Key points
- Celebrate Wolverine's 50th anniversary with the 50 greatest comic book stories voted on by fans!
- “Old Man Logan” – Wolverine as a retired hero with dark themes, was made into a hit film.
- “Weapon X” – Barry Smith's chilling origin story redefined and popularized “Weapon X.”
We're celebrating Wolverine's 50th anniversary by counting down YOUR picks for the greatest Wolverine comics stories ever told! You all voted, I added up your votes, and now I'm counting your votes, for as long as it takes to get to #1!
These Wolverine stories will be drawn from his solo series, as well as notable collaborations with other superheroes, as well as issues of The X-Men where he was the main character of the story (this was especially common in the time before he got his own solo series, of course).
3. “Old Man Logan” (Glutton #66-72, Wolverine: Old Giant Logan #1)
The main concept of “Old Man Logan” is that it's been 50 years since Wolverine's death. By “Wolverine,” of course, we mean the superhero known as Wolverine, because the man now known as Logan retired after a horrible tragedy that led to the deaths of the X-Men (the incident is slowly but surely revealed to readers, and it's so damn tragic, and it's 100% something that would make a superhero want to hang up his costume forever). “Old Man” Logan is now a farmer and married with two young children. He rents his farm from the Banner Gang, the blood grandchildren of Bruce Banner (who married his cousin, She-Hulk).
The United States is now divided into four parts, each ruled by a specific supervillain. Clint Barton, the former Hawkeye (who is now blind), shows up at Logan's house after the Banner Gang threatens his family because Logan is late on his rent. Clint wants to hire Logan to help him transport some illegal goods across the country. Logan is forced to agree, and so the two former heroes go on a fantastical road trip across America, and as they travel, we see the world as it has become in the 50 years since the end of the Age of Heroes (a lot of dark stuff, but a lot of interesting stuff, nonetheless). The travelogue format was a brilliant idea, as it allowed Millar and McNiven to really let loose on the crazy concepts that Logan and Clint encounter on their journey.
It's truly remarkable HOW MANY fantastical elements they encounter along the way, like the Ghost Riders…
Did you see how fucking cool that was? And it was basically a throwaway gag, that's how full this plot is of wild and crazy concepts!
What do you want me to tell you about Steve McNiven? That guy is a legend. Millar, McNiven and Vines had just made the famous Civil war plot and now this was their sequel and boy, did they hit the mark. The hit movie Logan was based on this storyline. Think about it: Millar and McNiven did two stories together for Marvel and BOTH were made into hit movies! Wow! That's the kind of batting average that would make Ted Williams' eyes pop!
However, as the journey continues, Logan must continue to ask himself if he is truly content to no longer be a hero. When you have been beaten as much as Logan has been, can you ever rise up to be a hero again? It's a difficult question to answer, and here, Millar beautifully shows Logan grappling with these ideas, and discovering that the soul of a hero may never be truly broken (how that is expressed, however, is another story entirely – as Logan as a hero is very different from Wolverine who was a hero, as the world is now a much darker place).
Years later, the Logan of this storyline was brought into the Marvel Universe following the short-lived death of the regular Wolverine, leading to the popular Old Man Logan comic book series.
2. “Weapon X” (Marvel Comics presents #72-84)
To put into perspective just how much of an impact Barry Windsor-Smith's “almost” Wolverine origin had on the comics world, note the following… the term “Weapon X” wasn't a big deal among fans before Windsor-Smith named his own story after it in this 1991 story, and we didn't have the image of Wolverine in a helmet with tons of wires coming out of his body. Can you even CONCEIVE the idea that “Weapon X” was barely a thing at the time? Rob Liefeld was one of the first creators to think of playing with the X as a Roman numeral TEN and not an X, but while that was a completely different concept, the idea that no other X writer had made hay with a project called Weapon X is just mind-blowing to me, but it wasn't until this story that “Weapon X” became a thing, and boy, did it become a thing!
Within a few months of the Windsor-Smith story (which was serialized in the pages of Marvel Comics presentswhere many Shanna the She-Devil fans wondered why so many people were suddenly interested in the Shanna the She-Devil comic book series), both the term and the image were pretty much burned into the minds of comic book fans and have been ever since.
That the art from this story became so well known should come as no surprise, given that Barry Windsor-Smith is one of the most astonishing comic book artists ever, but the real revelation of the series, beyond its great art (which was somewhat predictable), was Windsor-Smith's strong story, depicting the callous cruelty of the scientists experimenting on Logan in an attempt to turn him into “Weapon X.”
The story progresses slowly, as we get a chilling look into the souls of the people working on Logan, and at the same time, see how the noble person tortured by science manages to survive the experience, and occasionally get a glimpse into the origins of what would eventually become the most famous member of the X-Men.
Man, that Windsor-Smith sure knows how to tell a story. I've made a few legends about this story over the years, and it's truly incredible how Smith approached this project. He basically came to Marvel with the first few chapters DONE, only under the ASSUMPTION that Marvel Comics Presents editor Terry Kavanagh would be interested. Again, this is Barry Windsor-Smith, so the odds of course WERE pretty good that he would be, but the nerve! And not just any story, but an untold story involving one of Marvel's most popular characters!
Of course, Kavanagh WAS interested, but then Kavanagh had to fight to get the story to actually appear IN Marvel Comics presentsas of course, the higher-ups felt this project might sell better as a prestige-format miniseries. Kavanagh thankfully won his battle to have the story published (part of his pitch was, “If this story is 'too important' to be in Marvel Comics presentswhat's the point of having Marvel Comics presents be a comic if you're going to put out something that's “too good” to be treated like that?”
But then Windsor-Smith had to fight over how much freedom he would have in the comic when it came to things like Wolverine’s nudity in the comic. With all the messy elements of comic book making, it’s amazing that it ended up being done so well!
1. “The Wolverine” (The Wolverine (1982) #1-4)
When Marvel decided to expand their publishing approach by adding miniseries as a standard publishing medium (rather than a very rare occurrence), there was no doubt that Wolverine would be one of the characters to receive one of these new miniseries. However, it probably still brought people back to how GOOD the miniseries was. Many of those early miniseries turned out to be pretty forgettable (and of course, there were some real gems, like Hercules: Prince of PowerAND Hawk Eye) but if you put Marvel's best writer, Chris Claremont, with Marvel's best artist, Frank Miller, you were bound to get a pretty good comic. However, Claremont and Miller really took the character to some astonishing new heights, basically redefining Wolverine by introducing concepts that hadn't yet been core elements of the character and have since become standard parts of his status quo, namely the whole samurai thing (Miller was just leaving Marvel to go creator-owned Ronin for DC, so this was an interesting step in Miller's creative journey).
This series (with finishes by Joe Rubinstein, whose contribution to this series is often overlooked, as Miller did not do full pencils on most of this series and people tend not to give Rubinstein credit for the pencils he did, just as Klaus Janson was the overall penciler on Daredevil (at the end of Miller's series) took Wolverine to Japan for an epic battle between Wolverine and the evil ninja Lord Shingen and the Hand (Miller's evil ninja organization) Daredevil).
Miller's layouts are striking and indelible, like this fantastic two-page presentation…
Everything about this series was just incredibly over-the-top and theatrical. Obviously, nothing beats that two-page spread for dynamism, but even the claws. See how HUGE those claws Miller makes them look? And he also makes them look like these big knives, which was a big departure from the way Wolverine's claws were depicted, but an approach that proved to be quite popular at the time.
I think “cinematic” often gets a bad rap when describing comics, because it seems a little dismissive of the comics medium, and that's something comics have had to deal with for, like, FOREVER, but at the same time, I can't help but notice that Miller, in particular, tends to do these stories that really feel like mini-movies. I was recently doing an interview with the great Patrick McDonnell (the award-winning cartoonist behind the comic strip Mutts), and he made an interesting comment about how comic strips are more like mini-stage plays, and that's why comic strips have been more successful in theater (You're a good man, Charlie Brown AND Little Orphan Annieof course, being two of the most notable successes on the stage), but the comics are better translated into widescreen action, and this Glutton The miniseries is a perfect example of this kind of thing.
This series also introduced us to the free-spirited Yukio, who helps Wolverine in Japan. Yukio proved to be a fascinating addition to the Wolverine mythos, and considering he had just gotten his own solo series at that point, the Wolverine mythos was pretty sparse (basically just the Hudsons of Alpha Flight). Claremont was notoriously cautious about giving Wolverine his own series, but by the end of this story it was clear that Wolverine could EASILY handle his own solo series, and that has certainly been proven over the years, just by looking at the stories in this series.
By the end of the miniseries, Wolverine has managed to reach a position of honor where his Japanese girlfriend, Mariko, can agree to marry him. It's fascinating that as much as this story stands alone, Claremont also used it to help set up a major plot in the The Mysterious X-Men comic, which directly followed this series (and which was a notable enough Wolverine story to finish in the top six of this year's voting). By the way, the first page of this miniseries debuted with the line “I'm the best at what I do.” So for that alone, this series would be pretty memorable.