makes all it’s money on three characters at this point, Spiderman, Wolverine, and Deadpool. Much the way Batman carries all of DC.

Or they pull something silly like they did in the Ultimate universe and kill off Wolverine. Oh, but wait, he actually had a son somewhere, and oh wait, we are just going to give him claws like his Dad out of nowhere, and oh wait, he magically turned them to metal, and oh wait, now he isn’t just some highschool kid, he is Wolverine Jr, super warrior. Or like what they did with Peter Parker in the same Universe.

All Marvel need to do was scale back it’s Wolverine appearances. I mean, they would need to keep Wolverine and the X-men because of the cartoon but then just have one Wolverine title. Get a good writer to up the story, even to the point of something like when Garth Ennis wrote Punisher for 75 issues or so and basically defined the character in his violence and grimness. Overexposing characters seems to be the go to for Marvel as I see Phil Coulson in every single comic that features Shield. Every one. It was getting like that for Wolverine too. From Avengers to X-men to his own titles to Deadpool to…he was everywhere. Just pull him back a little and work on developing other characters.

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[quote]MrZsasz wrote:
he was everywhere. Just pull him back a little and work on developing other characters. [/quote]

Marvel just doesn’t know how to keep long term readers. I was a total marvel zombie as a kid, because DC was ‘dumb’. Of course when I realized that it was the writers, not just the characters that truly made a comic interesting or not, I started picking up actual titles, not just anything put out by one company.

I remember in the 80’s when they started with the zillion title cross overs, and multiple versions of covers. Bastards just crapped on their mostly younger audience if you ask me. Yes, I know it’s how business works, but when you see such overexpeosure of a character, you know that no one is truly at the reigns saying “we need to protect our investment and keep the quality of the highest degree.”

Everything I used to love about Wolverine, everything that made him the cool ass character he was, has been somehow undone. His metal claws? Nope, bone (of course no one ever noticed it during Weapon X). Metal laced skeleton? Gone, Magneto tore it out. Healing Factor? No more, no longer a factor I suppose. A past that was so awfully traumatic that his mind ‘healed’ over it to protect him? All fleshed in, and just pretty darn silly to anyone over 15.

S

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It seems Marvel hasn’t learned anything about unceremoniously killing off main characters…

And really, after killing (and resurrecting) Captain America in Civil War and killing Peter Parker, you’d think there’d be enough death in the Marvel universe for now.

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Who cares. Wolverine’s boring. Especially the film version.

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Leave this nerd shit in the n3rd thread.

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Wolverine is over-hyped anyway. Regeneration? Adamantium skeleton? Claws? Please, kill him.

I used to love the character when I was younger, but having grown older I can’t get past his flaws. He’s of questionable intelligence, possessing at best B level powers, and has beaten characters who should have steamrolled him with nothing but angst and attitude? Spare me, please. Drop him in the middle of the Pacific.

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Is there a single story line that is considered official? I’m a casual reader who kinda finds an author I like and just read their stuff for a while so I dont really get in on the characters and universes as much as the authors who write them.

I understand the “marvel universe” and “DC Universe” exist, but I am not really if there is ONE story line to them. To my casual reader eye it looks like there are so many authors writing so many comics for the same character thats its all just “Here is a superman story by so-and-so” (I’ve read a number of origin stories just of his that it is hard to ascertain what is considered the “real official” one)

Obviously when Frank Miller writes something like “Batman Returns,” Batman doesnt suddenly become a 60 year old man in the “real” story line, so how does it work?

As someone pointed out above,

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[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:

[quote]MrZsasz wrote:
he was everywhere. Just pull him back a little and work on developing other characters. [/quote]

Marvel just doesn’t know how to keep long term readers. I was a total marvel zombie as a kid, because DC was ‘dumb’. Of course when I realized that it was the writers, not just the characters that truly made a comic interesting or not, I started picking up actual titles, not just anything put out by one company.

I remember in the 80’s when they started with the zillion title cross overs, and multiple versions of covers. Bastards just crapped on their mostly younger audience if you ask me. Yes, I know it’s how business works, but when you see such overexpeosure of a character, you know that no one is truly at the reigns saying “we need to protect our investment and keep the quality of the highest degree.”

Everything I used to love about Wolverine, everything that made him the cool ass character he was, has been somehow undone. His metal claws? Nope, bone (of course no one ever noticed it during Weapon X). Metal laced skeleton? Gone, Magneto tore it out. Healing Factor? No more, no longer a factor I suppose. A past that was so awfully traumatic that his mind ‘healed’ over it to protect him? All fleshed in, and just pretty darn silly to anyone over 15.

S[/quote]

Hah, I too remember the six different hologram Spiderman covers each month and buying all of them. Then Marvel almost went bankrupt. I also was much more on Marvel’s side back as a kid. Then over the years, DC caught up and sort of passed. Then DC pulled the New 52 do-over and it’s back to even. I tend to go with a bunch of Vertigo/Dark Horse/Other comics a lot as well.

For what they have done with the character, some of it I have made piece with it. The bones claws just seemed crazy to me when it happened but over the years, I have accepted it. Not the fact that they cut him on the way out which seems silly as it is just because it was mentioned in the first X-Men movie and now is true. The metal skeleton is back obviously though I don’t recall how it happened. I did think it was a great scene with Magneto just pulling all the metal out of him. The current Killable storyline could prove good with proper writing, dealing with him thinking about death, dealing with being essentially human, etc. But not sure if they will focus on that. But I do get what you mean about just getting him back to what he is.

Some of the best storylines about Wolverine were essentially removed from the Marvel universe. I loved the story where three mobsters are sitting in a bar telling war stories and Wolverine walks in and joins them. Then what happens and the followup story were great. More along the lines of what Wolverine does in his spare time when not saving the world.

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[quote]Lonnie123 wrote:
Is there a single story line that is considered official? I’m a casual reader who kinda finds an author I like and just read their stuff for a while so I dont really get in on the characters and universes as much as the authors who write them.

I understand the “marvel universe” and “DC Universe” exist, but I am not really if there is ONE story line to them. To my casual reader eye it looks like there are so many authors writing so many comics for the same character thats its all just “Here is a superman story by so-and-so” (I’ve read a number of origin stories just of his that it is hard to ascertain what is considered the “real official” one)

Obviously when Frank Miller writes something like “Batman Returns,” Batman doesnt suddenly become a 60 year old man in the “real” story line, so how does it work?

As someone pointed out above, [/quote]

Short answer, yes and no. There is a continuity that follows whichever universe but there are one-off storylines that might not be considered canon. A perfect example is the number of times DC has written Joker’s origin story. In the regular DC world, there is no set answer to who he is or what he is. In fact, Joker once remarked that if I am going to have a past, I have always preferred it be multiple choice.

Now compare that with Spiderman and the storyline where the Green Goblin kills Gwen Stacy. That is something that happened in that world. Or something along the lines of, you wouldn’t see a character get married or move to another city in one series but not in all of them.

Your comment about to the casual reader is interesting. DC comics just restarted their whole universe, changed characters to match movies/video games, got rid of whole storylines, just because they claimed people would have trouble starting to read say, The Flash, with thirty years of back story. The opposite of what you said. I found this crazy as everyone who reads comics jumped in at some point and it’s really odd to appeal to video game players who aren’t your fan base while alienated the ones who were buying the comics.

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I see what you are saying. I mainly read stories that exist in their own world (things like The Sandman, Y: The last man, Watchmen,etc…) so the official universes dont affect my reading much, but every now and then a friend will give me a Batman or Superman or something so I have a very lose knowledge of what is going on in them.

Is there a single spiderman/batman/superman/etc… story line that is still being continued from the early days? Meaning, along with the one-off’s is there still a Spiderman #783 that is official and continued from the #1 issue all those decades ago or is that not how it works?

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One advantage of the DC “do-over,” which I am admittedly not too familiar with, is that they can still cherry pick the best storylines of the past into the new universe for a cohesive story without all the fluff (and there was a lot of filler)… so I’m not entirely against it and I do think it was pretty ballsy to say, “you know… let’s just say our entire history didn’t matter.” Unfortunately, they try these things and then try to back step, ie. Spider-man = clone all these years, well maybe not, etc.

I dunno. I actually got into comics when Image and Malibu were big, so I don’t have the allegiance to the old guard like a lot of folks (though, I do own the first appearance of wolvie).

I recently heard something on the radio about how the economics of the comics industry are different from a lot of others because the stores pre-order everything before it’s even printed, so they essentially run no risk in overprinting and can invest in super niche markets. For example, Dark Horse’s crazier series. This has obvious implications to selling the 10-second idea of a book/series, along with whoever’s working on it, but leaves little incentive to uphold the long term integrity of a character because they can always make something up to undo it later.

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ehh, wolverines legs have been dead for years :slight_smile:

on a serious note, I hope they change their minds.

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Wolverine lost his healing factor in his comic and went through a journey to see if he could still cut “it” as the best there was etc etc. He couldn’t Doc Oc the superior spiderman made him a new armor suit and he has infiltrated a crew led by a mob boss who has the power of persuasion so he can taje out sabretooth who controls the hand. Aslo sabretooth is not Logan’s brother, sadly that’s the crap of the god awful films, his brother Dog is a bad ass bounty hunter who stole some time travel equipment and is still a pain in Logan’s ass. I’m sure like every other death he will be back with his healing factor before age of apocalypse the next x film. Wolverine is Marvel’s most popular character they won’t kill him for long.

I’ve been mostly consistently reading comics since 1984(I gave up in the 90’s with Image, the speculators, and all the extreme bullshit like Carnage). They just brought back nightcrawler but Jean Greay has been gone for over ten years, also Marvel is killing off Uatu the watcher

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[quote]MrZsasz wrote:
As someone said, when Superman died it MATTERED. Heck, people were lined up to get the comic, they wore black armbands, and those weren’t even the huge comic fans.[/quote]
When Superman died, one of the local comic shops had a public memorial, complete with a closed casket. Morpheus gave a eulogy. Swamp Thing, Huntress, and few other people attended. (Technically “cosplaying” before that was a widely-used term). I may or may not have attended as Hal Jordan. :wink:

I don’t follow comics much at all lately, but the idea of constant and drastic retcons and kinda-sorta-but-not-really deaths doesn’t make much sense at all. I get that you can’t just kill off a popular character permanently but, as others have mentioned, it seriously undermines the emotional connection and does come off as an attention-grabbing tactic when they do it. Especially when they make a big announcement about it months ahead of time.

Saw this recently. Seems relevant:

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^Lol, should watch the most recent DC Robot Chicken. They cover the death of super hero’s pretty well.