{"id":5757,"date":"2020-11-22T11:45:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-22T11:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5757"},"modified":"2021-07-25T14:52:17","modified_gmt":"2021-07-25T13:52:17","slug":"the-incomplete-wolverine-1976","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5757","title":{"rendered":"The Incomplete Wolverine: 1976"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Part 1: Origin to Origin II<\/a><\/em> | Part 2: 1907 to 1914<\/a><\/em>
Part 3: 1914 to 1939<\/a><\/em> | Part 4: World War II<\/a><\/em>
Part 5: The postwar era<\/a> | Part 6: Team X<\/a><\/em>
Part 7: Post Team X<\/a><\/em> | Part 8: Weapon X<\/a><\/em>
Part 9: Department H<\/a><\/em> | Part 10: The Silver Age<\/a><\/em>
1974-1975<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Last time, we entered Wolverine’s early years of publication. Now, let’s travel back to a strange time before Wolverine was a breakout character, and before the creators were all that bothered about him.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

And for reasons I’ll explain, we kick off 1976 with an issue from 1977…<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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X-MEN vol 1 #106<\/a><\/strong>
“Dark Shroud of the Past!”<\/strong> <\/strong>
by Bill Mantlo, Bob Brown & Tom Sutton<\/strong>
August 1977<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The X-Men fight psychic projections of the original team, subconsciously created by Professor X’s evil side during one of his nightmares. (These nightmares are a major subplot in the first couple of years of X-Men<\/em>, but they don’t directly affect Wolverine. Basically, they’re the result of a botched psychic message to Professor X, foreshadowing the introduction of the Shi’ar.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This is a fill-in issue, which explicitly takes place shortly after Moira arrives at the X-Men Mansion – even though it didn’t see print for over a year after that point. Although it appeared with a framing sequence by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum, Wolverine doesn’t appear in that bit, so we won’t be coming back to this issue again. There’s a bit of character work at the start: Cyclops accuses Wolverine of putting on a “mad killer” act, while Wolverine complains that Cyclops has been pushing the team too hard ever since Thunderbird died. Banshee chips in to agree, just so we know that the brattish Wolverine actually has a point for a change.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Technically, this is Wolverine’s first encounter with Professor X’s suppressed evil side, which will eventually show up again in X-Men vs Micronauts<\/em> as the Entity<\/strong>. The story is so unimportant that the Classic X-Men<\/em> reprint series just skipped it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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X-MEN vol 1 #97<\/a><\/strong>
“My Brother, My Enemy!”<\/strong>
by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum<\/strong> & Sam Grainger<\/strong>
February 1976<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The X-Men accompany Professor X to the airport to see him off on a trip – except for Banshee, who’s hanging around with Moira, and Wolverine, who’s just antisocial. The plane is attacked by a new Erik the Red <\/strong>(who later turns out to be Shi’ar spy Davan Shakari) and his brainwashed henchmen, Havok and Lorna Dane (now Polaris<\/strong>). The X-Men drive them off. Wolverine and Banshee show up as reinforcements at the very end, with Wolverine whining at Cyclops for not shooting the escaping villains with his optic beam.\u00a0Wolverine calls Cyclops “gutless”, Cyclops decks him, and Storm stops him retaliating.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Wolverine’s in this story for a grand total of two pages, but they sum up his position in the team at this point: he’s a macho idiot who yells stupid things at the sensible people in charge, and gets dressed down by any other character with an ounce of authority while the audience cheers. It’s 1976, and Wolverine isn’t cool yet.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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AMAZING SPIDER-MAN vol 1 #161<\/a><\/strong>
“…And the Nightcrawler Came Prowling, Prowling”<\/strong>
by Len Wein, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito<\/strong>
October 1976<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Nightcrawler teams up with Spider-Man and the Punisher to fight Jigsaw. (Bear in mind that in 1976 the Punisher was still using rubber bullets.) Wolverine has a brief cameo at the Mansion, having more pointless arguments. He’ll meet Spider-Man soon enough, but he won’t meet the Punisher until much, much <\/em>later. This one comes out of publication order because the X-Men are about to embark on a lengthy storyline which doesn’t allow many obvious gaps for guest appearances.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The Marvel Chronology Project lists a flashback in X-Men Unlimited<\/em> vol 1 #25<\/strong> as going in here – it’s a brief scene of Logan and Kurt talking about religion while they fix the Blackbird, and the placement is probably arbitrary.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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CLASSIC X-MEN #10<\/a><\/strong>
“Tag, Sucker”<\/strong>
by Chris Claremont & John Bolton<\/strong>
June 1987<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Logan has spent the better part of a week wandering New York and getting to know the place. Sabretooth stalks him, taunts him, and kills an innocent girl. Wolverine finally realises who he’s dealing with, and changes into costume to fight him – only to get swiftly beaten and thrown into the sea. As he clambers onto the Staten Island Ferry, Wolverine thinks to himself that he’ll need to change and grow if he’s ever going to beat Sabretooth – and doubts whether he can.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Obviously, this is Claremont writing early Wolverine through the lens of a later interpretation of the character, and inserting his lifelong feud with Sabretooth – Sabretooth had debuted in Iron Fist <\/em>by this point, but their rivalry wasn’t established until 1986.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The story accompanies a reprint of issue #102, but that’s in the middle of a lengthy storyline, and so this is the latest available gap for it. The MCP has it even earlier, but I’m not convinced that’s needed. The MCP also takes this fight as one of the near-death experiences which leads to Wolverine fighting Lazaer in flashback in<\/strong> Wolverine<\/em> vol 3 #58<\/strong>, which seems fair enough.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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MARVEL HOLIDAY SPECIAL<\/strong> 1991<\/strong>
“A Miracle a Few Blocks Down From 34th Street”<\/strong>
by Scott Lobdell, Dave Cockrum, Joe Rubinstein & Paty Cockrum<\/strong>
1991<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

A throwaway Christmas story. The X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants <\/strong>– a makeshift roster consisting of the Blob, the Toad, Unus the Untouchable<\/strong> and Mastermind<\/strong> – compete to find a powerful mutant in New York. It turns out to be Santa Claus<\/strong>, who turns the Brotherhood into toys and then wipes the X-Men’s memory of the whole thing. (Look, it’s not like it’s the only Marvel story to canonise Santa Claus<\/a>.) I suppose it’s meant to be a riff on the X-Men and the Brotherhood competing to recruit the Stranger in X-Men<\/em> vol 1 #11? Anyway, it ends by leading directly into…<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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X-MEN vol 1 #98-100<\/a><\/strong>
“Merry Christmas, X-Men… the Sentinels Have Returned!”<\/strong> \/ “Deathstar, Rising!” \/ “Greater Love Hath No X-Man…”<\/strong>
by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, Sam Grainger & Frank Chiara<\/strong>
April to August 1976<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The X-Men visit the Christmas celebrations in midtown New York. (Cover dates were miles <\/em>out of synch with reality in those days, because they wanted issues to stay on the shelves for longer.) Also present are Moira MacTaggert, Jean Grey, and two supporting characters that Logan meets for the first time: Amanda Sefton<\/strong> and Betsy Wilford<\/strong>. Naturally, Logan is a surly grinch, who wanders off on his own, claiming he has “no use for Christmas”.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The Sentinels capture Wolverine, Banshee, Jean and Professor X, and take them to the space station base of Project Armageddon<\/strong>, under the command of Steven Lang<\/strong>. The rest of the X-Men mount a rescue mission using a space shuttle piloted by scientist Peter Corbeau<\/strong>. They fight Lang’s “X-Sentinels” – replicas of the original X-Men, which Wolverine exposes as robots. Lang and his men flee, and the X-Men have to escape the damaged base aboard Corbeau’s space shuttle during a dangerous solar flare. Jean volunteers to be the unshielded pilot, but more of that in a bit.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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These are important issues for Wolverine, as Claremont and Cockrum are starting to retool him. It’s the first time we see Logan without his mask, and Dave Cockrum’s character design is wildly at odds with the childish brat that’s so far shown up in the stories. Cockrum makes Wolverine look much older than we’ve been led to expect, which immediately drags him away from the “toxic reckless youth” interpretation, and positions him more as “disturbingly strange”.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This is also the first time Wolverine uses his claws out of costume. Until now readers would have assumed that they were gimmicks in his gloves. Somewhat implausibly, Wolverine has apparently been keeping this secret from the other X-Men – it’s not really something that seems to bother him at any other point in his continuity, and quite how this never came up in their training sessions is difficult to understand. In the first few years, though, Wolverine is consistently written as being insanely secretive, and as fending off questions with improbable “you never asked” explanations. (They must<\/em> have asked, and he must<\/em> have ducked the question until he was in the mood to answer.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Wolverine also uses his senses for the first time, to identify that the X-Sentinels are robots – but it’s played not so much as a superpower as something to do with his generally animalistic perspective on the world.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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His attraction to Jean Grey also comes into play here. He obnoxiously cuts away more of her evening gown than necessary in order to make it practical in a fight. It’s specifically Jean that he instinctually recognises as a robot impostor, not any of the other founding members. And it’s only him and Cyclops who try to dissuade Jean from taking on the suicide mission – though Jean shows absolutely no sign of reciprocating his concern, dismissing him as an “obnoxious little upstart”. (Admittedly, he told her she was just trying to impress to her father figure Professor X, which probably didn’t go down well.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

So Wolverine’s starting to come into focus here. But at the same time, the Project run some tests which cast doubt on whether Wolverine is a mutant – reportedly, this was foreshadowing a plot where he’d turn out to be a creation of the High Evolutionary. Obviously that never came to fruition, but it shows that he was still a work in progress.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The expansion pack for this arc:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n