tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post374310468013541138..comments2024-03-22T04:20:11.870-05:00Comments on Gentlemen of Leisure: X-amining Wolverine #48Austin Gortonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14281239771248780430noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-84877537695295455622016-05-12T09:36:41.244-05:002016-05-12T09:36:41.244-05:00I had never been terribly interested in Wolverine ...I had never been terribly interested in Wolverine outside of the context of the X-Men. I always felt he made a great character on a team, where he could play off/against his teammates. Without that context, I didn't see much to distinguish him from the rest of the grim n' gritty heroes populating the comic book world at the time. This was a large part of of why I stopped buying after the first four issues--imagine my surprise when I found myself bored with my favorite character's solo series! (Buscema's art didn't help, for me.) The exception was his original 4-issue mini-series, which I still love, and the few stories like this that attempted to explore his origin. It also wasn't too much longer that I first abandoned the X-Men, and then comics entirely.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11428939457863204851noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-13065326902332897412016-05-11T19:21:54.715-05:002016-05-11T19:21:54.715-05:00// It's mostly just Wolverine wandering around...<br><i>// It's mostly just Wolverine wandering around the old Weapon X facility (him not knowing that's what it is) and having flashbacks //</i><br /><br />And that’s fine. Except in the absence of, like, hallucinogens being pumped into the facility, or some kind of antagonist using mental powers on him, or most to the point the chemical-&-computer framework in place in the <i>Weapon X</i> serial, it’s weird for the memories to overcome him to so great an extent it’s as if they’re literally happening to him and he repeatedly needs to snap back to reality. Of course we’re talking science-fiction/superhero fantasy, so it’s not like one can say this would never happen, but we could still be shown what he’s seeing without him going through those motions, simply being stopped in his tracks or withdrawn into himself instead of reciting dialogue from the memories out loud. Just seemed overkill, I guess. Could be that it’s perfectly consistent with his implants or whatever.<br /><br>Blamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07342343767763035991noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-30244667927159225232016-05-10T07:37:15.991-05:002016-05-10T07:37:15.991-05:00Re: KP&W, in the 80's MAD did a parody on ...Re: KP&W, in the 80's MAD did a parody on "Dirty Dancing", where they collected and named for every panel a cliche from the flick to form a coherent-ish followable entirely. It is possible to do engaging entertainment by doing it by the numbers. I have no scrubles with Milgrom and it got ninjas, so all good.<br /><br />Other than that, KP&W for me stands as the golden standard of continuity control, with Wolverine and Kitty Pryde being written out of the main title for the duration (and then some), and checking the Casket of Ancient Winters, Storm's losing her powers and Guardian's death at appropriate times.<br /><br />Mileage may vary on Ogun, but at least there we got one solid piece of Logan's history that would need to be acknowledged when delving with it.Teemunoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-41247718952335446042016-05-10T06:46:27.173-05:002016-05-10T06:46:27.173-05:00Too bad, you missed some really good Wolverine sto...Too bad, you missed some really good Wolverine story lines. wwk5dnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-86801859056339684262016-05-10T06:45:09.267-05:002016-05-10T06:45:09.267-05:00Prior to this, he seemed to remember somethings an...Prior to this, he seemed to remember somethings and not others. I remember during the last days of the Byrne era in Uncanny, for example, there was a flashback to Wolverine having a conversation with Jim and Heather Hudson over not remembering how he got his claws and bones. <br /><br />I guess it was selective enough to fir the needs of whoever was writing the story, and how much Logan needed to remember for that particular story.wwk5dnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-9381785260174070142016-05-10T05:37:16.436-05:002016-05-10T05:37:16.436-05:00The point I was going after with the Omega Red sto...The point I was going after with the Omega Red story was that in WOLVERINE the false memory implant memories really doesn't contradict with Logan's previous history as a fully regular human intelligence operator which was established by Claremont, whereas the portrayal of his roaming around East Berlin in futuristic-for-their-time 90'sriffic tight black team outfits with a gang of other superhumans take something away from his later membership in the X-Men. I know it's the same exact setup in both books, but Jim Lee somehow manages to turn it more into being too 90's comic.<br /><br />Or maybe it's Maverick. Oh well, we'll get there.Teemunoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-48387220804222060972016-05-10T05:21:01.569-05:002016-05-10T05:21:01.569-05:00It was better that way, if you think that then the...It was better that way, if you think that then they committed and now everyone's going around insisting that Logan is some kind of James Howlett <i>like for reals</i>.<br /><br />I liked that MCP story much better which had Wolverine fighting a big worm thing with a bunch of Native American a couple of centuries back and left you with some serious questioning about everything you ever knew about Logan.Teemunoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-67363062185909892422016-05-09T16:26:13.910-05:002016-05-09T16:26:13.910-05:00Was the story that bad, or just a case of you got ...Was the story that bad, or just a case of you got what you came for and didn't need anymore?Austin Gortonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14281239771248780430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-7505562304430798632016-05-09T16:25:41.626-05:002016-05-09T16:25:41.626-05:00I'm sure I'll get into this more as the st...I'm sure I'll get into this more as the story (and others that follow it) go along, but I think the big problem with the memory implant angle is also it's advantage: anything a writer doesn't like can be written off as an implant, but at the same time, nothing that's established as being "real" has any permanence because, see above. <br /><br />Also, even in these early goings, it seems like nobody at Marvel wanted to commit to anything, so very little gets established as being "real" from the outset, leaving everything in this nebulous, stakes-less realm of "maybe it's real, maybe it's not!"Austin Gortonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14281239771248780430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-40736532202474396192016-05-09T16:14:01.323-05:002016-05-09T16:14:01.323-05:00Yeah, the biggest takeaway of this story, moreso t...Yeah, the biggest takeaway of this story, moreso than specific details it may or may not reveal about Wolverine's past, seems to be the idea that his past being a mystery is as true for the character as for the readers, which wasn't always clear prior to this. Austin Gortonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14281239771248780430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-33215091895861344152016-05-09T16:09:33.871-05:002016-05-09T16:09:33.871-05:00And, of course, Michigan is the wolverine state. :...And, of course, Michigan is the wolverine state. :) Austin Gortonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14281239771248780430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-73549582158895072952016-05-09T16:09:01.667-05:002016-05-09T16:09:01.667-05:00While we agree on WOLVERINE, we'll just have t...While we agree on WOLVERINE, we'll just have to agree to disagree on KITTY PRYDE & WOLVERINE, which I find rather dull and trite and cliche, made worse by some terrible, terrible art. <br /><br />I'm also a bigger fan of the Omega Red Wolverine arc in X-MEN than most people, though I can't argue that it suffers from issue-to-issue (and often panel-to-panel) continuity problems. Austin Gortonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14281239771248780430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-45589124754766048262016-05-09T14:13:56.679-05:002016-05-09T14:13:56.679-05:00This issue was the first solo Wolverine I bought s...This issue was the first solo Wolverine I bought since issue #4 (!!). The promise of digging into his past was too good to pass up. I know I was familiar with the Weapon X series, though I hadn't bought them at the time. (That was maybe the first time I decided to "wait for the trade", since each issue only had like 8 pages of story.) So I bought this through #50--had to get the die-cut cover--and then never bought another Wolverine book.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11428939457863204851noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-57668690786808887422016-05-07T13:40:48.405-05:002016-05-07T13:40:48.405-05:00That annoys me as well. WE didn't know about h...That annoys me as well. WE didn't know about his past, but Logan did. That was the status quo of the classic version of the character. This is the start of the "he doesn't remember his past" thing, and the memory-implant stuff that ... Well, it probably could have been made to work if it had been done coherently, with someone having a road map of what was real and what wasn't, and a satisfying conclusion to it all. Instead, things just got more and more incoherent as time went on. Personally, I was able to put up with it for a while, because I liked Hama and Silvestri and Green. Even once Silvestri left, I still had optimism that it was all heading somewhere satisfying. I remember the exact issue where I finally threw up my hands. But it will be a few months before this blog gets there ... so I will shut up.<br /><br />At this point, it was exciting to see BWS's very self contained Wolverine story being integrated into the solo ongoing.Jasonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13298753675007196538noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-57762666518554684702016-05-07T12:23:13.369-05:002016-05-07T12:23:13.369-05:00I've always been confused about the status quo...I've always been confused about the status quo of Wolverine's memories. When I began reading the comics in the 90's I was under the impression that he has no memories of ANYTHING prior to the Weapon X project. Later I learned that he has prior memories, but they may be implanted false memories. Then when I read the original Cockrum and Byrne runs he made reference to past events that he surely remembered, but we as readers weren't clued into what they meant to keep him mysterious. I even remember in the first Wolverine mini-series there was a reference to his parents. I'm assuming he was meant to have no amnesia at all first, but as time went on the false memories/amnesia aspect was ramped up to make him even more of a mystery.Ian Millerhttp://ianjmiller.deviantart.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-57100935237811316182016-05-07T01:57:40.937-05:002016-05-07T01:57:40.937-05:00Oh, and, gotta mention: in junior high I got a cla...Oh, and, gotta mention: in junior high I got a classmate who went onto a North American trip, and they stayed a while in Windsor, Canada. I shot my knowledgeable mofo cred to completely new heights with being able to comment on oh, it being there right across the river from Detroit, curiously south of it, courtesy of this very story.<br /><br />The town was probably chosen for homage reasons to the Weapon X creator, though a border town is also very appropriate for more questionable sort of agent shenanigans.Teemunoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-85161731615489708982016-05-07T01:47:46.567-05:002016-05-07T01:47:46.567-05:00The trick is to compare this era of WOLVERINE to o...The trick is to compare this era of WOLVERINE to other stuff that was out contemporarily with it, and not to the 80's classics like WOLVERINE LS and KITTY PRYDE & WOLVERINE.<br /><br />I like a plenty of the continuous slipping back and forth from reality and the (false) memories in this one, and the now-starting arc is fine in itself when confined to the Hama WOLVERINE book. I think much of the bad name comes from the related stuff that starts happening on Jim Lee's X-MEN starting from #4. What we see here is more or less the sort of appropriate agent stuff that Claremont has hinted at previously. Not so with the carbonarium nonsense.Teemunoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-18932393454157061462016-05-06T23:52:33.917-05:002016-05-06T23:52:33.917-05:00One of the flashbacks in this issue features narra...<i>One of the flashbacks in this issue features narration from unidentified individuals discussing the importance of tying false memory implants to instances of pain, as the mind is less likely to remember specific details of events while dealing with pain.</i><br /><br />Conveniently color-coded with green, in this "sequel to Weapon X". I'm not sure about the purpoted non-identification. ;)Teemunoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7266470995513648978.post-44689753210506605012016-05-06T18:13:46.040-05:002016-05-06T18:13:46.040-05:00Have no fear Austin, this is the first issue of a ...Have no fear Austin, this is the first issue of a very cool run for Hama & Silvestri & Green.I Grok Spockhttp://igrokspock.comnoreply@blogger.com