Wolverine (graphic novel)

AUTHOR: Claremont, Chris

ARTIST: Frank Miller (illustrator); Josef Rubinstein (inker); Lynn Varley (colorist); Glynis Wein (colorist); Tom Orzechowski (letterer)

PUBLISHER: Marvel Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1982

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1982

Publication History

During his first appearance in 1974’s Incredible Hulk, issues 180 and 181, Wolverine appeared to be little more than a disposable character, introduced for the sole purpose of creating conflict with the book’s titular character. However, the superpowered Canadian berserker captured the imaginations of some of Marvel’s most important artists and writers, making him one of the brand’s most popular characters. While Wolverine first came to prominence as a member of writer Len Wein’s “new” X-Men in 1975, his first miniseries, created by writer Chris Claremont and artist Frank Miller, solidified his status as a comic character icon.

The idea for the miniseries was born during a fateful trip on Interstate 5 after the Comic-Con International: San Diego in the early 1980’s. Claremont, who had been writing the X-Men series since 1975, had been under pressure from Marvel to develop a series featuring Wolverine, the title’s breakout star. While Claremont was amenable to the idea, he wanted Miller, with whom he was sharing a rental car, to illustrate the story. Miller, however, was resistant because of Wolverine’s lack of character development in The Uncanny X-Men. Spurred by Miller’s resistance, the pair began to sketch out a plot that would move Wolverine toward a more nuanced, textured characterization based on Claremont’s nascent concept of the character as a “failed samurai.” This idea became the centerpiece for the miniseries, which would focus on an inherent element of Wolverine’s character, the conflict between his feral, berserker rage and his quest to define himself as a man. Approaching the character from this perspective forced Claremont and Miller to ask who Wolverine was and ultimately develop a story that illustrated the discordant nature of Wolverine’s character.

Issue 1 of the Wolverine miniseries was published in September, 1982, and the miniseries ran for four issues. The action of the series took place within the standard Marvel/X-Men continuity; issue 4 leads directly into The Uncanny X-Men, issue 172. The full series, including The Uncanny X-Men, issues 172-173, was reissued as Wolverine (also known as Wolverine by Claremont and Miller) in the Marvel Premiere Classic line in 2007.

Plot

Following a short mission in the Canadian Rockies to hunt a rogue grizzly bear, Wolverine travels to Japan to find Mariko Yashida, the woman he loves, who has recently cut off contact with him. Upon his arrival, Wolverine learns that Mariko’s long-lost father, the crime lord Shingen Harada, has returned and forced her into an arranged marriage with an underworld business associate. Wolverine confronts Mariko, learning that her new husband, Noburu Hideki, has physically abused her. Mariko tells Logan that she cannot leave her new husband, as it would dishonor her family. Wolverine leaves dejected and is quickly attacked by an unknown assailant armed with poisoned shurikens (“throwing stars”), which render him unconscious. When he awakes, Wolverine finds that he has been brought to Shingen, who challenges him to a duel with wooden practice swords. Still feeling the effects of the poison, Wolverine is quickly defeated and humiliated in front of Mariko and her husband. Before beating Wolverine into unconsciousness, Shingen tells Mariko that his opponent is “no man at all, but an animal cast in a semblance of human form.”

Following his defeat, Wolverine is awakened by a gang of muggers in the alley where he has been dumped. Before they can attack, however, a female assassin named Yukio kills the gang and carries Wolverine to safety. As Wolverine recovers, he and Yukio are attacked by the ninja assassins of The Hand. Wolverine defeats the ninjas in a bloody battle, and he and Yukio return to his hotel to recover.

As Wolverine sleeps, Yukio contacts Shingen, for whom she has been secretly working, and is instructed to assassinate Katsuyori, a rival gangster. Yukio convinces Wolverine that killing Katsuyori would free Mariko from her arranged marriage. The pair tracks Katsuyori to a private Kabuki performance, where he is accompanied by Mariko and Noburu. As the performance proceeds, one of the actors leaps from the stage, katana drawn, in an attempt to assassinate Noburu and Mariko. Wolverine intercepts the actor, killing him, and then defeats the rest of the heavily armed performers in a bloody melee. While Yukio kills Katsuyori, who has attempted to escape in the melee, Mariko looks at Wolverine in horror; he realizes that she sees him as an animal.

Soon after the battle in the theater, Wolverine, as Logan, is approached by Asano Kimura, a former colleague from his days as an intelligence agent. When Logan refuses Asano’s request to help bring down Shingen’s crime empire, Yukio murders Asano in an effort to protect her true motivations. However, Wolverine recognizes the scent of the poison used to kill his friend as the same type that was used against him. Realizing that Yukio has been manipulating him, Logan pursues her across Tokyo; however, just as he is about to apprehend her, the pair is attacked by The Hand. Once again, Wolverine dispatches the ninjas, but Yukio uses the battle for cover and escapes. Following the conflict, Wolverine realizes that he must embrace his humanity in order to win back Mariko.

Finally, after fighting his way through criminal underlings, Wolverine confronts Shingen. As the two prepare for their duel, Yukio appears and murders Noburu, only to quickly disappear. After a brutal fight, Wolverine kills Shingen and learns that if he had lost, Mariko would have killed her father and committed ritual hara-kiri. The reunited couple takes time to recuperate from their wounds and ultimately celebrates by announcing to Logan’s X-Men teammates their upcoming wedding.

Characters

•Wolverine, a.k.a. Logan, is a mutant superhero, temporarily on leave from the X-Men. He is a former Canadian intelligence agent, speaks fluent Japanese, and is a highly skilled combatant. His mutant abilities include enhanced physical senses and an accelerated healing ability that allows him to recover rapidly from any injury or poison. Beyond his mutant abilities and training, his skeleton is laced with adamantium, the strongest metal in his universe, making his bones unbreakable. He also has three adamantium claws that extend from the backs of each hand and retract into “bionic housings” in his forearms.

•Mariko Yashida is a member of Clan Yashida, one of Japan’s most noble and powerful families. While she loves Wolverine, her father, the crime lord Shingen, has arranged her marriage to Norubu Hideki, one of his criminal associates. She still loves Logan but remains married because of a strong sense of tradition and honor.

•Shingen Harada is Mariko’s father and a member of Clan Yashida. Missing for most of Mariko’s life, Shingen recently returned in an attempt to consolidate the major Japanese crime syndicates under his control. To do this, he employs the assassin Yukio and members of the ninja order The Hand to control his myriad criminal interests. Despite his advanced age, Shingen remains a skilled swordsman and hand-to-hand combatant.

•Yukio is an assassin working in the employ of Shingen, who instructs her to manipulate Wolverine into killing rival crime boss Katsuyori. However, Yukio develops feelings toward her intended prey, and she is forced to fight The Hand in order to save Wolverine’s life. Yukio is a highly skilled martial artist with an expertise in the use of throwing spikes and shurikens, often coated with a highly toxic nerve poison.

Artistic Style

Few authors are as strongly identified with an individual comics title as Chris Claremont is with X-Men. Because of this, Claremont, who turned the title from a perennial “also-ran” into a long-form meditation on prejudice and oppression, was the obvious choice to pen Wolverine’s first major series as a solo act. However, the addition of artist Miller created a specific look for the series, indicating that it had greater nuance and texture than the typical X-Men story.

Following his revelatory work on Daredevil, Miller provides a rich, stylized visual identity for Wolverine, which contrasts with Claremont’s naturalistic dialogue. Simultaneously informed by film noir and manga, Miller’s vivid color palette and page layouts provide the narrative with a distinctive visual cadence. Notable for panels that leave areas of white around the edges and “rough near-symmetry between the two facing [pages],” Miller’s work creates a kinetic, cinematic feel that was rarely seen in the comics of the era.

This is not to say that the visual identity of the series is without aesthetic problems. For instance, when rendered in a more naturalistic style, Wolverine’s trademark upswept hairdo and muttonchops appear to defy physics. This is particularly distracting during Logan’s more contemplative moments, which is when Miller shifts from a stylized aesthetic to a more realistic approach.

Claremont’s depiction of Japanese culture is also sometimes criticized for giving way to exoticism. Apart from Asano and a pair of scenes in Logan’s hotel room, the characters and settings make the series appear as if it takes place during the Japanese feudal era. While this can be read as an homage to the influence of James Clavell’s 1975 novel Shogun (in which an English sailor journeys to feudal Japan, battles alongside the samurai, and falls in love with a woman named Mariko), the series is ostensibly set in the modern day of 1982, making this precious portrayal of Japanese culture problematic.

Themes

During the creation and plotting process of the Wolverine miniseries, Miller was open about his reluctance to fully engage in the project. Claremont’s desire to work with Miller forced him to utterly reimagine Wolverine as more than “a terminal psychotic” and as a character struggling to define his own humanity. This shift informed not only the series’ thematic mass but also the manner in which the character was portrayed in literally every incarnation afterward.

During their initial battle, in Wolverine issue 1, Shingen defeats a drugged Wolverine in battle and declares that his opponent is “an animal.” This insult illustrates the duality that exists in Wolverine, between the beast inside him and a desire to be civilized. This duality is explored throughout issues 2 and 3; Wolverine struggles with his longing for Mariko as he is forced to commit multiple acts of violence. Seemingly, this struggle reaches its climax at the end of issue 3, as Wolverine, who has just defeated the ninja assassins of The Hand, finds himself alone in a Zen garden. As he reflects on his surroundings, he thinks, “[A]n animal knows what it is and accepts it. A man may know what he is—but he questions. He dreams. He strives. Changes. Grows.” Ultimately, he declares that he is “a MAN!” and sets out to destroy Shingen’s criminal empire. Ironically, Wolverine does so through violence, finally killing Shingen in a vicious duel that echoes their earlier fight. While Wolverine may recognize the steps he must take to approach a sense of self-actualization, his action in issue 4 indicates that it may be a longer process than he realizes.

Impact

Soon after Wein took over The Uncanny X-Men series in 1975, Wolverine emerged as the breakout character. Wolverine’s popularity, combined with the narrative demands of expanding a character with limited dimensionality, spurred the evolution from “psycho killer” to existential samurai. The turning point in this process was Claremont and Miller’s Wolverine miniseries. Claremont argues that the series allowed the character to be perceived in a new way: as a “failed samurai” forced to reconcile his feral instincts with his humanity. Claremont and Miller saw the miniseries as an opportunity to explore this conflict and remake Wolverine.

This new approach to Wolverine has informed every incarnation of the character that has followed. While the character continued to be used in traditional superhero and action stories, Wolverine also developed new depth and texture. Beyond his inner conflict, Wolverine’s role in the X-Men team has evolved, as he has served as a leader and been seen as a surrogate father to Kitty Pryde and Jubilee. The origin of this shift—from one-dimensional psychopath to conflicted yet compassionate team member—is made manifest in Claremont and Miller’s Wolverine miniseries.

Further Reading

Claremont, Chris, and Brent Anderson. X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills (2007).

Lindelof, Damon, and Leinil Francis Yu. Ultimate Wolverine Versus Hulk (2009).

Millar, Mark, and Steve McNiven. Wolverine: Old Man Logan (2010).

Millar, Mark, and John Romita, Jr. Wolverine: Enemy of the State (2006).

Bibliography

Claremont, Chris. Wolverine Omnibus, Volume 1. New York: Marvel, 2009.

Diaz, Eric A. “Homo Superior, or Just Plain Homo?” Geekscape, April 27, 2009. http://geekscape.net/homo-superior-or-just-plain-homo.html.

Powell, Jason. “Jason Powell on the 1982 Wolverine Miniseries.” Remarkable, September 11, 2008. http://geoffklock.blogspot.com/2008/09/jason-powell-on-1982-wolverine.html.

Sanderson, Peter. “Wolverine: Evolution of a Character.” The Incredible Hulk and Wolverine 1, no. 1 (October, 1986): 43-48.

Vaughn Owen. “Chris Claremont, Len Wein: The Men Who Created Wolverine.” The Sunday Times, April 29, 2009. http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts‗and‗entertainment/film/article6191387.ece.

Wigler, Josh. “Chris Claremont and Matthew K. Manning Discuss Wolverine’s Origins.” Comic Book Resources, May 1, 2009. http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=21040.