|
|
Post by commond on Aug 17, 2024 16:29:47 GMT -5
I took a look at Byrne's Wolverine origin story. It's kind of rushed and includes a bunch of other subplots since it's supposed to be an early 80s floppy. I get that it's meant to be fragmented because it's Wolverine reliving his own memories, but I would have liked to have spent more time at each stage of Logan's past. Byrne still can't draw kids. Young Logan is the ugliest looking kid you'll ever see. It's a shame that Stern and Byrne didn't do their Wolverine story that they had planned for Captain America as it doesn't make much sense that modern day Captain America doesn't remembering fighting alongside Logan in the war. There's some awful writing involving the Canadian government folks, especially them harping on about taxpayers money all the time. Personally, I have a hard time buying into the Canadian government doing anything remotely shady, but that could be based on my own stereotypical views of Canada. Sabretooth being Wolverine's father has never appealed to me. It reminds me of a story Warren Ellis liked to tell about Marvel guys sitting around in the office having geeky conversations about how old Wolverine was, etc. I don't really like the idea of Wolverine being 60-100. To me, that opens that kettle of fish where suddenly Logan can be involved in any these things that happened in the past and know everybody. It also makes it kind of creepy that he's always chasing these younger women.
I dunno. I kind of feel as though Wolverine was convoluted from the get-go as soon as Byrne wanted to make him more than just a character that randomly appeared in an issue of Hulk.
|
|
|
|
Post by Ricky Jackson on Aug 18, 2024 18:41:04 GMT -5
As a Canadian, I can buy our government doing shady things, but we are generally very good at keeping our dirty little secrets hidden from the rest of the world (or maybe more accurately, we aren't interesting enough for most to dig below the stereotypes)
|
|
|
|
Post by commond on Aug 18, 2024 20:12:28 GMT -5
Now I wanna see the Canadian version of Unsolved Mysteries.
|
|
|
|
Post by Yasotay on Sept 7, 2024 1:43:15 GMT -5
Thought I might as well toss in my (late) two cents on this one, too, since I already did it for the Roy Thomas podcast.
Another very good episode. On who gets the credit for Wolverine, I'd suggest that it really comes down to terminology and definitions. Perhaps there should be three categories here: 1. The originator of the idea (Thomas, unless you also want to credit Cockrum since he claims to have come to Thomas with the idea, earlier); 2. The actual creator of the character (Romita, Wein and maybe Trimpe who formed it into something more than a general idea); 3. The popularizer (obviously Claremont and Byrne and possibly Miller if you want to credit him, as well).
They all probably deserve some credit but as the saying goes, "Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan." I do believe all of them, and not just Claremont and Byrne, should share in credit for the character's success. After all, Claremont and Byrne created other characters completely of their own, but how many of them became major breakout stars? I think Jeff was correct in suggesting some of this may just come down to the ferocity and the claws, which predated Claremont and Byrne.
You also pointed out how Wolverine became a more important figure in X-Men when Byrne took over but the interesting thing to me was how Claremont completely changed the portrayal of the character. Early on, I always felt he wrote Wolverine as basically a loud-mouth punk, more annoying than anything else. He gradually improved the character and added more depth but it wasn't really until the Dark Phoenix saga, in particular issue 133, that the character turned a corner. I seem to recall him becoming much more popular after that specific issue. It just seemed like, instead of a punk with a chip on his shoulder, from that point on Claremont began to write Wolverine as more of a cold, hardened, professional killer. That was something I don't think you saw with Marvel heroes before this, except maybe on occasion with Nick Fury. I always felt his characterization became akin to the kind of characters Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson played in some of their big movies of that era.
|
|
|
|
Post by spoon on Sept 7, 2024 17:13:54 GMT -5
Thought I might as well toss in my (late) two cents on this one, too, since I already did it for the Roy Thomas podcast. Another very good episode. On who gets the credit for Wolverine, I'd suggest that it really comes down to terminology and definitions. Perhaps there should be three categories here: 1. The originator of the idea (Thomas, unless you also want to credit Cockrum since he claims to have come to Thomas with the idea, earlier); First, thanks for listening. It's cool that people listened to an episode I had the privilege to contribute to. To be clear, Cockrum said he had a character he wanted to name Wolverine among the character ideas he showed Thomas, but he was clear it wasn't the same character. It was just the same name. Yes, I think "loud-mouth punk" is a good way of putting Claremont's early portrayal of Wolverine. He has the attitude. He has the viciousness. But often his anger or attitude would get the better of him, and he'd get his comeuppance. It's my impression that this wasn't merely a matter of Claremont independently changing the way he wrote Wolverine, but that Byrne played a crucial role in the change. I think Byrne was involved in the plotting pretty much from the beginning. His first issue was #108. The first issue with credits suggesting he's involved in the writing is #113 which collectively labels Claremont & Byrne as "raconteurs" before #114 which explicitly calls them both plotters. My understanding from interviews is that this was a result Byrne was getting credit for a role that he felt he had already been performing rather than only starting to co-plot with #113. I think Byrne, Cockrum, and Claremont have all said that Byrne wanted to give more attention to Wolverine, especially in contrast to Cockrum. I'm a huge fan of all of Claremont's original run on X-Men. I've so many of the issues tons of times. But when I re-read, it's often a short run of a few issues or an individual issue. But from December 2023 to March 2024, I binge-read Giant-Size X-Men #1 through Uncanny X-Men #143 in their entirety, which is the shortest time I've gone through all those issues in order. That really crystallized in my mind how Cockrum and Byrne's differing feelings about Wolverine played out in practice. It's a pretty stark dividing line between Cockrum and Byrne in the depiction of Wolverine. So many of Logan's moments of competence and charisma from the Byrne period would never have happened during Cockrum's first run. In Byrne's second issue (#109), we've already got Wolverine's moment stalking a deer, and Weapon Alpha (a/k/a Vindicator, a/k/a Guardian) puts the focus on him. I have the disadvantage of not being alive or too young to read during the Claremont/Byrne run, so I wouldn't remember firsthand the turning point in Wolverine's personality. But I think the ingredients for his breakout moment in #133 were being put in place throughout Byrne's run. For example, the way he resolves the fight with Alpha Flight in #122 by feigning surrender and then escaping is clearly beyond the expectations for the character before Byrne's arrival. |
|
|
|
Post by Yasotay on Sept 8, 2024 1:55:33 GMT -5
Thought I might as well toss in my (late) two cents on this one, too, since I already did it for the Roy Thomas podcast. Another very good episode. On who gets the credit for Wolverine, I'd suggest that it really comes down to terminology and definitions. Perhaps there should be three categories here: 1. The originator of the idea (Thomas, unless you also want to credit Cockrum since he claims to have come to Thomas with the idea, earlier); First, thanks for listening. It's cool that people listened to an episode I had the privilege to contribute to. To be clear, Cockrum said he had a character he wanted to name Wolverine among the character ideas he showed Thomas, but he was clear it wasn't the same character. It was just the same name. Yes, I think "loud-mouth punk" is a good way of putting Claremont's early portrayal of Wolverine. He has the attitude. He has the viciousness. But often his anger or attitude would get the better of him, and he'd get his comeuppance. It's my impression that this wasn't merely a matter of Claremont independently changing the way he wrote Wolverine, but that Byrne played a crucial role in the change. I think Byrne was involved in the plotting pretty much from the beginning. His first issue was #108. The first issue with credits suggesting he's involved in the writing is #113 which collectively labels Claremont & Byrne as "raconteurs" before #114 which explicitly calls them both plotters. My understanding from interviews is that this was a result Byrne was getting credit for a role that he felt he had already been performing rather than only starting to co-plot with #113. I think Byrne, Cockrum, and Claremont have all said that Byrne wanted to give more attention to Wolverine, especially in contrast to Cockrum. I'm a huge fan of all of Claremont's original run on X-Men. I've so many of the issues tons of times. But when I re-read, it's often a short run of a few issues or an individual issue. But from December 2023 to March 2024, I binge-read Giant-Size X-Men #1 through Uncanny X-Men #143 in their entirety, which is the shortest time I've gone through all those issues in order. That really crystallized in my mind how Cockrum and Byrne's differing feelings about Wolverine played out in practice. It's a pretty stark dividing line between Cockrum and Byrne in the depiction of Wolverine. So many of Logan's moments of competence and charisma from the Byrne period would never have happened during Cockrum's first run. In Byrne's second issue (#109), we've already got Wolverine's moment stalking a deer, and Weapon Alpha (a/k/a Vindicator, a/k/a Guardian) puts the focus on him. I have the disadvantage of not being alive or too young to read during the Claremont/Byrne run, so I wouldn't remember firsthand the turning point in Wolverine's personality. But I think the ingredients for his breakout moment in #133 were being put in place throughout Byrne's run. For example, the way he resolves the fight with Alpha Flight in #122 by feigning surrender and then escaping is clearly beyond the expectations for the character before Byrne's arrival. You did a good job on there, as did George and Jeff, in bringing a lot of interesting information and viewpoints to the show. I don't discount Byrne's part in the change to Wolverine's portrayal. If nothing else, I think Byrne occasionally showed Wolverine being successful in fights, whereas, it seemed Cockrum had him always get knocked out instantly. The fact Wolverine would constantly talk like such a tough guy but then get his ass handed to him in every fight, as much as anything, may have given the impression he was nothing more than a loud-mouth punk at the beginning. I was winding down my original comics reading run as a kid during the Dark Phoenix saga. I think I probably quit comics right as that was wrapping up and, honestly, I was not a big X-Men reader at the time. I was barely familiar with Wolverine except for the couple of Claremont issues I'd picked up, which gave me my loud-mouth punk impression. In my memory, he just wasn't a very big deal in comics back then. But when I started reading comics again a few years later in college, he suddenly seemed like the most popular Marvel character. They were already talking about making a Wolverine movie and this was like 1985 (there was an amusing, and strangely apropos, photo mock up someone had done of Danny Devito as Wolverine circulating around then). My roommate had all the back issues so I started reading, probably from the new team's debut in Giant-Size X-Men, up to whatever the current issue was at the time. And it just became obvious 133 was the turning point. I seem to recall hearing other comic fans back then discussing that issue as what got them interested in the character. While it may have been implied he had killed people prior to that, I'm not sure you ever saw him doing it on panel. Whereas, in 133, they actually showed him killing the guards (or at least it seemed that way, I think they brought them back as cyborgs later on). You have to remember, this was before Punisher got his own comic, before Watchmen or Dark Knight. Heroes just didn't kill people on panel in that era, certainly not with claws. For better or worse, that seemed to intrigue everyone with the character. From there, like I said, it seems Claremont kept writing him as a cold-hardened professional, à la Clint and Bronson, rather than the loud-mouth punk he started out as. |
|
