The Incomplete Wolverine – 2003
Part 1: Origin to Origin II | Part 2: 1907 to 1914
Part 3: 1914 to 1939 | Part 4: World War II
Part 5: The postwar era | Part 6: Team X
Part 7: Post Team X | Part 8: Weapon X
Part 9: Department H | Part 10: The Silver Age
1974-1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979
1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985
1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991
1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997
1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002
When we left off, we were in the middle of a mob storyline, though we’d taken a diversion to deal with some guest appearances. And now, back to the main story.
WOLVERINE vol 2 #183-185
“…And Got Yourself a Gun” / “When in Rome…” / “Sleeping with the Fishes”
by Frank Tieri, Sean Chen, Tom Palmer & Edgar Tadeo
December 2002 to February 2003
As per his deal with Freddo, Logan starts going after the operations of rival crimelord the Roman. The Roman turns out to be a gang leader who publicly feigns insanity, dressing as an ancient Roman. He does things like feed annoying henchmen to his pet lions. It works better than you’d think; he feels like a Silver Age Batman character who’s wandered into an otherwise straight crime story. Anyway, being a moron, Freddo is so delighted with Logan’s work that he tries to offer him a permanent job, despite sensible underboss Delcavvo trying to warn him off it. When Logan turns him down, Freddo starts scheming to force Logan into working for him. Meanwhile, the Roman and Delcavvo both try to have Logan killed, and get absolutely nowhere with it. In the end, Logan kills the Roman, but winds up striking a deal to hand over Freddo to Delcavvo, who has him killed.
Issues #181-185 are the peak of the Tieri run; they have dry humour that actually lands, and they don’t have the repetitive sadism that plagues a lot of his run. This is a largely forgotten arc because it has no wider impact, but it’s really pretty good.
WOLVERINE vol 2 #186
“See Ya Around, Frankie”
by Frank Tieri, Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson & Edgar Tadeo
March 2003
Unfortunately, Tieri’s final issue is this notorious misfire. Unhappy that Wolverine has been interfering in mob business, the Punisher attacks him and they fight for an issue. It’s meant to be the “answer” story to Punisher #16-17, where Garth Ennis battered Wolverine for two issues, but it’s just excruciating, mostly because of some gay jokes that didn’t work at the time, even on their own terms, and are even worse from the standpoint of 2022. In fact, Tieri’s main approach in this story isn’t so much to humiliate the Punisher as to have Logan dismiss him as a deranged idiot, but even if you ignore the dire attempts at comedy, it’s just not a story.
There ends the Tieri run. For some reason, it’s followed by three fill-in issues before the book relaunches under its next regular writer. But first…
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #409 (part 2)
August 2002
We had part 1 last time. Wolverine only appears briefly in the second part; at the end, he acknowledges that Warren’s methods worked after all.
PUNISHER vol 6 #33-37
“Confederacy of Dunces”
by Garth Ennis, John McCrea, Crimelab Studios & Avalon Studios
November 2003 to January 2004
Daredevil enlists Spider-Man and Wolverine to help him capture the Punisher. Wolverine seems more interested in killing the guy (despite letting him go in Tieri’s story), but grudgingly agrees to Daredevil’s terms. The heroes get to meet supporting character Spacker Dave.
Of course, since this is his book, the Punisher outwits them, sets the Hulk on them, and escapes. Wolverine gets punched from New York to Boston at the start of the final issue and misses the ending. The payoff is the Punisher telling Daredevil that the only way to defeat him is to kill him, since if he goes to jail, he’ll just kill everyone he meets – and since Daredevil isn’t up to doing that, he should just back down. It’s the final arc of Ennis’s Punisher run, and the point is to tease that the Punisher might finally be brought down, and then not do it, because the Punisher is a static character. It’s basically a parody arc as far as Wolverine and Spider-Man are concerned, though less so than in Wolverine’s previous appearance in the book. Daredevil, in contrast, is written more or less straight.
I’m not sure quite why the MCP has this so wildly out of sequence, but presumably it’s to do with one of the other guest stars.
X-TREME X-MEN vol 1 #19
“Passages”
by Chris Claremont, Salvaador Larroca and Liquid! Color
November 2002
Wolverine is among the X-Men who visit the X-Treme team in New Orleans for Thanksgiving. He decides to stick around for a while and help Storm out with her rehabilitation (she’s in a wheelchair at this point). For timeline reasons, though, a lot of other junk will happen before we get back to that.
X-FACTOR vol 2 #3
“Weeds”
by Jeff Jensen, Arthur Ranson & Paul Mounts
August 2002
Despite the title, this miniseries was about FBI agents Aaron Kearse and Catherine Gray of the Mutant Civil Rights Task Force. When a mutant-friendly “Sanctuary” church is blown up by a terrorist, Wolverine shows up to lean on Kearse and demand action. In fact, even though Kearse has conflicted feelings about mutants, he’s trying his best already. Later, the X-Men show up to help deal with bomber Kyle Nakamura.
X-TREME X-MEN: X-POSÉ #1
“Chasing Smoke”
by Chris Claremont, Arthur Ranson & Liquid!
November 2002
Assigned to make a muckraking exposé about the X-Men, journalist Neal Conan and Manoli Wetherlell try to do it properly and set up an interview with Storm. Logan kind of looms in the background, and chips in to say that vigilanteism is good, because governments are useless. Generally, he plays the patient supporter to Ororo and encourages her to take her rehab slowly . Remarkably, the series logo has an apostrophe instead of an accent.
NEW X-MEN vol 1 #131
“Some Angels Falling”
by Grant Morrison, John Paul Leon, Bill Sienkiewicz & Chris Chuckry
October 2002
Logan is among the mourners at Darkstar’s funeral. Later, he encourages Scott to talk to Jean more.
NEW X-MEN vol 1 #133
“Dust”
by Grant Morrison, Ethan van Sciver, Norm Rapmund & Chris Chuckry
November 2002
In Afghanistan, Wolverine rescues mutant Sooraya Qadir (later Dust), from a group of slave traders – despite, in his words, “trying my best to honour the strict pacifist principles of the Xavier Institute”. Fantomex is also trying to collect Sooraya for his own reasons. Wolverine is unimpressed by Fantomex’s mercenary attitude, but gets much more interested when Fantomex calls him “James” and offers information about Weapon Plus. Wolverine quickly figures out that Fantomex is the last iteration of the Weapon X project, Weapon XIII.
Later, Wolverine takes Sooraya to the X-Corp offices in Mumbai, where he presumably meets local staffers including Feral’s sister Thornn (Lucia Callasantos).
WOLVERINE vol 2 #183 (backup strip)
“Restraining Order”
by Matt Nixon, Ryan Bodenheim, Mark Morales & Avalon
December 2002
Obsessed with revenge yet again, Lady Deathstrike kidnaps Amiko. When Wolverine fights her, she wins, but can’t bring herself to kill him. He tells her that she needs to come to terms with the fact that he gives her life meaning, and that she will never let herself succeed. Advising her to get help, he leaves her to face the forces of crimelord Nicopetti (who she had tried to drag into her scheme) without his involvement.
This story is missing from the Marvel Unlimited version of the issue. It was Bodenheim’s prize for winning a talent contest in Wizard, and in the circumstances it’s surprisingly non-throwaway.
WOLVERINE: NETSUKE
4-issue miniseries
by George Pratt
September to December 2002
Prompted by dreams, Logan returns to the Shingen estate in Japan, where an antique… I guess it’s a helmet? Anyway, whatever it is, it transports him to a wintery landscape. There, he finds an inexplicably unfrozen garden where he can sense Mariko’s presence. This leads to a series of events where Logan finds a series of netsukes (miniature carvings) which apparently let him to travel back in time and live the life of swordsman Kiyoshi, who has his own Mariko. Meanwhile, a winter spirit menaces Logan in the present day, but is defeated thanks to the spirit of the past Mariko… or something?
We’re now entering a period in which Wolverine miniseries are running almost continually, alongside the main book. Effectively, this becomes a second Wolverine title with a rotating creative team. Netsuke is a very unusual story – it won an Eisner for “Best Painter / Multimedia Artist”. It’s undeniably ambitious and beautiful, but as a story I find it an absolute chore just to follow. The sort of book I feel guilty for not liking.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #410-412
“Hope”
by Chuck Austen, Ron Garney, Mark Morales & Hi-Fi Design
September & October 2002
Yup, we’ve reached the much-maligned Chuck Austen run. But he doesn’t do much with Wolverine – quite reasonably, he focuses on the characters that are mainly his – so his stories won’t be detaining us much. In this one, the X-Men go to Cassidy Keep and help Juggernaut deal with an out of control Black Tom Cassidy. Squid-Boy (Sammy Paré) debuts, and Juggernaut joins the X-Men. Austen gets off to a flying start by giving two different reasons for the X-Men to go to Cassidy Keep in the first place, and then putting the castle in the wrong country.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #413
“Annie’s Moving Story”
by Chuck Austen, Sean Phillips and Hi-Fi Design
October 2002
Back at the Mansion, the X-Men meet nurse Annie Ghazikhanian and her son Carter Ghazikhanian, who join the supporting cast during Austen’s run. Wolverine warns Juggernaut to behave himself.
X-TREME X-MEN: X-POSÉ #2
“Watershed”
by Chris Claremont, Arthur Ranson and Liquid!
December 2002
Wolverine appears in a single panel near the end, discussing the plot with the X-Treme cast after Warren has the hostile news show spiked.
X-MEN UNLIMITED vol 1 #44
“Can They Suffer?”
by Chuck Austen, Romano Molenaar, Danny Miki & Dean White
April 2003
A very special issue about how animals can feel pain. Wolverine has a brief scene where he goes after some local kids who are torturing animals, but it’s principally a Juggernaut story, and (on a character level) one of Austen’s better issues.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #417-420
“Dominant Species”
by Chuck Austen, Kia Asamiya & JD Smith
February to April 2003
The X-Men fight the Dominant Species, a group of feral mutants led by Maximus Lobo, who have somehow managed to take over Lobo Technologies, a Worthington Industries subsidiary that Warren hasn’t even heard of. Wolverine gets knocked unconscious at the end of issue #417, remains unconscious throughout issues #418-419, and appears in a single panel of the epilogue of issue #420. See what I mean about Austen not being terribly interested in him?
X-MEN UNLIMITED vol 1 #45
“Hero”
by Chuck Austen, Pop Mhan, Derek Fridolfs & James Brown
April 2003
An Alpha Flight story. The X-Men appear briefly in the epilogue, to meet James and Heather Hudson’s newborn daughter Claire Hudson. (Yes, I’d forgotten they had a daughter too.)
WOLVERINE vol 2 #187
“Down the Road”
by Daniel Way, John McCrea & Avalon Studios
April 2003
Logan hitches a lift from a drunken hillbilly serial killer who has two bodies in the back of his pick-up truck. The killer is weirdly relieved that someone has finally caught up with him, and Logan “assists” him in committing suicide by driving his truck off a cliff. A perfectly serviceable fill-in, elevated by McCrea’s art. I like the mutual suicide ending, which depends on the unspoken point that Logan will survive this.
WOLVERINE vol 2 #188-189
“Good Cop, Bad Cop”
by Daniel Way, Staz Johnson, Danny Miki & Avalon Studios
May & June 2003
Rounding off this volume, another fill-in. Beleaguered internal affairs detective Lester Brown investigates narcotics officer McLawry, but meets a brick wall until McLawry panics and kills a potential witness. Brown confronts McLawry in a bar, but has no evidence and has to back down. But Logan overhears, and tricks McLawry into trying to kill him too, thus collecting the forensic evidence for Brown.
This is a crime story awkwardly repurposed as a Wolverine story – the title character only appears in one panel of issue #188. The influence of Garth Ennis’s Punisher is heavy on both these Daniel Way fill-ins, and really, both would work better as Punisher stories, if you tweaked the plot so as to not involve Wolverine’s powers.
X-MEN UNLIMITED vol 1 #46
“Weapon of Choice”
by Ian Edginton, Simon Bisley & Jose Villarrubia
May 2003
Logan enters a pitfighting tournament, where mutants fight for the entertainment of humans. He deliberately undermines the business by winning all the fights in the most boringly predictable way he can. After the owners sell out to him, he burns the place down. Simon Bisley is surprisingly restrained here, but it’s still a story written to his strengths.
X-MEN UNLIMITED vol 1 #46 (backup strip)
“Upon Reflection”
by Bruce Jones & Shin Nagasawa
May 2003
As a favour to Nick Fury, Logan checks out a remote government facility where the scientists have been killed by the mirror creature they accidentally created. Logan fights the creature, which now looks like a giant, monstrous version of him, until he finds a dying message from the lead scientist that explains how to shut the monster down. A neat mostly-silent short, strong on atmosphere.
In contrast…
X-MEN UNLIMITED vol 1 #48
[Untitled]
by Bruce Jones & Richard Isanove
June 2003
When Dr James Mackenzie discovers that Savage Land plants and animals are dying, he suspects that an invasive species has introduced a new disease. In an odd couple story, Wolverine and Shanna the She-Devil team up to track the newcomer down and get a blood sample. Shanna and Dr Mackenzie succumb to the virus, but Logan figures out that disease is actually spread by mutated fleas on Mackenzie’s dog Bingo and its wolf mate Sheba, and saves Shanna and Mackenzie by… injecting them with Sheba’s blood? Um…
This is awful. Aside from the fact that it doesn’t makes sense, it exists primarily because someone really wanted to paint Shanna’s arse, and dialogue such as “When a woman like you is grabbed roughly and kissed, she usually slaps back, unless maybe she’s feeling guilty about slapping someone else recently!” was inexcusable even at the time.
WOLVERINE vol 3 #1-5
“Brotherhood”
by Greg Rucka, Darick Robertson, Tom Palmer & Studio F
May to August 2003
Logan is living in Portland (apparently for some adventure that takes place off panel; he shows up injured after what appears to be the resolution). He becomes a regular at a local diner, to the fascination of waitress Lucy Braddock, who befriends him.
Lucy has escaped a survivalist cult, the Brothers of the New World, led by Cry. The cultists kill Lucy, and try to gun down Logan as a witness, with predictable lack of success. Tracing the killers’ modified guns leads Logan to corrupt gun dealer Tom Leeds and his partner Cassie Lathrop. Cassie is actually an undercover cop; she doesn’t recognise Logan as Wolverine but becomes instantly obsessed with him and starts following him in an ongoing subplot.
Meanwhile, Logan’s trail leads to the town of Westfall, where the local Sheriff Dennis Terril has been turning a blind eye to the cultists in his area. When Terril derides Lucy as a “tease” who had it coming, Logan apparently kills him (and certainly seriously injures him). Meanwhile, Cassie winds up getting captured by the Brothers. Logan breaks into the cult compound and is horrified to find out how many women they’ve killed. He goes on a rampage until running into Cassie; he tells her that they aren’t enemies, then leaves without explanation. Cassie is more determined than ever to find out who he is.
This is the first relaunch of Wolverine as an ongoing series – justified on this occasion by the fact that the book was being moved to the Marvel Knights imprint. The Rucka/Robertson run is very good on its own terms, but like a lot of Marvel books from this period, it’s very slow in serial form. It’s got things like two-page silent sequences of Logan removing the bullets from his body after a fight.
The Rucka run is inconsequential when it comes to wider continuity; by this point Wolverine has become a static character and we’re shifting to stories about how other people react to him. Rucka drops Logan’s first person narration and tells the first issue from Lucy’s perspective. She sees him as a “Mean Man” who can probably take care of himself in a way that she can’t; Logan is quietly overtipping her, recognising that she needs support. Logan is living in an unfurnished apartment and showing his depth by reading a lot.
There are no superhero elements in this arc except for Logan himself (and a passing suggestion that Cry’s influence over his followers might be a mutant power). Logan doesn’t even use his claws in action until issue #5. It’s a dialling back of the stakes, or at least the scale, in favour of a more street level approach – though the Brothers are undoubtedly a serious threat to their victims. It feels like a story about reclaiming aspects of masculinity as cool while rejecting the more dubious stuff – though Rucka does also go out of his way to show Logan hanging out with a reputable law-abiding gun dealer friend, who runs a shop called “My Cold Dead Hand”.
WOLVERINE vol 3 #6
“So, This Priest Walks Into A Bar”
by Greg Rucka, Darick Robertson, Tom Palmer & Studio F
October 2003
Logan and Kurt meet for a drink in a (completely mundane) mutant bar. From Logan’s unkempt state, Kurt quickly figures out that he has failed to save a girl, and counsels that this is sad, but a part of life for them both. Logan then explains that he has just killed 27 cultists. After asking a few more questions, Kurt declares them evil, but says that he cannot simply offer forgiveness. Still, he says, “Is the wolf evil when it culls the sickness from the herd?” At first Logan seems to find that comforting, but soon he insists that “I’m not an animal. I’m not.” Kurt agrees, but Logan seems unconvinced.
If the first five issues could have played as a Punisher story, this epilogue – which shifts the perspective back to Logan – very much couldn’t. There’s a lot of self-loathing going on in this take on the character.
One side effect of the shift to very long arcs is that Wolverine’s solo title will effectively be telling just two stories a year. Which means there’s a lot of other stuff to fit in before we get to issue #7.
HULK & WOLVERINE: SIX HOURS
4-issue miniseries
by Bruce Jones, Scott Kolins & Lee Loughridge
January to April 2003
Logan is having a break in a remote mountain cabin when, by sheer coincidence, a plane crashes nearby carrying Bruce Banner, pilot Margie White, teenager Kyle Hatcher, and criminals Whitie and Sid, who are on the run. Kyle has been bitten by a snake and has the titular six hours to get the antidote.
Logan and Banner team up to rescue Kyle and Margie from the two criminals, who are also on the run from weird mercenary Shredder. Shredder gets an over the top build as a man from Wolverine’s past, but he’s really just a one-off villain with an admittedly memorable and off-kilter character design. After Shredder is defeated, Banner lets the snake bite him so that he can cure Kyle with, um, a blood transfusion. Yes, that’s two Bruce Jones Wolverine stories this year where the resolution is a blood transfusion that doesn’t make sense.
Leave that aside and this is okay, but there’s really no particular reason for it to be a Hulk and Wolverine story; you could do the basic story with Logan alone. The mini has some gloriously over the top covers by Simon Bisley that bear no resemblance at all to the muted interiors.
SPIDER-MAN & WOLVERINE #1-4
4-issue miniseries
by Brett Matthews, Vatche Mavlian & Paul Mounts
June to September 2003
SHIELD abduct Logan to get a genetic sample for their anti-superhero programme “Stuff of Legends”. Programme leader Edward Brecker and a group of followers turn rogue, and hand Logan over to Takeshi Kishimoto, a drug dealer who was once jailed thanks to Wolverine. Takeshi broadcasts a live stream of Logan’s torture. Nick Fury sends Spider-Man to rescue Wolverine, and everyone teams up to take down Becker.
This Marvel Knights mini is memorable mostly for its gorgeous artwork. But it’s a mess – it’s a simple story jazzed up with wildly overcomplicated plot mechanics, and it does things like claiming Switzerland is three continents away from France. It also has a mad scientist in late middle age who is said to have been a child in the Silver Age, as if the sliding timeline wasn’t a thing. The hook is meant to be the odd couple angle, but it winds up as one of those awkward stories where Spider-Man is appalled by Wolverine’s body count, but not to the point of actually trying to do anything about it.
X-TREME X-MEN vol 1 #20-22
“Schism, parts 1-3”
by Chris Claremont, Salvador Larroca & Liquid!
January to March 2003
Logan is back helping Ororo with her rehabilitation; he’s here mainly to discuss the plot with her and to explain why he’s not at the Institute, and he doesn’t even appear in the final chapter.
The main story, which Logan only hears about, involves Bishop and Sage investigating whether mutant teen Jeffrey Garrett, now a student at the X-Men’s school, killed his family; Emma generally shelters him and behaves obnoxiously, though she’s under the influence of Elias Bogan for some of the time. Logan gets to defend Emma’s trustworthiness to Storm.
WOLVERINE / CAPTAIN AMERICA
4-issue miniseries
by RA Jones, Tom Derenick & Hi-Fi Design
February 2004
Wolverine, Captain America and Warbird (Carol Danvers) team up to recover a stolen Shi’ar computer chip which has somehow mutated to become massively powerful. They fight rogue S.H.I.E.L.D. black ops unit the Contingency – Shrike, Kite, Killdeer, Condor and Rapture. Rapture escapes with upgraded powers, but the rest of the Contingency go to jail.
From a 2022 standpoint, most striking thing about this weekly mini is the treatment of Warbird as a cavalier incompetent who needs to learn faith in herself. It’s mediocre, and it’s mainly a Cap/Warbird story with Wolverine as an unnecessary guest to boost sales. The story was plainly intended to set up Rapture and the Contingency as recurring villains – Rapture had previously appeared in Weapon X: The Draft – Kane in 2002 – but nothing comes of them.
DAREDEVIL vol 2 #53-55
“Echo, part 3 to 5”
by David Mack
October to December 2003
Echo (Maya Lopez) encounters Logan while on a visionquest. He tells her how he once met her “Chief”, who helped him control his animal urges, and told him a story about Two Dogs Fighting. Logan tells her that for him, what was important was to shed the dents to his ego caused by his past exploitation, and to focus on a sense of purpose and the good that he had done. He acted out the story he wanted to tell until he made it real, he says. Summarising it like that rather misses the point of these highly unusual, visually experimental issues, where Wolverine serves as the animal spirit for Echo’s visionquest. These are Echo stories; Daredevil only appears briefly in issue #55.
WOLVERINE / DOOP
2-issue miniseries
by Peter Milligan, Darwyn Cooke, J Bone & Laura Allred
May & June 2003
The Pink Mink – seemingly just a piece of pink fur, but allegedly a dangerous artefact that can cause visions and mania in people, especially mutants – is stolen from scientists. They ask Wolverine to get it back. The trail leads to the Collector (no connection to the Elder of the Universe), a rich obsessive who collects valuable things.
Ignoring the warnings not to expose the Mink to the air, Wolverine picks it up and immediately has a vision of a Pink Lady, who takes the Mink and leaves. When Wolverine reports this back, the scientists don’t believe him – they say the Collector just stole the thing back from him while he was hallucinating. Haunted by the memory of the Pink Lady, Wolverine teams up with Doop to investigate further, and both become increasingly convinced that the other one is going mad. Along the way, they fight random Pink Psychos – latent mutants activated by the Pink Lady – and Hunter Joe, also hired by the scientists to get the Mink back. Bizarre plot twists ensue, as Wolverine and Doop test each other’s sanity by inventing scenarios that both turn out to be true – apparently because of the Mink’s probability-warping. Eventually they recapture the Mink, but the Pink Lady persuades them not to return it, so that she can remain free. Instead, Logan enjoys a night of passion with her, while Doop helps the Mink to asexually reproduce, creating a duplicate Mink that the heroes deliver up to the scientists in place of the original.
This is more coherent than I remember, though still very meta (“Like characters drifting in a pointless plot line who are suddenly given motivation”). It’s not especially like X-Statix, which was more satirical in tone, where this is absurdist and dreamlike, relying heavily on Logan as a familiar character to anchor the madness. For no apparent reason, Logan wears a suit throughout the story.
X-STATIX #11
“3 in a Bed”
by Peter Milligan, Mike Allred & Laura Allred
July 2003
Logan appears briefly as a guest at a pool party thrown by X-Statix (the former X-Force). He gets to meet Dead Girl, El Guapo (Robbie Rodriguez), Venus Dee Milo and Spike Freeman.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #423-424
“Holy War”
by Chuck Austen, Ron Garney, Mark Morales, Nelson, Dan Green & JD Smith
May 2003
The Church of Humanity crucify a group of mutants on the X-Men’s lawn, including Bedlam (Jesse Aaronson). The X-Men discover that Nightcrawler’s mind has been tampered with to believe that he has completed his priestly training; his mentor Father Whitney turns out to be part of a ludicrous Church of Humanity scheme to destroy faith in the Catholic Church by somehow making Nightcrawler the Pope and then exposing him as a mutant. The X-Men defeat the Church. A truly abysmal story which seems motivated largely by anti-religious sentiment and a desire to prise Nightcrawler from nasty God-type opinions, missing the point of the character completely.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #425-426
“Sacred Vows”
by Chuck Austen, Philip Tan & Avalon Studios
June 2003
Logan is a guest at Havok’s stag night, and then at his wedding to Polaris (which he calls off at the altar).
Soon after, looking for Logan, Laura Kinney visits the X-Men Mansion and watches from afar, in a flashback in X-23: Target X #6. More of that issue in a bit, but first…
EXILES vol 2 #28-30
“Unnatural Instincts”
by Chuck Austen, Clayton Henry, Mark Morales & Transparency Digital
June to August 2003
When student Nicholas Gleason (later codenamed Wolf Cub) injures him, Havok is possessed by the consciousness of Earth-1298 Havok (the Havok who was native to the world of Mutant X, in other words). The Exiles arrive with a mission to stop evil Havok; the Dominant Species show up looking for Gleason. The X-Men and the Exiles team up to beat the bad guys, and the Exiles spend a few days with the X-Men afterwards before moving on to their next adventure.
At this point, the Exiles are Earth-12 Mimic (Calvin Rankin), Earth-2182 Nocturne (TJ Wagner), Earth-1081 Morph (Kevin Sidney), Earth-2109 Sunfire (Mariko Yashida), Earth-3470 Sasquatch (Heather McDaniel) and Earth-4210 Magik (Illyana Rasputin). Wolverine is just making up the numbers here, though he does make a point of avoiding the alt-Mariko afterwards.
WOLVERINE: X-ISLE
4-issue miniseries
by Bruce Jones, Jorge Lucas & Oscar Carreno
April 2003
Amiko visits America, but runs off in tears when Logan loses his temper at a carnival. In response, Logan drinks himself into oblivion, passes out, and wakes up on a beach. Dreamlike weirdness ensues, including a small boy who apparently represents Logan’s inner child, and a monster that Logan must allow to kill him, in order to come to terms with his guilt. Afterwards, a man comes to collect Logan from the island, having apparently been hired by Logan to put him there in the first place. No explanation for anything that happened on the island is ever given.
A very heavy handed metaphor for Logan needing to control his temper, and a weird little experiment that just doesn’t work. Jones had something of a problem with teasing fascinating ideas and blowing the reveal, and this is no exception.
X-MEN UNLIMITED vol 1 #50
“The Swordsmith”
by Kazuo Koike, Kengo Kaji, Paul Smith & Brad Anderson
July 2003
Wolverine helps a woman, Renge, defend her late father’s mystical sword Mikage from the villainous Azuma. The sword’s power comes from the souls of the people it has killed, who want to exact revenge on the sword-user. Azuma is consumed by the souls, and Wolverine has the sword melted down.
A perfectly nice little story in a traditional Wolverine-in-Japan mould. Kazuo Koike was the creator of Lone Wolf and Cub, one of the more intriguing guest creators to work on X-Men Unlimited.
WOLVERINE: SNIKT!
5-issue miniseries
by Tsutomu Nihei & Guru eFX
May to November 2003
A girl called Fusa brings Wolverine to her post-apocalyptic future so that he can defend her people from the Mandate – a waste-consuming bacteria that has gone out of control. Wolverine teams with Fusa’s freedom fightsers, including the robot Colonel, to defeat the original Mandate – the Primogenitor – so that Fusa can send him home.
This is another stab at manga, complete with manga-style pacing. It reads better as a collection, but as a five-issue monthly it was excruciating. It’s a real oddity, with everyone’s skin consistently left uncoloured, and Wolverine depicted as tall, but it’s got some moments of grand scale to it. A real oddity.
NEW X-MEN vol 1 #135, #137 and #138 (part 1)
“Riot at Xavier’s, parts 1, 3 and 4”
by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely
December 2002 to March 2003
The X-Men discuss the troubling behaviour of rebellious student Kid Omega (Quentin Quire) and his Omega Gang (Glob Herman, Radian, Redneck and Tattoo). At first Wolverine dismisses it as kids testing their limits, and Quentin having an identity crisis on learning that he’s adopted.
When the Omega Gang stage a riot on the school’s first Open Day, Wolverine shows up to look confident and give Quentin a stern talking to – and gets easily despatched by Quentin, who traps him in his own mind and moves on with the story. Afterwards, with Sophie of the Stepford Cuckoos dead, Wolverine yells at the Gang members, who insist that they were under Quentin’s control. With hindsight, this is an odd storyline in being so unsympathetic to Quire’s version of youthful rebellion.
Issue #138 is split in two parts because it has an epilogue. But first…
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #429-434
“The Draco”
#429-433 by Chuck Austen, Philip Tan & Avalon Studios
#434 by Chuck Austen, Takeshi Miyazawa, Craig Yeung & Avalon Studios
August to November 2003
Azazel, an ancient mutant who claims to be Satan, has fathered many teleporting mutants on Earth in an attempt to build an army under his control, who can open a portal to the dimension where he is trapped. He summons all these mutants to Isla des Demonas, where Professor Dibble‘s archaeological site has discovered evidence of an ancient mutant society. Among the summoned mutants are Nightcrawler, Kiwi Black and Abyss. The X-Men tag along and defeat him. Wolverine’s role in all this is largely peripheral.
“The Draco” has a reputation as one of the worst X-Men stories ever published, because it is. It’s completely incoherent – Azazel’s plan involves travelling to Earth in order to create a portal through which he can travel to Earth, and the finale involves him being defeated by falling into the very portal that he was trying to go through in the first place. Tan’s art is simply not ready for prime time, and in fairness to him, it’s a visually demanding story that called for someone much more experienced. On top of that, it does yet more damage to Nightcrawler’s back story for no benefit whatsoever.
The epilogue to New X-Men vol 1 #138 goes here, with Wolverine visible in one panel at the X-Men’s prizegiving.
NEW X-MEN vol 1 #139-140
“Murder at the Mansion, parts 1-2”
by Grant Morrison, Phil Jimenez, Andy Lanning & Dave McCaig
April 2003
Logan shows up briefly to sympathise with an upset Emma after her affair with Scott comes to light. He cameos in part 2 when Bishop and Sage arrive to investigate Emma’s murder but vanishes from the arc after that.
A flashback in X-23: Target X #6 – which forms most of that issue – fits between New X-Men #139-140. That night, Logan goes biking, and X-23 tails him. Picking up her scent, Logan sets up camp and invites her to talk. Instead, she attacks him, claiming that they are both weapons who need to be stopped and destroyed. Logan tells her that she isn’t to blame for anything she’s done, and tries to persuade her to return with him to the Institute, but instead she gets captured by S.H.I.E.L.D.. Wolverine already knows who Laura is, and claims to have a copy of a letter from her mother – none of this has ever really been explained, but since we know Wolverine has previously met her in a time travel story, presumably that encouraged him to do a bit of digging.
X-TREME X-MEN vol 1 #25-30
“God Loves, Man Kills II”
by Chris Claremont, Igor Kordey, Scott Hanna & Liquid!
May to August 2003
When Reverend Stryker’s plane crashes while transporting him to a new prison, the X-Treme X-Men (including Wolverine) investigate. Stryker and Kitty Pryde are on the run from Lady Deathstrike, who is meant to be on Stryker’s side, but has fallen under the mental control of Mount Haven, a small picket-fence town run by an AI that’s using nanites to re-write mutants into delighted citizens. The AI can see mutants’ energy signatures, but it mistakenly believes that they’re souls, and it’s concluded that non-mutants are all soulless monsters who must be destroyed.
Lady Deathstrike defeats Wolverine in battle, but he claims later that he was actually just getting her to stab him through the heart in order to reboot his healing factor and overcome the nanites. If you say so, Logan. The core story largely gets sorted out by Kitty without Wolverine contributing very much to it.
Though it doesn’t live up to the billing of “God Loves, Man Kills”, Kordey does good work on this story. Claremont also takes the chance in issue #28 to set out his stall on Wolverine and Deathstrike: “Both rebuilt as weapons, Logan’s innate humanity is the touchstone of his life. It gives him focus and meaning and purpose. To transcend the goals of those who made him and carve his own path of honour. For Yuriko Oyama, that humanity is an encumbrance, like a pressed flower in a memory book, reminding her of a time long-past, whose meaning and relevance fades with every upgrade.” Originally, the idea was that Deathstrike wanted to be restored to humanity once she completed her quest, but evidently Claremont thinks she’s drifted.
NEW MUTANTS vol 2 #5
“Not One of Us”
by Nunzio DeFilippis, Christina Weir, Mark Robinson, Aaron Sowd, Wayne Faucher, Scott Elmer & Ian Hannin
October 2003
Logan appears as the teacher of a martial arts class. His students include Laurie Collins (Wallflower), Sofia Mantega (Wind Dancer), Kevin Ford (Wither), David Alleyne (Prodigy) and Julian Keller (Hellion). Since Logan doesn’t understand his powers, Prodigy actually beats him in a sparring session.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #438-441
“She Lies with Angels, parts 2-5”
by Chuck Austen, Salvador Larroca, Danny Miki & Udon
January to March 2004
Wolverine is among the X-Men who tag along to Kentucky stand around in the background in a Romeo & Juliet riff based on a feud between the Guthrie family and the Cabot family. He contributes literally nothing to the plot and doesn’t even meet any of the Cabots until part 5.
NEW X-MEN vol 1 #142-145
“Assault on Weapon Plus”
by Grant Morrison, Chris Bachalo, Tim Townsend & Chris Chuckry
June to August 2003
Wolverine bumps into Cyclops in the Hellfire Club’s strip club, where he is attempting to drown his sorrows after his split with Jean. Wolverine laments that all he ever wanted was the sort of life that Scott had with Jean, while Scott wants to “throw all that away and run a little wild with the sexy White Queen.” He also tells Scott that he’s wrong to think Jean wouldn’t understand – “Bub, she’s been praying for you to come out of your shell for a zillion years.”
But Wolverine is mainly there to meet with Fantomex, who had promised to reveal facts about his past. Fantomex, Wolverine and Cyclops – and Fantomex’s living vehicle E.V.A. – travel to the World, a facility where scientists are creating life-forms using time-warping technology stolen from A.I.M.. A.I.M. have also been trying to reclaim the World, but have been torn apart by the World’s newest creation Weapon XV. Weapon XV has apparently gone mad after learning the true nature of the World, and he flies up to the Weapon Plus Project’s orbiting satellite base, with Fantomex and co in pursuit.
During all this, Fantomex reels off a mixture of genuine facts about Wolverine and bluff – he claims that Wolverine’s real name is “James Logan”, for example – which the two X-Men treat with appropriate scepticism. But once on board the satellite, Fantomex does indeed help Wolverine access the Weapon X database for a few minutes. When Weapon XV – also going by Ultimaton – wanders in asking about the purpose of his life, Wolverine replies that based on what he’s just read, “some of us were born to kill and raised to kill and that’s the only damn thing we’re any good for. Everything else is just lies we tell ourselves.” He dismisses Weapon XV as a “genocide machine”, and blows up the station. (Fantomex and Cyclops escape separately.)
This is a rare story from the period which actually develops Wolverine’s back story, though it turns out not to amount to much. Morrison never specifies what Wolverine read in the file, but according to Weapon X #25, it was his involvement in slaughtering the townsfolk of Roanoke.
NEW X-MEN vol 1 #146, #148 and #150
“Planet X, parts 1, 3 and 5”
by Grant Morrison, Phil Jimenez, Andy Lanning & Chris Chuckry
October to December 2003
Jean goes into space to rescue Wolverine, and the two wind up on the ruins of Asteroid M fighting Ultimaton. This is just sub-plot stuff, and the fight ends off panel. Wolverine and Jean are then trapped on Asteroid M, which is set to fall into the sun within 24 hours. Wolverine tells Jean that what he saw in the Weapon Plus files proves that they only chose him because he was an enthusiastic killer, and he now believes that his hazy recent memories of a red-headed woman (Rose O’Hara from Origin) actually involve times when she was scared of him. Jean tells him that he’s already redeemed himself for whatever he may have done in the past.
Once they get closer to the sun, Jean’s full Phoenix power is triggered, and she takes Wolverine back to Earth in time to join the final battle with Magneto (who turned out to have infiltrated the school as “Xorn”). Magneto kills Phoenix, and a berserk Wolverine beheads him in retaliation. Then he has to be held back by the Beast as Jean dies in Scott’s arms.
This is where we bid Morrison goodbye; the final four issues of Morrison’s run take place in an alternate future, and end with a future Phoenix altering history by nudging Scott to stay with Emma and keep the school running.
A flashback in Weapon X vol 2 #18 has Wolverine tell the X-Men that, based on what he saw on the Weapon Plus satellite, they need to go after the new Weapon X Project. Chamber is selected to infiltrate them.
The flashbacks in Secret War #2-5 take place here. Nick Fury recruits Wolverine, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Captain America, Luke Cage, the Black Widow and Daisy Johnson (later Quake) for a secret mission to overthrow the Latverian government, who have secretly been funding tech-based supervillains. They fight a bunch of Latverian soldiers and such illustrious villains as a new Hobgoblin and Lady Octopus (Carolyn Trainer). Finally, when they reach current Latverian leader Lucia von Bardas, Daisy brings down the building to kill her, horrifying the other heroes. Fury wipes everyone’s memories, and they don’t learn about their involvement in the coup until the main story.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #442-443
“Of Darkest Nights”
by Chuck Austen, Salvador Larroca, Danny Miki & Udon
April 2004
Logan grudgingly accompanies Professor X to Genosha for the funeral of Magneto, but refuses to participate in anything amounting to a show of respect. Other mourners, such as Shocker (Randall Darby), are offended by his behaviour, and Polaris shows up to make the case for Magneto. Xavier decides to stay and rebuild on Genosha (leading in to Excalibur vol 2), and Logan leaves.
NEW X-MEN vol 1 #156
“A Bright New Mourning, part 2”
by Chuck Austen, Salvador Larroca, Danny Miki & Udon
April 2004
Just a single-panel cameo in the epilogue, as the X-Men watch the school being rebuilt after being blown up by Magneto in “Planet X”.
WOLVERINE vol 3 #7-11
“Coyote Crossing”
by Greg Rucka, Leandro Fernandez & Studio F
November 2003 to February 2004
Another crime story with minimal superhero elements. Logan stumbles upon two thugs, Merrick and Lake, who have unintentionally killed a truck full of immigrants while smuggling them across the Mexican border, and are trying to cover up the deaths. Logan’s investigation leads him to El Paso, where he hangs out with old friend Nestor Garcia, and follows the trail to Mexican crime boss Rojas, who is also involved in heroin smuggling. Cassie Lathrop also shows up, along with Border Patrol’s Agent Aguinaga, and Logan has to rescue her.
Logan tracks down Rojas, who turns out to be a heavily pregnant woman. She accepts responsibility for the deaths, but argues that she doesn’t actually want to kill the people she smuggles, or her drug mules – after all, it’s in her interest for them to live – whereas Logan is a true sociopath who just likes to claim the moral high ground while he’s killing people. Logan shows up back at Nestor’s bar with Rojas’s baby (later named Angelica Murillo) – it’s initially implied that he killed Rojas, but a flashback clarifies that she died in chlidbirth. Logan tells Cassie that he is “not much of a man at all” and that he “might as well have” killed Rojas, since the stress of his attack sent her into labour and wiped out the support staff that would have helped her. Cassie insists that he is not an animal and that if “you decide you’re a man, you know where you can find me.” Logan tracks down Rojas’s relatives in El Paso and delivers the baby to them.
This is a very good arc, with excellent art and a deliberate anticlimax in Rojas’ death before the final act.
When I think of Wolverine solo stories done right, I think of Rucka very high in the list.
“[The Roman] feels like a Silver Age Batman character who’s wandered into an otherwise straight crime story.”
Maybe more like a Bronze Age one, since that’s fairly close to Maxie Zeus’ gimmick.
“In an odd couple story, Wolverine and Shanna the She-Devil team up to track the newcomer down and get a blood sample, in an odd couple story.”
Either a small editing flub or you *really* want us to know it’s an odd couple story.
As for Snikt!, what I’ve read of Tsutomu Nihei doesn’t just have manga pacing, it’s slow and told largely by implication in that context too.
Fixed – thanks.
“but like a lot of Marvel books from this period, it’s very slow in serial form”
Interesting to realize that serialized storytelling has sped up since the Jemas/Quesada years. Writers are still writing for the trade, but are offering more story. I suppose they have to as individual issues are more and more expensive.
“WOLVERINE vol 3 #6”
I feel like we should at least mention that Kurt is fully nude on that cover. I read that was a joke that somehow made it past editorial.
“Once they get closer to the sun, Jean’s full Phoenix power is triggered”
Technically, her power is triggered when Wolverine mercy kills her. I’m being picky, but it seems like an important detail.
While the idea of Switzerland being its own continent in the Marvel Universe is amusing, what did that writer even mean? That line makes absolutely zero sense even if he used the correct term of “country”. Did he mean “counties”? That would only make sense if the characters were in France, and it’d still be a strange way to place Switzerland by saying “three counties away from France” rather than naming the county; it’d be incomprehensible in geographical terms. I can’t wrap my mind around
Greg Rucka’s run was one of the high points of Wolverine having his own solo book also. I really enjoyed the Claremont stories when Wolverine first got his own title, the Rucka run, and Jason Aaron on Wolverine. Otherwise, I’ve never been a fan of Wolverine having his own comic.
I don’t think we’re ever meant to be sympathetic to Quentin because he’s not a stand in for a student revolutionary. He’s a stand-in for a school shooter, what with his motivation being a collection of “identity” issues and wanting to impress girls.
The problem with that interpretation is that Morrison did an explicit story about an actual, as opposed to metaphorical, school shooter in New X-Men. There were a lot of fascist implications and symbolism around Quire in Morrison’s story-arc. I think instead of “school shooter” symbolism, Morrison was foreseeing the alt-Right version of a “student revolutionary”, rather than progressive or Leftist revolutionary.
There’s also Quire’s “Magneto was right” slogan. While Morrison does make the point that Magneto’s sole purpose in the modern age is as a symbol and he should stay dead, there’s also Morrison’s interpretation of Magneto as akin to Jack Kirby’s “the master race ideology is Hitler’s ideology” interpretation of Magneto.
Never even though of that angle but that is very true, Quire does come across as a prototypical Ben Shapiro/Dave Rubin/what have you type.
The Jemas era was also the start of Marvel publishing many books more-than-monthly ; for example, Austen pumped out 34 issues of Uncanny in barely 20 months. This helped quicken the pace a bit, but not always, and certainly not consistently ; many of the decompressed books/minis were the one that still ran monthly.
This whole period, to me, was a mix of uninteresting and bad. Quite representative of the whole Jemas/Quesada era. I didn’t bother trying the rebooted solo or ANY of the minis here, and The Draco was the point where I gave up on Uncanny.
Gotta love the era when the X-Men were split into three separate teams, of each of which Wolverine was an active member, while he was also starring in multiple miniseries and his own title.
Shaping it into a coherent Wolverine chronology means there must be long periods of time when the rest of the Marvel Universe is sitting around twiddling their thumbs for weeks on end waiting for Logan to come back before they can progress their own continuing plotlines…
I think 2003 is when I first found The X-Axis, and have been following Paul writing about the X-Men ever since.
I can’t keep up with all the retcons, but shouldn’t that be Xorn or Xorneto in all the New X-Men entries?
I maintain Xorn is Krakoan propaganda invented to cover up that time Magneto was all high on Kick and started his own death camps.
heh, “Elias Bogan”. In Australia, that’s the equivalent of his name being Elias Chav.
And yeah, Quire has actually become pretty interesting now, but I was honestly surprised anyone wanted to bring him back at the time. I think maybe Morrison (as well as the alt-right toxic demagoguery as mentioned) was having a bit of a dig at a sector of his own fans who affect the persona of a revolutionary with a wild hairstyle and a provocative T shirt but have little of substance to offer. Those same fans took Quire at face value, and here we are.
And yeah, Nightcrawler and Wolverine in the style of an erotic pulp paperback cover is quite the image.
The loony mob boss in that Tieri storyline may also be a play on real-life American mobster Vincent “Chin” Gigante, who tried to dodge prosecution by pretending to be severely mentally ill in public for several decades. Apparently he used to walk around in the streets in a bathrobe muttering nonsense to himself.
How was Quentin Quire alt-right, unless you regard the left as so perfect anything bad has to be on the right? I don’t think Ben Shapiro (who’s never been a part of the alt-right) sporting a pink mohawk or a revolutionary t-shirt reminiscent of Che Guevera.
I pointed out that Magneto’s presentation under Morrison was Jack Kirby’s “master race” version, while Quire wore a “Magneto was right” T-shirt.
Quire was upset that regular humans were being allowed to the school. He was upset that Xavier was actually pursuing a policy of equality between humans and mutants. He is eerily foreshadowing the accelerationism ideology of a Nick Land.
His symbolism was very much wrapped up in fascist symbolism.
No one going to bat for hatemonger dumb dumb Ben Shapiro is going to get a good response around here.
Instead of Shapiro, Compare Morrison’s Quire to Richard Spencer. The pink hair is different but the hairstyle itself is very similar (it is known as the “fashy” and has been popular with neo-Nazis for some time). Both are into iconography, ethno-nationalism, idolising Hitler/Magneto, stunts designed to disrupt the activities of the “enemy”, the list goes on. Not that Quire was a pastiche of Spencer directly, I don’t think that particular blight on humanity was well-known back then. But the movement in general has deep roots, and bears a strong resemblance to what happens in the comic.
The moral that it was just idiot kids being idiots doesn’t sit quite right, nor does Quire as a Phoenix in the White Hot Room, I’m not sure where he was going with that.
I think Morrison’s point by the end of his run was that no one is irredeemable, as we even saw Cassandra Nova (responsible for an attempted genocide) shown as redeemable. Maybe everyone except Magneto, I guess. heh
I think Morrison’s statement is about evolution, that things are progressing in a direction towards betterment, even if there are set backs along the way.
Portraying Magneto as old and outdated, along with going back to the Kirby “Hitler analogue” version, I think was about showing that those sorts of ideas are dying. Magneto is a relic of the past, like Nazi ideology.
Instead, the world is moving towards greatest equality and understanding. Xavier’s dream seems more achievable during Morrison’s run.
So, outside of the very representation of the old ideologies, based in division, violence, and hate; everyone has a chance to be redeemed. That’s how I read it. I get what you mean though, Si.
“The moral that it was just idiot kids being idiots doesn’t sit quite right”
I think that lands differently now than it did back then, since the latest fascist resurgence wasn’t quite in full swing yet.
But dumb kids unwittingly using fascist symbols they think are cool seems about right for Riot at Xavier’s. The whole thing was an overblown reaction to Quire finding out he was adopted plus an attempt to impress a girl he liked. He used the things he knew Xavier disliked most: exclusion, Magneto, anti-mutant propaganda, etc. to launch what amounted to a giant tantrum.
And what a great way to show that Magneto was completely irrelevant. The boy who was his biggest proponent at the school didn’t even understand what Magneto stood for or had personally been through.
Of course, today we see uninformed, painfully transparent, attention-seeking public figures actively courting fascists, so I can see why in retrospect the whole Riot arc reads uncomfortably.
Chris V I think you’re right, it’s a theme I hadn’t noticed. So many characters improve through change and are generally happier at the end. Especially people like Beak and Angel. Cassandra Nova becoming Ernst is fascinating when seen through this lens (never mind what happened with other writers later).
But, uh, how about that Wolverine guy, eh? He sure did some stuff during this time period too…
Portraying Magneto as old and outdated, along with going back to the Kirby “Hitler analogue” version, I think was about showing that those sorts of ideas are dying. Magneto is a relic of the past, like Nazi ideology.
Instead, the world is moving towards greatest equality and understanding. Xavier’s dream seems more achievable during Morrison’s run.
So, outside of the very representation of the old ideologies, based in division, violence, and hate; everyone has a chance to be redeemed. That’s how I read it. I get what you mean though, Si.
Even in Magnet’s case, there’s the stuff in Planet X where the kids all miss “Mr. Xorn” after Magneto reveals himself. Later, Magneto — high on Kick/Sublime possession — is briefly “confronted” by his conscience breaking through and has an argument with “Xorn’s” helmet.
At the end, Xavier spells it out: “The worst thing you ever did was to come back, Erik.” Magneto, almost despite himself, had the chance to change into a new, genuinely inspiring and caring figure. Reverting to form ends with pointless destruction.
And Sublime/Kick is, of course, the ultimate retrograde being, an atavism that insists it’s the peak of all evolution and development and wants to destroy or dominate mutants because they represent real change.
But only until the Brian Wood X-Men, where he’s a goodie who conquers Rachel Summer’s heart.
I sometimes feel sorry (well, not really) for Austen, who’s remembered as the author of the worst X-Men run, when there’s stuff like that – as stupid as his, but not outlandish, just boring. So it’s just forgotten instead of mocked mercilessly over and over, when it’s just as deserving if not more. Austen at least had some ideas and wrote a not terrible Juggernaut face turn. Wood’s run is a complete waste of good art.
FTR I brought up Ben Shapiro because he was one of the first that came to mind when I think of “online conservative personalities.”
(apologies my internet crapped out and ate the second part of my post)
Richard Spencer is probably a better example because Shapiro is ultimately much more close to Fox News conservatives than what Quire can be seen as a proto-typical example of.
“Quire was upset that regular humans were being allowed to the school.”
They were?
“At the end, Xavier spells it out: “The worst thing you ever did was to come back, Erik.” Magneto, almost despite himself, had the chance to change into a new, genuinely inspiring and caring figure. Reverting to form ends with pointless destruction.”
It seems like a shit version of the 60s one dimensional Magneto, as opposed to Claremont’s Magneto, who was a far more interesting version. But Morrison never seemed interested in taking that version and evolving him. Or any version of Magneto, beyond the 1960s version.
I think this has to be one of the more confusing tiin Wolverine’s history, in terms of trying to sort out what fits where.
“No one going to bat for hatemonger dumb dumb Ben Shapiro is going to get a good response around here”.
You speak for everyone? I don’t particularly know who Shapiro is, but I do know not everybody is part of the lefty group-think.
Oy vey.
I do agree that peaceful coexistence felt more possible in Morrison’s run than pretty much any other. Morrison ran with the minority metaphor. Mutants had their own New York City neighborhood. Mutants had fashion designers. The Xavier Mansion wasn’t a secret location anymore. Add that to the general compassion in Morrison’s run, and mutants feel more real.
(Not going to explain why Ben Shapiro is terrible, that’s been done plenty)
Morrison characters are always so hard to place because Morrison always tacks so many weird random things onto characters until they’re unrecognizable as an archetype. But you have to look past that to see what’s really going on.
Everybody knows a Quentin. Quentin is not a media figure, Quentin is not even an iconoclast. Quentin is the kid who thinks he’s being original because he doesn’t know a million other kids are already doing the same thing.
I’d say that Morrison’s version of Magneto as “Bwahaha I was evil all along, but… In DISGUISE” was a reductive take on the character. It only makes sense if you’re writing the last traditional X-Men story ever, to kill off Magneto and Jean Grey in one fell swoop. Unfortunately this story occurred in the same timespan as the Fox X-Men movies so it was doomed to fail. Imagine if Marvel hadn’t immediately retconned Morrison’s run, it would have left years of viable stories on the board while significantly changing the status quo. It was always kind of a fool’s dream though.
Can we stop talking about Ben Shapiro? If anything should be canceled it’s his sophomoric incel understanding of the world.
I meant to also say, how many versions of Magneto had we seen before Morisson? There was obviously the 60s villain, the Claremont redemption arc, then he went back to evil with the Rogue/Zaladane arc and Moira manipulating him, then was rather easily defeated and put in a coma. It seemed for a while that the good part of Magneto was Joseph and the evil psyche went into Onslaught, none of which made any sense. Then he showed up as Erik the Red to expose Gambit? God damn the 90s X-Men are a clusterfuck
“then he went back to evil with the Rogue/Zaladane arc”
No, he didn’t. He basically admitted that Xavier’s way wasn’t the right path for him, but he wasn’t going back to being his one-dimensional 60s version either.
How many great Magneto stories did we get after the Morrison story was undone? Basically none. He spends a year in Claremont’s Excalibur book, is the bizarre deus ex machine of Avengers Disassembled, and then House of M, in which he’s not even a main character. Then he ends up sitting on the sidelines of the books until deep in the Utopia era.
I’m sure even Morrison knew that eventually Marvel was going to bring Magneto back somehow (after all, he had a reality warping daughter who could’ve done it as part of House of M, like she did with Hawkeye, Magik, etc…). What annoyed readers was the immediacy of the retcon, and the ham-fisted way it was done which basically said to all readers “this story you just finished reading didn’t really matter at all.”
My take on Magneto’s viability as a character is that Claremont attempted to rehabilitate him from the unambiguous megalomaniac villain into a more nuanced character and, according to many readers, succeeded.
That certainly made Magneto more of a draw for readership. Some wanted to see how he would contribute to stories as a reformed villain, some would want to see how exactly he would collapse or be exposed. I guess some were just curious.
But the problem there is that such an approach is inherently self-limiting. The more interest there is in the character, the more reason exists to bring up his published history. Some people will simply not choose to selectively reevaluate it as Claremont seems to have invited us to. People will take sides, which creates controversy, which creates discussion and probably helped create further interest.
But there is only so much to do with the character while it is saddled with so much contradictory baggage. Claremont allowed himself to disregard even his own stories to present Magneto under a good light. It is only fair that Roger Stern, Grant Morrison and others feel entitled to likewise disregard that good light and go for a more traditional (and better supported) take on Magneto.
“How many great Magneto stories did we get after the Morrison story was undone?”
I’d say that while there might not be great Magneto stories, there was great use made of the character, in that writers got a lot out of having him around as a cast member for the more altruistic and traditionally heroic characters to bounce off and interact with.
Carey made good use of him in his run, and later Cullen Bunn did, too. I’m not a fan of Bunn’s Magneto – since I like Claremont’s ‘striving for redemption version’ and Bunn’s take was that Magneto is a hypocrite. But that ongoing with Walta was good.
Unfortunately it goes sort of nowhere – first he has to work in Axis, then Secret Wars ends the ongoing, and afterwards he’s still writing Magneto, but he fades into the background over Bunn’s Uncanny and Blue runs.
The thing is that Morrison clearly gave Marvel an out with Magneto; “Here Comes Tomorrow” establishes that Kick is Sublime and that he can control and alter the thoughts of the people who use it, and yet Marvel chose to do the complicated and stupid Xorn retcon.
Marvel wanted Magneto to be usable in his heroic or at least shades of grey version. That is easier when you say ‘that wasn’t him at all’ than if you say ‘it was him BUT on mind-controlling drugs’.
We’ve discussed in these comment sections characters who can’t get rid of a story from their past that makes them close to unusable, no matter how many redemption story arcs they go through (see: Scarlet Witch, who’s now on redemption story #4, I think).
Magneto isn’t one of them. Magneto got away clean – even though Morrison’s run was the biggest thing in X-Men comics for the past 20 years, up to HOXPOX.
Was the Xorn brothers switcheroo stupid and clearly an ass pull? Yes.
Did it successfully divorce ‘the real Magneto’ from the crazed maniac who razed Manhattan? I’d say so.
Yeah, I’d say Morrison’s big mistake was thinking they could upend the franchise the way they did with Doom Patrol. I don’t know this for a fact, but I assume they wanted to take Magneto off the board for good. Otherwise, why spend so much time making him seem irrelevant?
Morrison rehabilitated Cassandra Nova, for goodness sake. And they brought back Jean and Quentin for the big final arc in the future, but Magneto was nowhere to be seen.
There was a lot of good in New X-Men, but throwback Magneto and emotionally unstable Beast were both problems that left the characters worse off than before.
The Xorn-is-Magneto reveal was one of the biggest surprises I ever experienced in a comic, and it was gutting. He only had a handful of appearances, but I really liked Xorn. The fact that he also worked in special education probably had something to do with it. I would have loved to see special ed. at the Xavier school explored further.
Quentin Quire started out as a deeply unpleasant modern day incel with powers. If they had to keep using him, I’m glad the writers moved him away from that characterization. If Morrison hadn’t portrayed him more positively in “Here Comes Tomorrow,” I’m sure he would have become a villain.
@YLu and @Krzysiek, that’s kind of my point. All of the good Magneto stories come a decade after the Morrison run is over. If Marvel had just let Magneto stay dead for a bit — even if he was just brought back in House of M a couple years later, the Morrison run wouldn’t feel quite so tarnished. Instead, they brough back Magneto one month after Morrison left only for Claremont to spend a year doing the completely unmemorable Excalibur series and then to basically vanish.
Anyway, my headcanon for all this nonsense is that Scarlet Witch brought back Magneto and created the “real” Xorns as part of her building insanity in the runup to Avengers Disassembled.
I agree with Mike L. I’d really liked Xorn as a new introduction to the cast and a counterpoint to the cynicism of say, Emma. I was also gutted by the “it was Magneto all along!” which I recall was breathtaking at the time. Oh the days before spoilers.
I also think the awful, offensive retcon was as a reaction to fans who also liked the concept of Xorn. They could have got away with it… But the delivery was so ham fisted. As so obviously editorially mandated! I do like to think the conclusion of New X-Men is really the “end” of X-Men. Everyone gets their redemption, or the promise of it.
Otherwise, Wolverine being on three teams at once was regularly lampshaded as ridiculous, if I recall.
Ok, I appreciate that just about everyone hates the post-Morrison Xorneto retcon, but the bottom line is that’s current canon, yes? Or has that been re-retconned?
So shouldn’t the entries above say Xorn infiltrated the mansion, then masqueraded as Magneto to terrorize NY, and then Logan killed Xorn? Currently it reads as though the character was Magneto.
Speaking of characters that can’t get away from their past, shout out to HTA pal Al Ewing for his new Hank Pym story in Ant Man 1. Hopefully, there is not another shoe dropping at the end of it.
I’ll come back to this in a future chapter, but basically, the retconning of this story was so incompetently carried out that I don’t accept that there *is* a clearly defined present state of continuity on it.
@Nu-D: Yours is a pretty good question.
Far as I can tell the retcon is still canon.
However, pretty much everyone acts as if it were not.
To the best of my understanding, we just can’t very well picture Xorn having the proper personality and motivation to impersonate Magneto so convincingly, and therefore most everyone ends up glossing over that retcon and deciding that Magneto just turned up alive somehow.
It is an interesting situation, where the information is not contested but is strongly doubted anyway, apparently out of aesthetical perception alone.
Probably the most astonishing thing about the Xorn/Magneto confusion is that someone, presumably Chuck Austen, decided that what the mess really needed was a twin brother with an almost identical name and power set, like when a guy’s D&D character dies.