The Incomplete Wolverine – 1984
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
Welcome to the era of event comics.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #178
“Hell Hath No Fury…”
by Chris Claremont, John Romita Jr, Bob Wiacek, Brett Breeding & Glynis Wein
February 1984
Wolverine doesn’t appear in the January issue, in which Lilandra and Binary leave with the Starjammers, and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants attack Kitty and Colossus.
In this issue, the X-Men come to the rescue. It turns out to be a diversion to draw the X-Men away from the Mansion, so that Mystique can kill Professor X as revenge for taking Rogue away from her. Rogue talks Mystique down, and Mystique spares Professor X in exchange for safe passage for the Brotherhood.
So not a Wolverine story, then. He does note that Storm is taking on some of Yukio’s traits, and suggests that he doesn’t think this is a great idea – understandably, since Yukio’s role in the Wolverine miniseries was to offer the temptation of succumbing to his instincts.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #179
“What Happened to Kitty?”
by Chris Claremont, John Romita Jr, Dan Green & Glynis Wein
March 1984
A group of Morlocks led by Callisto kidnaps Kitty Pryde to force her to keep her word and marry Caliban. (Wolverine missed the Morlocks’ debut, which happened while he was in Japan.) A dead teenager, altered by Masque, is left behind as Kitty’s supposed body, but of course it doesn’t fool Wolverine’s sense of smell. By the time the X-Men arrive, Kitty has decided to go through the wedding, partly out of guilt towards Caliban, and partly so that the Morlock Healer will cure Colossus (which he does). Of course, Caliban realises that she’s miserable and releases her from her vow. Oh, and this is also Wolverine’s first meeting with Leech.
Not much for Wolverine here either, aside from using his senses. Kitty upbraids him for attacking the Morlocks without waiting to find out if she wants to be rescued, and accuses him of looking for an excuse to fight. To be fair, she doesn’t know about the violated corpse.
At around this point, Magma (Amara Aquilla) joins the New Mutants and moves into the X-Men Mansion. Wolverine must be introduced to her, but we don’t see it.
X-MEN & THE MICRONAUTS #1-4
by Bill Mantlo, Chris Claremont, Jackson Guice and various others
4-issue miniseries
January to April 1984
Baron Karza, arch-enemy of the Micronauts – Arcturus Rann, Marionette, Acroyear, Bug, Huntarr and Fireflyte – shows up at the Mansion with the Micronauts’ living Bioship in tow. The two have just escaped a devastating battle in the Microverse against the mysterious, all-powerful Entity, and Karza has traced the Entity’s power to Professor X. The X-Men go into the Microverse, get mind-controlled by the Entity, and wind up attacking several planets for him alongside the similarly-enslaved Micronauts. After Kitty frees both teams, they join forces to defeat the Entity, who turns out to be a projection of Professor X’s dark side. Completely inconsequential for Wolverine, unless you count the fact that he meets the Micronauts.
No placement for this story is ideal, but this official position is as good as any. There’s no mention of Colossus’ injuries, which are still troubling him in Uncanny #180… but maybe he has a relapse.
NEW MUTANTS vol 1 #14
“Do You Believe in — Magik?!”
by Chris Claremont, Sal Buscema, Tom Mandrake & Glynis Wein
April 1984
The X-Men cameo as guests at a birthday party for Illyana Rasputin, who’ll join the New Mutants next issue as Magik.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #180
“Whose Life is it, Anyway?”
by Chris Claremont, John Romita Jr, Dan Green, Bob Wiacek & Glynis Wein
April 1984
Logan talks to Peter, who is brooding about his relationship with Kitty. Peter worries that he has lost her, either to the Morlocks (since she agreed to marry Caliban), or to New Mutants supporting character Doug Ramsey (who is closer to her own age). Logan’s advice is that if Peter feels that way about Kitty, then he should wait until she’s older, and that if he truly thinks he isn’t good enough for her then he’s already lost more than he realises.
This hasn’t aged brilliantly – the age gap between Peter and Kitty reads rather less comfortably now than it did nearly 40 years ago. Remember, we only just had Kitty turning 14 in Special Edition X-Men. In this issue, Peter actually says that if they were in Russia, they could be married already.
Later, the X-Men (minus Kitty, who’s off in a New Mutants storyline) investigate an enormous construct which has appeared in Central Park. Like a lot of other heroes, they blunder into the thing and get zapped off to…
MARVEL SUPER HEROES SECRET WARS #1-12
by Jim Shooter, Mike Zeck, John Beatty & Christie Scheele
12-issue miniseries
May 1984 to April 1985
The mysterious, cosmic Beyonder abducts various heroes and villains to his patchwork Battleworld, made up of bits stolen from other worlds (including a suburb of Denver). He tells each side that if they kill their opponents then they can have whatever they want. Meanwhile, Magneto gets assigned to the hero team, but only the X-Men are prepared to try and work with him – which leads to Magneto walking out, and the X-Men following him to become a third force. In practice they wind up siding with the heroes, obviously, but the X-Men’s outsider status and Magneto’s face turn is duly worked into the plot. Eventually everyone teams up to stop Galactus from eating the planet, and Doctor Doom from stealing the Beyonder’s power. And then everyone goes home.
This is the very first line-wide event crossover – Wolverine appears in all but issue #8 (which does feature the rest of the X-Men). Like other heroes, the X-Men departed for Secret Wars just as the series began, but then returned home in the very next issue. Secret Wars itself lasted a year, and the gimmick was that the changes would all be explained over time. There aren’t any radical changes for the X-Men, unless you count Colossus becoming obsessed with a girl he meets on Battleworld, which leads to his break-up with Kitty. Professor X and Rogue get new costumes, to give the impression of a bit more change. And Lockheed meets an unnamed girl dragon at the last minute, in order to set up Uncanny X-Men #181.
Naturally, Wolverine meets a bunch of new people here. On the hero side, he’s met everyone but the new Iron Man (Jim Rhodes), who at this point is pretending to be Tony Stark anyway. On the villain side, the ridiculously random line-up includes Galactus, Kang the Conqueror, Doctor Octopus (Otto Octavius), Ultron, the Molecule Man (Owen Reece), the Lizard (Curt Connors), the Absorbing Man (Crusher Creel) and the Wrecking Crew, comprising the Wrecker (Dirk Garthwaite), Thunderball (Eliot Franklin), Bulldozer (Henry Camp) and Piledriver (Brian Calusky). Wolverine also meets the debuting Titania (Mary McPherran) and Volcana (Marsha Rosenberg); the living alien Spider-Man costume later known as the Venom symbiote; Colossus’ healer Zsaji; and Galactus’ herald Nova (Frankie Raye). The new Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) also debuts in this series; Wolverine doesn’t seem to actually meet her on panel, but they probably say hi before everyone goes home.
Despite his rising popularity, Wolverine isn’t particularly central to the story. Shooter writes a throwback Wolverine, who objects to Captain America as leader because he’s weak, and then bickers with him, like in the old days with Cyclops. Later, Wolverine gets to give Nightcrawler his familiar speech about not taking prisoners in a time of war. He does indeed try to kill the Molecule Man when he gets the chance, and he cuts off the Absorbing Man’s arm while he’s in stone form, even though nobody really knows if he can be put back together. (He can.)
Issue #10 gives Wolverine a more significant scene where he berates Captain America for doing nothing to help mutants. He argues that Magneto’s reaction to humanity is perfectly understandable, and that the other heroes’ reluctance to accept him even after he’s reformed proves that Magneto was right in the first place. We’re not meant to agree with any of this – Captain America duly reminds us that Silver Age Magneto was a terrorist and murderer, and Wolverine acknowledges later on that Cap does indeed care about everyone, including mutants. It’s still interesting that Wolverine gets to be the spokesman for a comparatively radical position, though it’s probably because Shooter saw him as the X-Man most suited to being angry and wrong.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #181
“Tokyo Story”
by Chris Claremont, John Romita Jr, Dan Green & Glynis Wein
May 1984
Meanwhile, back in the regular titles… Lockheed’s new lady friend stows away as the X-Men leave. For some reason, this makes most of the X-Men reappear in Japan, and the girl dragon turn into a giant. She wreaks havoc in Tokyo, and the X-Men try to help. During this, Wolverine finds a dying mother and her daughter Amiko. Wolverine swears to keep Amiko safe and see that she is raised as if she were his own daughter. (A single panel flashback in Wolverine vol 2 #150 expands slightly on this scene.) Eventually the girl dragon vanishes, apparently after realising that Lockheed doesn’t love her.
Ah, Amiko. Wolverine adopts her in the heat of the moment, out of nowhere. And then… pretty much dumps her on Mariko and forgets about her. She winds up as a character who shows up every few years so that people can chide Wolverine about being a terrible father to her – hardly a direction that accords with the growing maturity Wolverine was meant to be showing in Claremont’s stories. Presumably she was meant to help keep Wolverine and Mariko’s relationship ticking over and give them reasons to continue to meeting up, but she’s ultimately an underdeveloped misfire.
I suppose, to be fair to Wolverine, he technically keeps to the letter of his promise: “I’ll see she’s raised as if she were my own.” Not quite the same as “I’ll raise her”. In fact, when you look at the children who have been retconned into Wolverine’s back story since there, “rais[ing] [her] as if she were my own” is a pretty low bar.
After this story, the X-Men return home. Wolverine doesn’t appear in Uncanny #182 (which is a Rogue solo issue). A flashback in X-Men: Liberators #3 takes place around here, showing Wolverine, Colossus and Nightcrawler playing tag in the grounds as a training exercise.
Flashbacks in DAMAGE CONTROL vol 1 #4
“eXcessive Farce”
by Dwayne McDuffie, Ernie Colon, Bob Wiacek & John Wellington
August 1989
The Mansion needs repairing again, so Professor X calls in Damage Control to deal with the public parts. The X-Men meet Robin Chapel, Lenny Ballinger, Gene Strausser and Albert Cleary. Gene inadvertently releases a bunch of slapstick comedy into the Danger Room, and the X-Men have to sort it out. Professor X wipes Damage Control’s memories; they get them back in the framing sequence (which takes place shortly after “Inferno”). Damage Control is a fondly remembered series, but this really isn’t its finest hour.
The flashbacks really doesn’t fit anywhere. Storm still has powers, and Kitty Pryde is there, neither of which can really be ignored. So it has to be before Uncanny X-Men #183 – any later, and either Kitty is off in Kitty Pryde & Wolverine, or Storm has lost her powers. But Doug Ramsey is also wandering around as Cypher, and it’s far too early for that. Best just to shrug and stick it here, in the last available space before Kitty departs.
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 1 #183
“He’ll Never Make Me Cry”
by Chris Claremont, John Romita Jr, Dan Green & Glynis Oliver
July 1984
Peter breaks up with Kitty. Logan drags Peter to a bar to yell at him about it, and Kurt tags along to make sure things don’t get out of hand. By sheer coincidence, the Juggernaut shows up, and Peter gets into a fight with him. Logan decides Peter has it coming, and lets him get beaten up.
Logan is clearly very protective of Kitty, and gives at least one good reason for being angry at Peter: she was willing to marry Caliban in issue #179 in order to get the Healer to save Peter’s life. According to Logan, Peter never even thanked her for that, which does sound pretty reprehensible. But Logan also accuses Peter of being scared of commitment now that Kitty is old enough for their relationship to become more serious (“Kitty’s not a kid any more – you two were going beyond playing games.”) He seems to believe that he’s also helping Peter by challenging him over his fear of commitment, and defends his own separation from Mariko, insisting that it’s a matter of honour and duty.
Once again, the age gap on this storyline really hasn’t aged well. This issue is quite clear that Peter is 19 and Kitty is 14, and it seems highly dubious, to put it mildly, for Logan to be pushing Peter to pursue that relationship, especially on the grounds that she’s “not a kid any more”.
As for Kitty, she takes a leave of absence to meet her father. We’ll see her again in the Kitty Pryde & Wolverine miniseries, and neither she nor Wolverine will appear again in Uncanny X-Men until next year. But before Wolverine joins her, he has a batch of Kitty-free guest appearances.
FIRESTAR vol 1 #2
“The Players & The Pawn!”
by Tom DeFalco, Mary Wilshire, Bob Wiacek & Daina Graziunas
March 1986
The New Mutants are invited to a dance at Emma Frost’s Massachusetts Academy. And they decide to go, on the grounds that since plenty of regular students are going to be there, it must be safe. Wolverine disagrees, because he’s not a moron, but the plot says they have to go, so he’s outvoted.
Yes, I know the cover shows Firestar fighting Wolverine. She doesn’t, though she does fight an illusory Wolverine for three panels in a training session.
(Firestar was a continuity implant filling in the back story leading up to the character’s debut in Uncanny #193, which is why this goes so far out of publication order.)
MARVEL GRAPHIC NOVEL #12
“Dazzler: The Movie”
by Jim Shooter, Frank Springer, Vince Colletta & Christie Scheele
October 1984
The X-Men (randomly including Cyclops, who’s meant to be in Alaska) make a brief cameo when Storm phones Dazzler to check in on her. This story can’t go any later, because it’s referenced in Uncanny #192.
1985 #6
“Nuff Said!”
by Mark Millar & Tommy Lee Edwards
October 2008
Marvel heroes and villains from roughly 1985 in Marvel continuity start appearing in the “real world” thanks to reality warper Clyde Wyncham; young Toby Goodman finds a portal to the Marvel Universe and alerts the heroes. Wolverine is among a whole bunch of characters who cameo here, none of whom actually seem to have been selected with any particular eye on their status quo in 1985. Still, this is where the official timelines put it. Wolverine ticks another bunch of names off his list here: Giant-Man (Hank Pym), the Red Skull (Johann Schmidt), Electro (Max Dillon), the Shocker (Herman Schultz), the Vulture (Adrian Toomes), the Abomination (Ivan Blonsky), the Hobgoblin (Roderick Kingsley) and some line-up of the Frightful Four. In the end, Wyncham surrenders, sends everyone home, and returns to the Marvel Universe with the heroes to be incarcerated.
Next time, the Kitty Pryde & Wolverine miniseries (which starts in November 1984, but runs through to spring 1985).
The Aliens: Deadliest of the Species series he wrote right after he left Marvel was outstanding.
Anything Claremont wrote after 1992 is best avoided.
It was as if Claremont used up all his skills and ideas as a writer by the time he finished on Uncanny X-Men and that Aliens title, then lost all of his abilities.
After doing a big Claremont era read/re-read I decided to go back to other things he’d done during that period and was surprised how little there was. In the late 70s he’s a pretty typical Marvel writer – defining runs on Ms. Marvel and Iron Fist, and runs on Marvel Team-Up and Spider-Woman, all of which engage with X-Men. But by the end of 1982, he’s exclusively writing X-Men and its spinoffs. Unless I overlooked something, his next regular assignment with Marvel that’s not an X-book is Fantastic Four v3 in 1998. I can’t think of another writer who spent that long simmering in one (big) set of characters.
Chris V: “The Aliens: Deadliest of the Species series he wrote right after he left Marvel was outstanding.”
Wikipedia: “Aliens/Predator: Deadliest of the Species is a 12 issue comic book limited series published by Dark Horse Comics in 1993-1995.”
Chris V: “Anything Claremont wrote after 1992 is best avoided.”
THE MATH DOESN’T ADD UP CHRIS V!
😉
“But by the end of 1982, he’s exclusively writing X-Men and its spinoffs.”
As far as regular assignments in the Marvel Universe that’s true, but there are some other things in that time-frame: Black Dragon and Epic Illustrated for Epic, the prose novels published in 1987 and 1991, and some other one-offs here and there.
I don’t say that to disagree with your point re: the simmering (I like that image! … 🙂 ) But if you’re looking for Claremont to read from that era, there is some!
(Also a couple one-off comics; a seventeen-page fantasy/superhero origin story in a squarebound one-shot anthology called (I think) “Amazing Adventures,” an eight-page She-Hulk story for “Avengers Solo” with Alan Davis … In other words, I’ve gone down this rabbit hole myself, and happily so, I might add.)
Those novels (or at least the first one: FIRST FLIGHT) are arguably part of the simmering. The characters are pretty clearly modeled after the X-Men. He even dedicates the book to Ororo, Logan, Kurt, etc.
They’re astronauts instead of mutants, which I guess is how he was able to get away with it.
Re: Claremont’s inability to re-create his Uncanny magic after leaving Marvel in 1991:
I recently wrote this in another forum:
“Claremont’s success was due to having more than a decade to build a nothing property into something. After all, it’s not like his first year on Uncanny in 1975-76 was anything all that great. But after he spent enough time building his own toy box, he really was able to produce great stories. He also depended heavily on the creative frisson with his artists. But that’s different than working under the thumb of an editor and inside of a shared story with other writers. So after he and his collaborators built it all up over years and years, editorial started to pull it away from him. And so he quit.
Now, every time he comes back, he’s tossed in to an overstuffed toy box and told he can’t re-build the toys. But he can’t do that because they’re not his toys. He depended on the slow, long burn and the ability to build his own ideas up. So instead, he tries to go back to his old unfinished ideas and pick up where he left off; but those ideas are tired, or don’t fit anymore, so it all feels flat.”
That Aliens/Predator thing is a real conundrum, to be sure, Jason. heh
The Solo Avengers: She Hulk short story was great because it was one of the few times where Claremont actually dealt with the Mutant Registration Act after introducing it.
Nu-D: You certainly make a compelling point.
I know that Chris Claremont got along very well with Anne Nocenti as an editor because, based on what I’ve read, she was a very hands-off editor. She liked to give writers as much freedom as possible.
The two of them seemed to work very well together, and my opinion of the greatest period in the history of the X-Men took place under Nocenti as editor.
Also, reading that Wikipedia article on the hidden gem Aliens/Predator: Deadliest of the Species series, which I consider near the very top of Claremont’s oeuvre, Claremont stated in an interview that he was given nearly total creative freedom to write the story he wanted.
It makes you wonder why he never had any creator owned properties with publishers like Image or Dark Horse, where he would have had total creative freedom.
The closet to that was his novels.
Instead, he kept coming back to Marvel and trying to recapture his glory days again.
I know he loved the X-Men, but he needed to figure out that they stopped loving him after 1991.
As much as I love Claremont, I will point out that the series of Willow sequel novels he wrote (ostensibly with George Lucas) constitute some of the direst, most unreadable prose ever committed to paper. I powered through all three books because I’m just that stubborn, and they are literally the worst books I’ve ever read
I’ll take those Willow novels (which I’ve never read, granted) and raise you the Superman/Wonder Woman: Whom Gods Destroy Elseworlds mini-series.
Easily one of the worst comics I have ever read. At the nonsensical level of a bad Howard Mackie comic (and there are a lot of those to choose from).
I have no idea how a comic could end up reading that badly, or what Chris Claremont could have been thinking.
It was as if Claremont had ideas for three or four different series and just decided to jam them all together.
For some reason Nazi Germany still exists in the present day.
The Nazis are aligned with the Greek gods…?
It all ends with Superman, Wonder Woman-Lois Lane, and Lana Lang in a polyamorous relationship.
I wish I could say it was laughable, but the writing was so bad it even precludes it from being so stupid it’s fun.
There were a large number of post-Aliens/Predator bad comics from Claremont, but none of them were able to beat this nonsense.
“That Aliens/Predator thing is a real conundrum, to be sure, Jason. heh.”
I think that adjusted time-frame does work, though! I’m a Claremont apologist to the end, but even I will admit to a drop-off in quality. I think the drop-off would be post-1994 rather than post-1992 though. So I posted those A/P dates to preemptively make my case for that adjusted time-frame. It lets me include:
WildCATs 10-13 (which are not so great when read on their own, but they’re quite clever in the context of the first nine issues).
And Star Trek: Debt of Honor. That was published in 1992 anyway, so I guess my two-year cushion was not needed. I do think this is another genuinely brilliant piece of post-1991 writing from CC, though. Even without the rose-tinted glasses, if you’re a Trek fan, I think this one’s legit amazing.
“Dragon Moon,” the illustrated novella. Prose by Claremont with some illos by John Bolton, and a sequel (kind of) to their Black Dragon stuff from Epic. I’m pretty sure this is 1994, and it’s pretty slick.
“I know that Chris Claremont got along very well with Anne Nocenti as an editor because, based on what I’ve read, she was a very hands-off editor. She liked to give writers as much freedom as possible.
The two of them seemed to work very well together, and my opinion of the greatest period in the history of the X-Men took place under Nocenti as editor.”
I am very much in agreement with you on that point!
“It makes you wonder why he never had any creator owned properties with publishers like Image or Dark Horse, where he would have had total creative freedom.”
He tried. “Renegade” for Dark Horse. “Huntsman” for Image. Neither seemed to gain any traction. Kind of a shame; I thought both concepts got off to good starts.
“Sovereign Seven” was creator-owned despite taking place in the DCU. “S7,” though, did not get off to a good start. And from there it went to a bad middle and eventually came to a bad end.
“The closet to that was his novels.”
I think he said that these suffered from pretty low sales. Kind of a shame. First Flight and Grounded are both really good.
“Instead, he kept coming back to Marvel and trying to recapture his glory days again.
I know he loved the X-Men, but he needed to figure out that they stopped loving him after 1991.”
I guess he figured that’s where the money was. Maybe that was true? I agree with you, though; generally speaking, post-1991, I prefer his non-X work to his X-work.
“Those novels (or at least the first one: FIRST FLIGHT) are arguably part of the simmering. The characters are pretty clearly modeled after the X-Men. He even dedicates the book to Ororo, Logan, Kurt, etc. They’re astronauts instead of mutants, which I guess is how he was able to get away with it.”
Since you included the word “arguably,” I’ll go ahead and argue against this point. First Flight has a cast of four, and there are some superficial connections to be made. (The Russian astronaut is said to be very tall, for example. The lady with red hair has a last name that rhymes with “Grey.”). Since Claremont has so many recognizable tics, one can pick out some similar speech patterns.
But to say that he modeled the characters after the X-Men feels like a bridge too far. The fact that he dedicated the book to “Logan, Ororo, Kurt” et al seems like a shout-out to X-Men fans who picked up the novel. Not exactly a smoking gun. I don’t think Marvel’s legal team would have much of a case. (The Lila Cheney cameo notwithstanding. 🙂 )
Oh shit those Willow books, I used to have those.
I thought “Claremont and Lucas are so influential on things I love, I need to buy these.”
I was… wrong. Very wrong.
It was a suburb of Denver, not Detroit that was transported to Battleworld.
I got the impression it was Lockheed or the other dragon that teleported the group from New York to Tokyo, then teleported the other dragon away.
@Jason Powell: Fair enough. It’s been quite a while since I read First Flight. My strongest memory of reading it is the thought, “Wow – Storm and Kitty are making out.” The intervening years have probably warped everything else I remember about it.
There was maybe a German guy, too, and he and the Russian guy were a couple? Everyone got matching mohawks, perhaps? At this point who knows what I actually read and what my hormone-saturated adolescent brain concocted. Maybe I’ll reread it one day.
Storm was presented pretty much as a bisexual woman during the Claremont run, come to think of it. It fell just short of a direct statement, but edged very close to that point.
Yes, there was pretty clear subtext that she was in an open-relationship with Logan and was also dating Yukio.
Marvel editorial wouldn’t have allowed Claremont to be any more overt about the relationships.
Yukio was also presented as being attracted to Logan.
I’m sure Claremont’s agenda was a polyamorous relationship with Logan, Ororo, and Yukio.
So, the Scott/Jean/Logan living arrangements now are just the logical extension of what Claremont would have wanted back then, but couldnt do at the time?
Logan?
I guess I am not objective enough a reader, but to this day, _after_ confirmation on panel, I can’t really picture the two of them together – and I never once noticed any hint back in the Claremont days.
Yukio, sure. And the story where she lost her powers had a very clear scene with Rogue. But Logan… well, I don’t really perceive anything regarding Logan if given half a choice. And Storm isn’t really a favorite of mine either.
[…] A year of event comics. One in which Logan T. Wolverine’s dance card was full to burstin’, […]
“@Jason Powell: Fair enough. It’s been quite a while since I read First Flight. My strongest memory of reading it is the thought, “Wow – Storm and Kitty are making out.” The intervening years have probably warped everything else I remember about it.”
**Oddly enough, I don’t remember what scene that might be referring to …
“There was maybe a German guy, too, and he and the Russian guy were a couple?”
*Yes! I apologize, I did forget that there was also a German character. He and a couple other characters I didn’t really count as leads, because of what happens about midway through the book (which I won’t spoil, just in case).
“Everyone got matching mohawks, perhaps?”
*Hmmm. Maybe I need to re-read this too!
“At this point who knows what I actually read and what my hormone-saturated adolescent brain concocted. Maybe I’ll reread it one day.”
*I do think it and the sequel, “Grounded” (from 1991) are genuinely good. The third book in the series came out in 1994. It’s a step down, and maybe speaks to Chris V’s paradigm as far as the chronological dividing line between good Claremont and completists-only Claremont.
@Luis,
I didn’t pick up on it as an adolescent reader, but there’s some pretty physical affection and flirty banter between Ororo and Logan in the Old Soldiers arc, and again in the outback. It can definitely be read as intimate friendship, but I can also see it as hinting there’s more going on behind the scenes too.
The smoking gun for Wolverine and Storm having a sexual/romantic relationship during the Claremont run is Uncanny #245-6, where Logan kisses Ororo at the end of 245, which she’s surprised by but happy about, and then especially #246, where they’re both half-dressed in Storm’s bathroom first thing in the morning, doing their hair and getting dressed. They’re familiar throughout Australia – first name basis, he calls her darlin’ – but either the scene in 246 is after they slept together, or Wolverine came over in his underwear to use Storm’s bathroom. Which would be very odd.
Storm and Wolverine also kiss in UXM Annual #11, right before they march to their deaths (or what they reasonably think will be their deaths). It could just be a what-the-hell, impulsive thing. Or maybe Claremont was trying out the idea before committing to it later. In any case, it’s a year or two before the UXM #246 scene.
Mariko and Yukio (sort of) make appearances in Annual #11, too, for readers interested in their relationships with Wolverine and Storm, respectively.
Though to be fair, Claremont had a lot of characters randomly kissing during the Outback era. I recall Psylocke and Havok, maybe Psylocke and Colossus, Logan and Ororo, Jean and Logan, and there were probably others.
I think he was hinting at a lot of bed swapping, not just those two.
Claremont did not really use Mariko much (if at all) after the Kitty Pryde/Wolverine series of 1984, which arguably establishes either Wolverine has a very open relationship with her or is all-out unfaithful. In his defense, their relationship is about as long distance as they come, particularly given how Claremont directed the character in later years.
Still, it is interesting that she (or her likeness anyway) confronts Wolverine in Annual #11 a couple of years later. I can’t help but see that as another example of his tendency to write ambiguous scenes with Wolverine in order to gauge reader reception. In this case, on whether there was interest in keeping them as at least a nominal couple.
Apparently not. While we never saw them breaking up, Wolverine never seems to attempt to see her again either. Not even during that time in the Outbacks, when he kept taking time off to have solo adventures all over the planet. AFAIK no one even mentions her name or thinks about her on-panel for years after that apparition (which was not her) in Annual #11. I think that it is fair to say that Claremont lost interest in revisiting her.
@Nu-D: Yeah, by the time when Scott and Charles were away the X-Men largely became implicitly liberal far as their sexual life goes, and Wolverine was to some extent a trendsetter there, going as far back as his tacit encouragement of Piotr’s experiences in the Savage Land back in Byrne’s run.
To an extent that is part of what I assume to be a deliberate effort from Claremont to make the X-Men drift ever further into clandestinity and distance from larger society. It had the side benefit of insulating him a bit from crossovers with the larger Marvel Universe, but I think that Claremont truly wanted to bring the X-Men to more alternative settings. He even has Scott leaving in #201 and the Beyonder bringing the X-Men to San Francisco in #202 to remain there for four or five issues.
“… tacit encouragement of Piotr’s experiences in the Savage Land back in Byrne’s run…”
Is that in the original? I thought it was one of the continuity inserts from the Classic X-Men reprints.
It is in the original run. Colossus invites him to come along to their “special island”, Wolverine picks up the implication, and we get a good exchange: “I’m sure. Sides, wouldn’t want to crimp your style. Have a good time, bub. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, okay?” “My friend, is there anything you wouldn’t do?” “Nope.”
Classic X-Men expands on that substantially, but it’s definitely in the original. Uncanny X-Men #114.
Claremont had an attraction between Storm and Yukio, but they didn’t meet frequently enough to date.
@Allen,
Funny, I always read the scene as though Piotr was naive and didn’t know what the girls had planned. Logan understood and smirked.
Oh, that’s definitely the intent of the scene. I just didn’t phrase it well. Wolverine knows what’s up, Piotr doesn’t.
To be fair, that Piotr doesn’t realize what they want comes across a lot clearer in Classic X-Men #21 than in Uncanny #114 / Classic #20. That question on whether there is anything that Wolverine would not do is slightly ambiguous and arguably out of character for Piotr as he was at that point time.
Incidentally, I want to point out that Claremont’s elaboration of the scene in Classic #21 is one of the best character pieces that I ever saw from him. It portrays Piotr as an idealistic, selfless youngster trying very hard to do the right thing at all times. He is lacking in life experience, but also intelligent and highly adaptable. His discussion with Nereel is a fine piece of writing.
Many of those CXM back-up stories are quite charming.
And have lovely John Bolton artwork as well.
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