Friday Night Fights: OPP!! Round 2

It's Friday night, folks, and that means it's Fight night! The perfect time to show Space Booger that... Bellow of bombastic braggadocio courtesy of Steve Englehart and Kieth Pollard and Fantastic Four issue 320!

The Worst There Is, Part 5

By the late nineties, Wolverine was a household name. He was, perhaps, more recognizable than Spider-Man, Marvel's de facto 'it' character.

In a word, Wolverine was-and is-overexposed. Wolverine, X-Men, Uncanny X-Men, as well as appearances in other Marvel titles. It got worse when he became an Avenger. Right now, as I type this, Wolverine is appearing in over eight titles as a main character. Eight!

Think about that.

Even more interestingly, writers have, by and large, begun to downgrade the character, stripping the meaningful characterization (i.e. the stuff that genuinely made him a heroic protagonist) and replacing it with elements of psychopathic viciousness that Len Wein's Wolverine would have trouble swallowing. Wolverine wiped out villages in Vietnam, he tortured Nuke, he was a third generation sentinel, etc.

It's almost as if the character-a symbol of the gritty anti-hero-is too 'soft' for current writers, and thus must be darkened even more than he currently is in order to make him interesting. And, it's fast becoming too much for the character to support. In coming years, there will, most likely, be another 'everything you ever knew is a lie' moments for the character, in which his origins are once again stripped of excess material in order to salvage his appeal.

At the moment, however, the continuity problems have increased, as Marvel seeks to illuminate every shadowed corner of the character's past in order to milk his marketability. There is a strong sense of Wolverine fast becoming the fulcrum of the Marvel Universe, with other characters being defined by how they relate to Wolverine, as opposed to existing as properties in their own right.

Marvel has also begun creating future spin-offs...case in point, Wolverine's new mohawk'd illegitimate son, Daken. Or, if you prefer, his illegitimate female clone, X-23. The latter has already been marketed, albeit briefly, with little to no success, yet remains viably popular, enough so that she's a regular in the current incarnation of X-Force.

Daken is an interesting case, appearing in two concurrent series, Dark Avengers and Wolverine: Origins, with a third, Dark Wolverine, on the way. Interestingly, Daken is, with a few quirks, a mirror of Wolverine as he originally was presented in the seventies-surly, unpleasant, mysterious, and dangerous to his own teammates. Granted, his idiosyncrasies have been update for the 21st Century, but still...

Wolverine himself shows little signs of decreasing in popularity despite complaints from one end of the interwebs to the next about the character's seeming ability to be in multiple places at once. Appearing in multiple titles in regular continuity, Ultimate continuity, Marvel Adventures, etc., it's almost as if Marvel is shifting the burden of the flagship position from Spider-Man onto broader shoulders.

The Weekly Thing

I'm not the biggest fan of Dan Slott, but I do have to give the man his props for the most recent attempt at a Thing series. It was by turns funny, emotional and thrilling. In other words, everything such a series should be. Other than the first storyline, these were mostly done in one stories, which was quite a treat in this age of deconstruction. Slott seemed to really get the character, to get that it wasn't all about the angst (though that was never far from the surface), but that, at times, the Thing had fun doing what he did.

Monday Clobbering Time

Friday Night Fights: OPP!! Round 1

FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS rings in with another twelve-round slugfest! Are you down with OPP? One Panel of Pain, that is...

This hands-free tackle courtesy of Tom Defalco and Ron Wilson and Marvel Two-in-One issue 81!

The Worst There Is, Part 4

If you're just joining us, the earlier parts of the diatribe are here, here and here.

As Wolverine evolved from a walking, talking switchblade into a gruff anti-hero, so to did he begin to acquire what he'd heretofore been lacking...namely, a back-story. Every hero has one, and for most of them, it's pretty much the important bit.

Wolverine, however, didn't have it. No handy-dandy origin story to extrapolate off of. Tabula Rasa.

This is where the problems started. Part of the character's mystique hinged on his relative shallowness. No back-story meant no definitive past, which in turn meant the character was a field of dreams as far as writers were concerned. No past means no continuity. No continuity means no rules. Anything went. you wanted him to be a clone, he could be a clone. Missing family? We can do that too. Secret agent/hired killer/immortal warrior/evolved wolf-person? Gravy.

Twas continuity which killed the beast. The character's evolution stopped with the aftermath of the Dark Phoenix saga. Instead, readers were treated to constant revisions of a unnecessarily convoluted back-story. Old enemies, missing relatives, unknown siblings, dirty secrets, Wolverine got it all. A one-man soap-opera. Every year saw something new added to his origin, a little bit more of the secrecy stripped away, a little more weight added to the chains.

In many ways, Wolverine became a sort of ambulatory timeline for the Marvel Universe. Despite his second-stringer origins, he became a focal point. Every other character seemed defined by 'that time they met Wolverine'.

In the meantime, writers seemed determined to strip away the character's attractive qualities, or else render them unremarkable. Wolverine's cathartic function was overtaken by other characters (Rogue, Gambit, Random, Sabretooth, etc.), his viciousness offset by a college-boy philosophy that rendered even the most mundane battles with a layer of pathos that'd make the gloomiest of the Gus think twice.

In short, in an attempt to keep the character interesting, they lost sight of what made him interesting to readers in the first place. Mystery and sudden violence. These were-and are-the core of the character. But up until recently, both have been distinctly lacking. As the character moves further away from them, he becomes less intriguing. Less entertaining.

Mix in a little overexposure, and things begin to get ugly.

The Weekly Thing

I like this one because it's the first appearance of the core of what would become the Serpent Society later on. Oh sure, it's the Serpent Squad here, but later on...man. I love me some Serpent Society. I would get all up on that if somebody decided to write it. Hell, I'll write it!

Return of Ben Grimm-Ladies Man

(Courtesy of Bully, the little Stuffed Bull, who is all kinds of awesome.)

The Worst There Is, Part 3

So, where were we?

Oh yeah.

It wasn't long after Claremont and Byrne began sliding him into the first string that Wolverine got his own series. The move was a smart one, in hindsight, because it was the first step on the long and so far seemingly unending road of Wolverine as a marketing juggernaut.

The first step, was, of course, to clean the character up a bit. Give him some class to soften a few of those rough edges. As popular as he was, Wolverine was most definitely not what you'd call super-hero material. In fact, he was pretty much the antithesis of the normal run-of-the-mill hero, even by Marvel standards, which were, in and of themselves the antithesis of the standard super-hero paradigm.

Thus, Wolverine needed a makeover. He got a new costume, and new motivation. Same hairstyle though. Unfortunately.

First it was the samurai angle-Wolverine as a ronin, desperately seeking some form of balance in his off-kilter life. This wasn't too bad, as far as characterization went. It allowed the character to retain the ferocity that made him popular, but also gave him more of a sympathetic edge, something he'd been distinctly lacking.

Next, we get Wolverine the tragic romantic-a bevy of lost lovers and relationships that could never be swum through the pages of X-Men and his own eponymous series. There was groundwork for this angle already, in the form of the Wolverine/Jean Grey/Cyclops triangle that had been festering since the earliest issues of the epic Claremont run. But then, with Jean Grey's death (well, the first one anyway) we got Mariko Yashida, the memory of Silver Fox, simmering hints of a Storm/Wolverine pairing, and Wolverine/Psyloche, and so on and so forth.

Then, we had Wolverine as father-figure, first with Kitty Pryde, then the numerous Power Pack appearances, later with Jubilee, now with the aptly-named Armor. Young girls playing counterpoint to a gruff mentor.

None of these, in themselves were (and aren't) the problem. To be touted as a first string hero, a 'face', Wolverine's more unpleasant characteristics had to be mitigated. The problem was, whether intentionally or not on the part of the writers, the character soon began to acquire baggage at a remarkable rate to explain both his former madness and his softening tone. We're talking Jacob Marley type chains of continuity, weighing the character down in a mire of Wold Newtonesque history.

Friday Night Fights: LOVE-TAP!

Ah, is that love I see in the air? No. No, it's just Space Booger.

Lover's quarrels are the name of the game this week kids and kittens and that's just what we've got for y'all here. Ladies and gentlemen, above is everyone's favorite Femizon, Thundra, putting a romantic lovelock on Aunt Petunia's favorite Valentine, the Thing! Courtesy of Gruenwald, Perez, Macchio, and Day, from Marvel Two-in-One issue # 56!

The Worst There Is, Part 2

So, picking back up where we left off yesterday, that guy off to the right there-that's Wolverine. He's the best there is at what he does and what he does ain't pretty*.

That one line right there sums up the character perfectly. It's long-winded as catch-phrases go, but it-ah-cuts to the heart of the matter so to speak.

Wolverine is, simply, the team nut-bar. He's that guy, on every team, who's just that little bit more dangerous than everyone else and is completely unapologetic about it.

The problem with that is that such a character will, unless the writers are careful, gradually slide into center stage. Especially in a visual medium such as comics. And center stage is just somewhere a character like Wolverine doesn't belong.

He's just not interesting enough, you see.

I'll get back to that later.

Wolverine started his slide towards top-tier character around X-Men # 129-130 or thereabouts. Up until then, it could be argued that Cyclops was the 'face' of the X-Men for most comic fans. But with the 'Dark Phoenix Saga', Wolverine begins to edge him out, largely due to Chris Claremont and John Byrne's attempts to make the character more interesting. That, in and of itself, is a laudable goal. Claremont, whatever else you can say about him as a writer, was adept at fleshing out background characters and he went to work on Wolverine with gusto.

However, it was, in the end, just a step too far. Wolverine's brawl with the Hellfire Club was a Hail Mary Pass as far as character development. Readers were given the character in his own element at last, free of the super-heroic restraints of his teammates. He sliced, diced and smack talked for close to twenty-two pages before being once again yoked and pushed safely into the background. Only it didn't quite happen that way.

Instead, Wolverine begins the slow trudge to comic-book franchise. In the tradition of most media, the fans clamored for more and buddy, they got it. X-Men began to shift focus, with Wolverine in a more prominent role. And as his role grew, so too did the character begin to change.

The Worst There Is, Part 1

The above panel is the exact moment when legions of fan-boys began wetting themselves with excitement over the prospect of Wolverine. Up until this point in the X-Men, Wolverine was a little more than a primary colored punching bag with a bad attitude. He was unpleasant in and out of costume to his teammates, the other characters hated him (with good reason) and he had an annoying fashion sense. Yellow and blue do not match up well in those proportions.

This was Claremont and Byrne's big one. "The Dark Phoenix Saga". Jean Grey goes nutty, eats a planet full of broccoli people, then commits suicide on the moon after whupping the tar out of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard. We've all read it. It's The Great Gatsby of comics. Love it or hate it, you read it. Big things happen. It's the gold standard of X-Men comics. And so far in the story, it's been pretty normal. Well, as normal as the X-Men got back then. Mind control, hallucinations, Claremontesque dialog quirks.

To catch up to our above visual, Wolverine has been mouthing off at the bad guys and just gotten his hairy little butt shut down but good by a fat man in faux-Regency dress and hosiery. Granted, said fat man has the intriguing power to manipulate mass, but then, he mostly just uses it to make walking to the buffet less arduous. Either way, the little psychopath got schooled. And the rest of the X-Men with him (deservedly so, as the Hellfire Club was awesome.).

But here (there), beaten, bloodied, thought dead, Wolverine is the last hope of the good guys. Last mutant standing. "It's my turn," he says. And buddy, he looks like he means it don't he? And he did. If I recall correctly, he goes through the Hellfire Club cannon fodder like a chainsaw through a bag of kittens. The Wolverine as unchecked aggression. Glaring up at the reader, knee-deep in sewage, berserk fury contorting his features.

It's all downhill from there, though, true-believer.

This is both the first, and last time, that Wolverine is interesting. Ever. Because, see, that panel up there, that glare right there, that's it. That's as far as the character ever evolves. That's as far as he ever goes.

More tomorrow.

The Weekly Thing

One of the most talked about issues of the Lee/Kirby era of Fantastic Four, this one's got body-swapping, the Negative Zone, lots of angst and a lesson on heroism. It's probably one of the best single issues in the series, and it's easy to find in handy essential form these days.

EL GORGO!

Courtesy of Messirs McGee and Jakab, the second issue of EL GORGO! is available online for a free read (just click the cover image). But why simply read it, when you can own it?

Monday Slobbering Time

Yeah. That's just unpleasant. I got nothing.

It Is Good.

The Nostalgia Pillow

The nostalgia pillow, stuffed with continuity and fan reaction, is smothering our super-heroes. And we're the ones holding it over their four-color faces.
Don't deny it. We've all done it. And we'll continue to do it until they're dead. It's the only way to keep them safe, after all. To keep them just the way they were when comics were good. Do you remember when comics were good? I do. I bet you do too. I also bet we have different opinions on just when that was. But we all hold the nostalgia pillow nonetheless.
Continuity has ruined more comics than I care to name. Rather, an overly fanatical adherence to continuity. The iron chain of past events, dragging new comics into the mire of the old.
Continuity can be a good thing, in small doses. A nod to a villain's previous appearances, a quick explanation as to why s/he survived certain death in that crumbling volcano base. A quick recap of a hero's origins (every comic is someone's first comic, after all) in simple terms. These are good things.
It's when the story begins to bog down in the little details that it begins to sink.
You know what I mean. If there's ever a bitch-fight on a fan forum or comic message-board, it's probably got something to do with continuity. Or lack thereof. "Bendis hasn't read the Marvel Handbooks!" "Morrison is shitting on DC continuity!" etc. etc. ad nauseum. It's always struck me as rather akin to complaining about the curtains in your motel room.
It gets worse as time goes on. Fans begin writing they books they loved as kids, following their personal continuity, discarding what they don't consider canon. Other fans get upset. Continuity, like reality, is subjective. Not everyone considers that fourth Venom miniseries as being important to the current status of the character, but other people will shit a brick if you don't mention Pyre (remember Pyre? He was made of fire. And hate. FIREHATE!) or Mace (remember Mace? He had a mace. It did things. And shoulder pads. Why? NINETIES!) or the third symbiote from the left who whacked Venom with a chair. That was a good issue though. Moving on.
Continuity is a fool's bet. You can't please everyone all the time. Heck, you can't even please your intended audience all the time (though Geoff Johns tries, don't he?), so why even try? Think about Wolverine. Arguably, one of the most popular characters in modern comics. Now, try and fit all of his appearances and personal history into the established Marvel continuity.
Can't do it, can you? Not without bacon grease and severe chronal rip. But that doesn't matter. Not really. The stories, by and large, are interesting, regardless of that fact. Wallowing in continuity, while comforting to some degree, is a guaranteed turn-off to a new reader. It's a turn-off to some old readers too.
For my money, consistency is more important than continuity. If a character acts a certain way, has a certain ability, speaks with an accent, etc. then he better damn well do it every time he appears. Unless, of course, the point of the story is that he no longer does this thing/speaks that way/dresses in purple. Beyond that, nothing else matters.
Consistency helps keep the story fluid, without eroding the basics that the story is built on. Only the worthy can pick up Mjolnir. With great power comes great responsibility. Superman is vulnerable to Kryptonite, Batman and magic. Batman's parents were gunned down in Crime Alley. Gwen Stacy went off the bridge. These are basics. They don't change. Everything else is-and should be-up for grabs. Whether we, as fans, like it or not.

The Weekly Thing

Fantastic Four # 350 was a good issue. 351 was more interesting, mind, but as far as set-up went, 350 was the bees knees. The real Thing comes back, after a year or two of Sharon Ventura as the She-Thing and Ben Grimm as a human. The real Doctor Doom comes back, negating most every appearance until now as being the work of a Doom-bot, thus semi-conclusively negating the McCauley Doom-bot Theorem.*

Plus, Walt Simonson. It don't get much better.

*'The McCauley Doom-bot Theorem' states that because every scheme/appearance of Doom can be ascribed to a Doom-bot if one doesn't like it, and that no one likes everything a 100% of the time, then every appearance of Doom to date has been a Doom-bot. I will go into why this is complete bollocks at a later date.**

**Take that, McCauley! Yeah, I said it.

Ben Grimm-Ladies Man Redux

Delivered without comment. Because frankly, who hasn't wanted to do this to Moondragon at some point in the last twenty-odd years?

Rumble in the Jungle

It's a Sunday Thing