Wolverine Comics

[DrRocka]

...just sorting through some old comics to free up some space and got sucked into cracking open a bottle and having a Wolverine marathon.

Thing is, for such an iconic character, there's not really THAT many truly great Wolverine comics, are there? Seems to me that the character's arcs just keep being watered down in favour of keeping the same old same old going, ad infinitum, throughout his history. What do others think?

So for me, the truly great ones would be:
Weapon X (the original Barry Windsor Smith story)
The Claremont/Miller Wolverine (the Japanese one)
The first Origin series - vague, kind of inconsequential, but gorgeous throughout
The Old Man Logan arc
The first 20 or so issues of volume 3, where he's hunting down gangsters and people traffickers for no other reason than he's genuinely a flawed hero with a leather jacket & a motorbike.
Issue 32 of the same volume, where he's a prisoner in a WWII concentration camp, driving the nazis insane, one at a time
Obviously, the John Byrne & Claremont issues of Uncanny Xmen (First Alpha Flight, Days Of Future Past, etc)
...beyond that, I'm struggling to think of any ones where the character isn't just fighting Sabretooth or the Baddie Of The Month, or dealing with increasingly convoluted (and frankly bollocks) plot lines about his memories being tampered with.
Anyone got any more GREAT Wolverines stories or arcs that I've missed?

[Smith]

Jason Aarons run was okay.

[Tjm86]

I was going to say, nope I think you've pretty much covered it but then I think that some of the JR Jnr issues around 200 are well worth a look (plus the Barry Windsor Smith standalone with Katie from Power Pack).  The run up to the Mutant Massacre is probably the last really good X-men run for my money.  Of course the art does help.

[Greg M.]

Uncanny X-Men 251-253 - whilst all the other X-Men have gone off through the Siege Perilous, Wolverine is captured and crucified by the Reavers. He's hallucinating, his healing factor is malfunctioning, and things look pretty grim. The end of the 'Australia' era, and one of my favourite X-Men arcs.

[Mute77]

Uncanny x men 251-253 was a classic marvel era for me also. I loved silvestri's depiction of wolverine. The scene of wolverine cricified and earlier on in the run i remember issue 234 the cover where wolverine is kneeling down with a "brood" face.. brilliant stuff.

[Tjm86]

Aye, I would agree with that.  Post Mutant Massacre that was probably the best arc.  The early Genosha stuff started off so well.  Then they bollixed it up by folding in Cameron Hodge.  X-Tinction Agenda was a complete dogs breakfast.

[Smith]

I kinda liked X-tinction Agenda,but thats just me.

[Colin YNWA]

Sorry to be a negative nelly but Wolverine really does my head in... well okay I enjoyed Weapon X and used to love the Claremont X-Men stuff back in the day (well up to around 250 or so) but man its hard to read that stuff these days. Wolverine is kinda a great example as to why. Back in the day when I was a teenager he was a cool symbol of the hard, loner, tortured but determined. Trying to find his moral core while fighting his inner and outer demons. Very much the embodiment of what the teenage nerd wanted to be, or saw themselves as. Now it just reads hackneyed and trite rather than tortured.

I don't get on with Claremont's writing at all and find his dialogue almost unreadable these days. Have to say I've not read any of the modern stuff, I think the only X-Men I've read since about 1991 is Morrison's stuff and I didn't really enjoy that anywhere near as much as I'd hoped. So yeah I'm probably wildly out of touch BUT the reason I decided to spue my pointless venom on this otherwise happy Logan party was actually to add a positive missed from the list.

Someone mentioned the Power Pack and those are some great issues. The X-Men issues they appear in and better still the issue The X-Men appear in Louise Simonson's brilliant Power Pack run really work and are one of the few examples of that X-era I still treasure. So yeah Uncanny X-Men 195 and Power Pack 11, 12 and 19 well worth the effort.

[TordelBack]

Power Pack has stood the test of time far better than most - and the BWS crossover with Katie is probably my favourite Wolverine comic. Quick shout out for Jason Aaron's entertaining (if horribly disrupted by 'events') Wolverine & The X-Men run, which stuck Wolvie in the headmaster's chair at Westchester.

[Jim_Campbell]

Power Pack has stood the test of time far better than most - and the BWS crossover with Katie is probably my favourite Wolverine comic. Quick shout out for Jason Aaron's entertaining (if horribly disrupted by 'events') Wolverine & The X-Men run, which stuck Wolvie in the headmaster's chair at Westchester.

The BWS 'fill-in' episode in Uncanny X-Men #205 still remains one of the finest standalone issues of US mainstream comics, IMO.

[Jim_Campbell]

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Nocenti/BWS Daredevil #236 (hiding behind one of the dullest covers Marvel published that year) vies for that title.

[Tjm86]

Power Pack has stood the test of time far better than most - and the BWS crossover with Katie is probably my favourite Wolverine comic.

It was my introduction to Marvel / American comics and still has pride of place (albeit well worn) in my collection.  That said post Mutant Massacre and when Jon Bogdanove took over on art duties it seriously lost its way.  Someone commented once that Bogdanove's art looks like a blind man trying to draw and I can get where they are coming from.  He had a major challenge to follow up from what went before.  Then you look at his Superman work ...

It is strange that no one has been able to capture the same image as Brigman.  The crossover to X-men (193 ish) and the Barry Windsor Smith issue gave some sense of what could be done with the title.  I didn't even bother with the noughties mini series after that.

[Colin YNWA]

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Nocenti/BWS Daredevil #236 (hiding behind one of the dullest covers Marvel published that year) vies for that title.

What's even more amazing is as I recall that cover is my Walt Simonson if I remember correctly!

Anyway yeah that's a GREAT comic and one I've whittered about on the long forgotten Daredevil thread here. All this talk of ol' Horn Head reminds me of another great Wolverine story. The Ann Nocenti + Rick Leonardi crossover in Daredevil 248 and 249 which introduced Bullet. Quite superb comics and a supreme Wolverine story.