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SEQUENTIAL CULTURE #15 8 Oct 03 |
Why I Hate Wolverine |
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JULIAN DARIUS |
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Wolverine would have been a good recurring
character in The Incredible Hulk, where he first appeared. And I would have defended him, retractable
claws and all. But he can’t really
sustain his own book, nor being a major character in a team book. He’s just a fairly shitty character, a
second-stringer to anyone but those with a part of their brains stuck at 17
years of age. |
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If super-hero
comics are stereotypically defined by the fight-of-the-month, Wolverine’s the
king of the fight-of-the-month mentality. |
Let’s be clear about this: people love Wolverine because he’s a tough
guy. He’s the Dirty Harry of the
mutant world. And God knows Americans
love their Dirty Harrys. Wolverine’s
sole point is to be a badass and to kill people. If super-hero comics are stereotypically defined by the
fight-of-the-month, Wolverine’s the king of the fight-of-the-month
mentality. He’s not good at anything
else. The Weapon X program is cool and
interesting, and it’s a good origin for a character defined by his ability to
kill. But it’s only that. Wolverine can act anguished about his own abuse,
but that usually just results in a “berserker rage” in which he just claws
everything in sight. The guy’s not
exactly an introvert. The guy’s not
exactly a thinker. Does he have any
measurable interior space? Not
really. He’s the tough guy, and
that’s it. |
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I like nothing
more than seeing Wolverine burned to a crisp and slowly healing. |
I like nothing more than seeing Wolverine
burned to a crisp and slowly healing.
You can’t feel sorry for him:
he’s a tough guy, and he gets what he gets. He’s not a hero. No one
gets points for courage when he heals like that. I mean, Superman’s a fun character but he’s not known for his
courage: what does he have to
fear? But Superman has an interior
space. Watch Clark Kent agonize over
not being able to stop a dictator as Superman because of his ridiculous,
Kansas-imposed commitment to the laws of this world. Hell, watch him agonize -- in the classic
Superman-Lois-Clark love triangle -- over his inability to woo Lois
Lane. There’s a character who’s hard
to write but who has interiority despite his powers. Superman’s a rich character not for his
powers, even though he could be the ultimate badass if he wanted to be. But not Wolverine. |
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Even the women in Frank Miller’s Sin City are tougher than
Wolverine. Anyone over 17 is tougher
than Wolverine. |
Wolverine talks like a kid acting
tough. “I’m not good for nothing but
killing” is something Wolverine might say, but not in a moment of
introversion. Instead, he’d say it with
a tough demeanor, revealing nothing more than his own shallow bravado mixed
with a seasoning of self-pity. This
is a guy who routinely says things as stupid as the Thing’s “it’s clobbering
time” but who takes these ridiculous expressions seriously. He’s got the emotional maturity of a high
school kid, and an immature one at that.
Like an adolescent, he thinks tough guys say this kind of shit. Adult tough guys know that toughness is
communicated through actions, through self-control as well as through rage. Even the women in Frank Miller’s Sin
City are tougher than Wolverine.
Anyone over 17 is tougher than Wolverine. He’s the poster child for arrested development. He’s got all the complexity of hard rock
music, of prancing in leather and thinking that acting tough makes you a
badass. He’s a poseur, and not a very
good one at that. If I’m going to read a tough guy, I’ll
read the Punisher. I don’t need the
claws. I certainly don’t need the
ridiculous healing factor. The
Punisher’s a badass but he’s a badass you can relate to. He can’t hide behind his healing
factor. He’s not a super-hero. He had a bad day, like the Joker, and his solution
to his rage at what humans are capable of doing to each other is to eradicate
as many bad guys as he can from the face of the Earth. And he does so with guns, like real people
do, not with claws. He’s a fucked-up
Vietnam vet, killing vicious criminals instead of robbing banks for that old
high he got in war. He’s not the
deepest character, to be sure, but he’s a better badass than the whiny,
bragging Wolverine. Wolverine belongs
with villains like Juggernaut, ridiculous monstrosities who can withstand his
claws and unwillingness to control himself and his “berserker barrages.” The Punisher belongs with mobsters, with
the mundane child molesters of the world.
He’s not Rorschach, but he’s cut of that cloth. Now, there’s a badass with depth. Wolverine, on the other hand... None of this addresses, of course, the
remarkable inconsistencies of Wolverine’s character. He’s a loner who spends all his time with
the X-Men. If Wolverine has a problem
with Weapon X’s abuse of him, why does he not have a problem with Professor
X’s agenda? Sometimes, Wolverine’s
depicted as killing civilians in bar fight.
Other times, he has the non-killing attitudes of the X-Men, even
against the vicious killers that the Punisher greets with a bullet to the
brain. He stops short of killing mass
murderers, but has left a string of dead drunken brawlers across the United
States and Canada. Yeah, great guy. |
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It’s argued
that comics readers see super-heroes as power fantasies: is Wolverine, then the fantasy of being
the high school jock instead of the high school nerd? A secret desire to be -- dare I say it? --
Flash Thompson? |
Not to mention the whole love triangle
with Cyclops and Jean Grey. I mean,
there’s a reason Jean Grey chose Cyclops over Wolvie. Cyclops is an introvert, a thinker. Wolverine is the extrovert, the unexamined
adolescent. Okay, we know the average
comics reader is a little more nerdy than the average Joe. A little more thoughtful. Probably a little more introverted. Why identify with Wolverine? Granted, Cyclops doesn’t have a lot of
interiority either, but he’s certainly a lot closer to the stereotypical comics
reader than Wolverine is. It’s argued
that comics readers see super-heroes as power fantasies: is Wolverine, then, the fantasy of being
the high school jock instead of the high school nerd? Doesn’t the love of Wolverine by
thoughtful, introverted readers express a kind of self-hatred? A wish that they could be a badass,
perhaps? And a stupid, bragging,
unexamined badass at that? A secret
desire to be -- dare I say it? -- Flash Thompson? Of course, there’s also that awful sound
effect. I mean, really. Snikt!
Snikt? What the fuck is
that? Have you ever heard something
make that sound in your life? No, but
it sounds cool -- in a thoughtless, adolescent kind of way. |
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Make Wolverine a psychotic who goes to
S&M clubs and gets torn to ribbons every night -- a guy who can’t come
unless half his body is on fire and literally shredded. |
Any character can be good if written
properly. Here’s a guy who, when he
extends his claws, they rip holes through his skin. He’s so used to pain that writers and artists don’t even note
that pain in the comics when his claws come out. But he feels it. Now,
if you wanted to do this right, you’d have a psychotic Wolverine. A guy who can’t use his powers without
pain, who’s not really good for anything but killing. He should be fucked up, in his own little
world. He enjoys the rip of his claws
through his skin. He likes it enough
to do it at almost any opportunity.
It makes him, deadened to sensation through experience, feel alive in
some small way. He’s an addict. He craves combat. He craves feeling alive. No wonder he kills guys in bars but not
villains who rend him limb from limb.
Make Wolverine a psychotic who goes to S&M clubs and gets torn to
ribbons every night -- a guy who can’t come unless half his body is on fire
and literally shredded. He’s not good
for anything else, and he’s gone down a path of needing to be hurt more and
more to produce that same adrenaline rush. He’s not in the X-Men for a social outlet
-- or because, after seeing everything he’s seen of the world, he believes in
Xavier’s dream. No, he’s there to
pick up chicks. Then he gets the
sexy, spandex-wearing teenage new recruit back to his room, where she’s
thinking she’s going to have sex with Wolverine -- Mr. Badass to her, because
she’s 17 and falls for that kind of bragging thoughtlessness, which is
probably why he does it in the first place, outside of his own arrested
development. She gets back to his room
at the X-mansion, so convenient for such liaisons, and he closes the
door. She expects him to be all over
her, to take her like the tough man he is.
But he begs her to tie him up and to cut him with knives, to set him
on fire, to shoot him over and over again.
She does so, but it does nothing for her. So much for the tough Wolverine, she thinks. |
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Read every Sequential Culture on
Sequart.com! Read about the author on our About page. Julian Darius can be reached at julian@sequart.com. Discuss this column online on Sequart.com’s messageboards. |
That’s my Epic Comics proposal, Mr.
Jemas. A one-shot mature readers
book. And the best Wolverine story
ever written. Because, you know, there haven’t been many
good ones. Read more about the
X-Men on Sequart.com. |
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