{"id":5308,"date":"2020-07-05T10:53:05","date_gmt":"2020-07-05T09:53:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5308"},"modified":"2020-07-09T16:04:19","modified_gmt":"2020-07-09T15:04:19","slug":"the-incomplete-wolverine-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5308","title":{"rendered":"The Incomplete Wolverine, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Because you can’t spell “quixotic” without an “X”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the Moira thing<\/a> went well, but it goes without saying you’d be completely insane to do the same thing for a character like Wolverine. Still, we had a long gap this year with no new comics coming out, and so I thought I might go back and read Wolverine’s pre-X-Men back story in chronological order to see if it made any kind of sense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so in this series of posts, we\u2019re going to go through Wolverine\u2019s history in more-or-less chronological order – some of this stuff just can\u2019t be placed precisely, but there are certainly clear phases of his life where appearances have to go. Obviously there’s got to be a cut-off point somewhere, but we\u2019ll cover at least his history up to joining the X-Men and see where we go from there – I’ve read up as far as Uncanny<\/em> X-Men<\/em> #200 at time of writing, which is around the point where he’s fully developed into the familiar character. It\u2019s also \u201cIncomplete\u201d because I can\u2019t be 100% confident I\u2019ve caught anything, but also because it\u2019s clearly going to stop somewhere. Once the ongoing comics are coming out again, these will probably settle into a less frequent schedule than the Moira posts – the current material takes priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

For a chronological list of Wolverine appearances, the obvious starting point is the Official Wolverine Index<\/em> from 2012, which opens with three dense pages of small print summarising his back story before Wolverine<\/em> #1. There’s also the Marvel Chronology Project<\/a>, whose list has been updated more recently. And there’s a site called the Wolverine Files<\/a>, some of which hasn’t been updated in a while, and which also includes some retconned-out apocrypha that I won’t be worrying about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since I’m a masochist, I’m basically going with the official line on canon but also counting the First Class<\/em> books (more on why they’re in a weird position when we get to them). I’m also going to try and keep track of the assorted Marvel Universe characters he meets as he goes along. Once we get properly under way, there’ll be quite a few short entries so that I can focus on the stories that are worth singling out, whether for their merits, or their curiosity value. Or their horrendous continuity problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of which…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Flashbacks in WOLVERINE: THE END <\/a><\/strong>#4<\/a><\/strong> <\/strong>
by Paul Jenkins & Claudio Castellini<\/strong>
April 2004<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, this is part of an alternate-future miniseries. But it has extensive flashbacks to Logan’s childhood – and since it was intended as a possible future, presumably those flashbacks are meant to be canon. And that matters, because Wolverine: The End<\/em> is a companion piece to Origin<\/em> – Paul Jenkins wrote both – and contains the only clear explanation of the Howlett family secret that’s repeatedly hinted at in Origin<\/em>. So if you’re going to read Origin<\/em>, you should probably read this too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it counts, Wolverine: The End<\/em> #4 has Wolverine’s chronologically earliest appearance by a mile – a photograph of him as a baby in his mother’s arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Howlett family’s back story is sketched out in Origin<\/em> #1 by one of the estate staff. According to him, James Howlett<\/strong> (the future Wolverine) is the surviving son of John and Elizabeth Howlett. John’s father, who never gets a first name, is a self-made copper millionaire. The Howletts have recently built their estate. Just after it was finished, elder son John Howlett Jr <\/strong>became ill and died; Elizabeth was hospitalised and became a recluse. It’s also made abundantly obvious that James’s biological father is actually groundskeeper Thomas Logan, whose other son Dog Logan<\/strong> lives with him in the grounds. Later in Origin<\/em>, we learn that Elizabeth has massive claw-mark scars down one side, which the staff clearly know about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you were reading Origin<\/em> in isolation, you might well come away with the idea that Thomas had attacked her (though that would beg the question of why he was still tolerated on the estate, since James sacks him over a much lesser offence during the course of the story). But according to The End<\/em>, 12-year-old John Jr discovered his mother’s affair with Thomas, confronted her about it, and had a screaming argument with her in which he popped his own claws and attacked her – John Jr is also <\/em>the illegitimate son of Thomas Logan, and has the same powers as James. The whole family knows about this incident, and John was packed off to a lunatic asylum and passed off to the world as dead. Origin <\/em>hints rather obscurely at all this (aside from the bit about John surviving), but The End <\/em>actually shows it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flashback in WOLVERINE & THE X-MEN #26<\/a> <\/strong>
“Savage Learning, Part 2: A Boy Named Dog”<\/strong> by Jason Aaron & Ramon Perez<\/strong>
March 2013<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This issue has a lengthy origin flashback for Dog Logan, including a scene where he plays with Logan in the estate grounds. Needless to say, they are close friends tragically divided by class. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Most chronologies have this scene during Origin<\/em>, but Dog specifically says that their relationship changed later after Rose O’Hara showed up in Origin <\/em>#1. Dog’s version doesn’t tally with Rose’s account as the narrator of Origin<\/em> – he says they drifted apart after Rose shows up, Rose says everyone grew closer – but maybe they just remember it differently.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ORIGIN #1<\/a> <\/strong>
“The Hill”<\/strong> by Paul Jenkins, Andy Kubert & Richard Isanove<\/strong>
November 2001<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

12-year-old orphan Rose O’Hara<\/strong> is brought to the Howlett Estate to be a companion for the frail James Howlett. James, Rose and Dog become close friends, and class-related tension ensues. (James himself does almost nothing in this issue, because the idea is to make the readers think that Dog is the future Wolverine.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let’s talk about when Origin<\/em> actually happens. The Index <\/em>politely ducks this question with some vague mutterings about Logan being born in the last decades of the 19th century. The only date given in Origin<\/em> is on John Jr’s tombstone, which bears the dates 1885-1897, placing the story somewhere after that. Wolverine: The End<\/em> makes matters much worse – it repeats the tombstone dates, but also says that James was still a baby when John died. If that’s right then Origin<\/em> #1 has to take place in around 1906… but that contradicts the time frame of a bunch of other stories showing Wolverine as an adult before World War I. (Not least Origin II<\/em>, which says outright that it happens in 1907.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some point Marvel just shoved Origin<\/em> back a decade. In 2011, another Paul Jenkins story, X-Men: Prelude to Schism<\/em> #4 shows James and Rose living at the estate in 1891. Wolverine<\/em> vol 5 #10 (a Paul Cornell issue from 2013) has a photo of Rose at the estate, which Wolverine says was taken in the 1890s. And Origin II<\/em>, also from 2013, says that years have passed since the end of Origin <\/em>and it’s now 1907. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the current consensus is that Origin<\/em> happens in the 1890s, and ignore the inconvenient tombstone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s a lengthy gap between Origin<\/em> #1-2 which accommodates a couple of minor flashbacks:<\/p>\n\n\n\n