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A Farewell To Claws: Looking Back At Jason Aaron’s Wolverine

By | April 13th, 2012
Posted in Columns | % Comments

Last week I wrote about Spider-Man. This week I’m apparently writing about Wolverine. I hope, for my sake, this doesn’t become a “thing.”

This week saw the release of “Wolverine” #304 and with it, the end of Jason Aaron’s tenure on Wolverine’s solo story. While Aaron isn’t leaving the character entirely (he is writing “Wolverine and the X-Men,” which will assumedly pick up a few loose ends), the departure from the book and the revitalization of James “Logan” Howlett is still a tad bittersweet.

Take a look behind the cut for a very fond look at Jason Aaron’s body of work on Wolverine so far, and why his Logan is the most important Logan of the past decade.

As a note, spoilers are discussed for the final issue, let alone the entire run.

For as far back as I can honestly remember, Wolverine has always been one of those characters. Marvel and DC both have them; characters who are overdone to the point that they don’t really seem all that interesting anymore. They’re characters who are pushed through an oftentimes vapid ringer of sub-par stories in which this character, who most of us likely grew up with, does a thing for a bit and then does another thing. It’s paint-by-numbers storytelling, and it’s there more often times than it’s not. (How many Batman books are there, again? And how many of them are worth reading?)

Wolverine always fell into that category. He’s the “cool” X-Man, you know? He has a gruff, mean-but-likable anti-authority attitude, he’s a prime antihero and he’s become generic enough that he can be everywhere and do anything. Throw him in Japan, rip out his adamantium skeleton, brainwash him and turn him against the Marvel Universe, age him and put him in the future – if you’re going to do something “crazy” with a character in the Marvel U, more often than not Wolverine is the vehicle for it. His life (or whatever we call the continued adventures of a 37-year old fictional character) is so convoluted and insane at this point that we as both a group of fans and a discerning readership have gotten to the point where we’re likely to take whatever works.

To that end, many people have come to tell the tales of Wolverine. Chris Claremont and Frank Miller had a rather defining albeit brief run with the character that introduced his catchphrase, and this past decade saw high-profile writers like Frank Tieri, Greg Rucka, Mark Millar, and Erik Larsen all putting their stamp on his history, let alone Daniel Way’s 50+ issue “Wolverine: Origin” series. Heck, Brian Bendis — one of Marvel’s prime architects — has used Wolverine in almost everything he’s written, from starring roles in events like “Secret War” and”House of M” to putting him all over the place in his run on the Avengers (Wolverine is in both incarnations of the New Avengers as well as the current line-up of Avengers). People clearly like using the guy when they can.

Yet despite all of these writers and artists telling all of these stories of all of these versions of this one character, no one has crafted a story that felt as passionate of a love letter as possible to Wolverine as Jason Aaron has.

Aaron first came to the character through a Marvel-run contest, the prize being that you get to write an eight-page back-up story in an anniversary issue of “Wolverine.” The story premiered in Wolverine #175 by Frank Tieri and Sean Chien and in so many words set the stage for Aaron’s entire take on the character. A concise story, it placed Wolverine in a moral and religious conundrum that asked the single most important question that has ever revolved around Wolverine: is he a good man? Is Logan, a seemingly immortal Canadian mutant farmer-turned-weapon-turned-ronin-turned-superhero born in the1880s and tied to almost every major story in the Marvel universe since the 70’s worth a damn? It was succinct, thought-provoking and well-executed for a man whose comic career hadn’t even truly begun yet. (I actually wrote a lot more about “A Good Man” for the now defunct column Longbox Diving, which you can read here if you’re so inclined.)

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As Aaron’s career began bourgeoning, he once again came back to the character in 2007 for a one-off issue of the main series entitled “the Man in the Pit.” What can ostensibly be referred to as a filler issue (and there are a lot of those with Wolverine) in between Loeb’s controversial “Evolution” story and Marc Guggenheim’s run, “the Man in the Pit” finds Wolverine an ancillary character in his own story as the character Wendell Rayfield starts his new job, a job literally defined by sitting at a large machine gun and shooting a man (Wolverine) in a pit all day. It’s a much darker story (you know, considering it’s Wolverine continuously being shot for twenty something pages), but it’s an intriguing one; here is an issue of a book of a solo character, and yet not only is that character not the main focus of the story but he’s also very much the villain of the story. We sympathize with Logan like we always do, but this is the story of Rayfield’s final days as he tries to come to grips to how a man like Logan could even exist — and what Logan’s existence in turn says about Rayfield’s, or our own.

Many comics are inherently morality plays, but these two stories alone can be held up against years of Wolverine stories. With one full issue Aaron managed to sneak in a truly wonderful character tale that really plays to the kind of person Wolverine is. If “A Good Man” showed us how Wolverine could be a good person if he wanted to be, “the Man in the Pit” was the other side of that coin. Earlier I made reference to the fact that Wolverine and the beats that writers frequently hit when utilizing him were inherently generic, that he could be a hero, an antihero or a villain at the whims of a creator, and this is all true — but Aaron gave that quality a vivid definition: Wolverine can be a hero because there is good in him somewhere, and he can be an antihero because he understands the differences between right and wrong and realizes the inherent ethic dilemma here, but he is a monster because that is his nature.

Following these two shorter opportunities, Aaron’s work on Wolverine grew to be quite prolific. He penned an arc in his solo title entitled ‘Get Mystique’, a balls to the wall action story of love and bullets before writing Wolverine’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ mini-series, which itself was a tribute to classic martial arts action films of the 70’s and 80’s as much as it was an open acknowledgement of Wolverine’s ninja past that had been fairly absent from comics at the time (outside of the occasional Hand fight). He penned the “Wolverine: Weapon X” ongoing for a while, thrusting Wolverine into various stories all over the map, covering spy thrillers, psychological horrors, dystopic post-apocalyptic science fiction with a few nice character stories in there as well (#10, dealing with his romantic life, and #16, the death of his best friend). It’s all a lot of fun, incredibly varied and shows of Aaron’s strengths as a writer able to move about multiple genres, and yes, they all continually offer tiny answers to the great question of who Logan is, man or beast.

Of course, before “Wolverine: Weapon X” came out, Aaron penned two more short stories in the pages of #73 and #74. At the time, Marvel was prepping the book for a transition from “Wolverine” to “Daken: Dark Wolverine”, a book about Wolverine’s son Daken to coincide with post-Secret Invasion’s Dark Reign (as well as to offer up some stuff pending Millar and McNiven’s late ‘Old Man Logan’ issues). However, despite being crammed into the two issues (that were, again, ostensibly filler issues) alongside a somewhat atypical Wolverine story, Aarons’ two shorts are revelations to the character.

“A Mile in my Moccasins”, as the two stories are titled, is Aaron and Logan at their very best. The first half is a humorous little lampoon of Wolverine’s ability to be a part of every team and team-up in the Marvel universe, which in and of itself is perhaps the greatest Wolverine story Aaron may ever tell in terms of absolutely nailing the character, and the second is a bit more somber. Placing Wolverine in a bar, he has a run-in with Spider-Man (Marvel’s “clown” with a heart of gold) in which Spidey calls out Wolverine for his behavior, asks him why he’s trying to kill himself and tries to rationalize it all before a fight inevitably breaks out. It is perhaps easy enough to say that while Aaron is great at Wolverine in the long-run (at least in terms of telling entertaining stories that do justice to the characters), he plays Wolverine’s song best in short, touching bursts of character and emotion like this; stories that cut to the core of the character and peel the curtain back just enough to create empathy but not far enough to reveal all of Wolverine’s secrets.

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Ultimately, these two combined stories (referred to in the Aaron/Wolverine catalogue as “A Day in the Life” in the back of #304 for whatever reason) is the definitive Wolverine story of the modern generation of comics about Wolverine. It’s an amusing but solemn story that brings gravity to the character, and I would go so far as to call it the only required reading for any incoming Wolverine writers (Cullen Bunn, I’m looking at you!).

Aaron wrote Wolverine and Spider-Man once again in “Astonishing Spider-Man and Wolverine”, and despite my high praise of the previous story, it may just be my favorite piece out of all of Aaron’s Wolverine work, albeit for different reasons. It still touches on the heart of Wolverine in scenes like the depiction of what death would actually be like for Logan, but if all of Aaron’s Wolverine stories can somewhat be considered “serious” stories, “Astonishing” is what happens when your serious friend gets a bit drunk and causes a ruckus at a party. It’s a brilliantly designed story about Wolverine and Spider-Man being blasted through time and various dimensions, and features things like Doom the Living Planet, a gun with the power of the Phoenix and the characters Czar and Big Murder who use “time diamonds” to beat up Wolverine and Spider-Man under the employment of Mojo. It’s crazy, all over the place and a hell of a lot fun, and the way it wraps up is on-par with “A Mile in my Mocassins.”

It also features my favorite scene ever to appear in an Aaron-penned Wolverine comic, pictured above, of Aaron himself sliding Wolverine a beer. We can assume Adam Kubert threw this in rather than Aaron writing it into the script, but its never the less 100% on point.

As “Second Coming” ended, Marvel relaunched Wolverine’s ongoing with Aaron at the helm, moving him from “Weapon X” to this and eventually re-numbering the book to Wolverine’s official issue account after twenty issues. Aaron’s story here became a lot more hyper-focused; Wolverine was sent to Hell, had to fight his way back to defeat his possessed body and then solve the mystery of who sent him there and why. It’s an interesting combination of everything Aaron had done up to that point (which was then conveniently collected in an omnibus), offering up both his thematic exploration of Wolverine’s soul (literally and figuratively) as well as creating a genre-bending generational revenge tale. It’s an entertaining story, and unlike Aaron’s other work thus far it played the long-con for 15 issues before delivering a gut-punching finale.

There were more stories after the Hell saga (such as a “Manifest Destiny” callback and more with Wolverine’s Japanese connection), but it all came to a head in this week’s “Wolverine” #304, in which Marvel and Jason Aaron gave us what we could affectionately refer to as “Aaron’s Greatest Hits: A Mix.” The issue format is simple: everyone who ever played a part in Jason Aaron’s extended Wolverine run returns and is placed in a position for other writers to come along and use the characters for their own ends. There are call backs to everything; Maverick (my favorite element of the first “Weapon X” arc) returns finally, the Ex-Girlriend Squad gets a spot, Dog’s mysterious return at the end of “Astonishing” is addressed (!!!) and the entire issue is jam-packed with artists who have worked with Aaron throughout his entire extended run on the character (the roster is seriously great: Steve Dillon, Ron Garney, Paul Pelletier, Dave Meikis, Mike Perkins, Jefte Palo, Daniel Acuna, Steven Sanders and Renatuo Guedes) — capped off with Logan once again sitting down at a bar and grabbing a drink.

It’s the perfect ending, offering enough closure for Aaron to leave easily while giving enough leeway for anyone else to pick up the baton and do as they will. That’s comics, in a nut-shell: stories with beginnings and endings that live on long after they’re done.

Of course, what’s wonderful about the story is the tongue in cheek nature of which Aaron touches upon the biggest story he never told in his run: that of Wolverine and Sabretooth. Sabretooth was dead by the time Aaron came to the books, so despite the two characters having an intwined and important history, Aaron never really got to tell a story about the two. Sure, the previous arc ‘Back In Japan’ had an element of that, but aside from featuring both characters in the same story there was no grand confrontation. This issue, however, brings that element in a few hyper-violent and sharply written pages; Wolverine pops by Sabretooth’s inaguration/birthday party and beats up all of his guests, knocks down Mystique (Sabretooth’s current “girlfriend”), and delivers a rather intense monologue that’s both vicious and meta:

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Sorry to crash your party like this, Creed, but when I heard about your little shindig here it got me thinking… ’bout how you used to look me up once a year and beat my ass just to show me you could. You remember that? I sure do. It’s been a rough couple years for me, but that’s no excuse to go forgotten’ old friends and special traditions. That’s why I had to drop by today, just to tell ya to your face… Happy birthday. From your old pal Wolverine.

The issue could have ended right there as far as I’m concerned. I mean, the beer was a great touch, but that speech and confrontation between Wolverine and his arch-nemesis is so to-the-point and biting that it makes me glad Aaron never told a Wolverine vs. Sabretooth story before now. As much as I praise the man’s work, I doubt he’d ever be able to deliver a story that cuts to the bone as sharply.

Truth be told, I don’t know what personal reason causes Aaron to understand the character better than anyone else. Perhaps it is a secret hidden in that magnificent beard of his in the same way Gretchen Wieners’ hair is full of secrets! What I do know this: the profound difference between Aaron and any other writer who has tackled the character (in recent memory, anyway) is that Aaron has a very vivid respect for the character and what he’s been through. As fictional as Wolverine is, Aaron treats the character from a place of acknowledgement and understanding (even though Aaron obviously couldn’t understand between a hundred-something year old weapon of mass destruction). The scene from “Astonishing” of Aaron sliding Wolverine a beer is honestly what I view as the pivotal scene of Aaron’s run here: Wolverine, a man broken and bruised from the weight of time and life, comes into a bar to have a beer and unburden himself of his problems in the same way some people do to priests in confessional. These aren’t really Aaron’s stories; they’re Logans, and Aaron just happens to be the man who hears all of them and sympathizes, who just happens to be a strong enough writer to convey the weight of the emotional roller coaster that is this man’s life.

Suffice it to say, I wouldn’t be reading Wolverine stories by choice if it weren’t for Aaron.

Now, granted — despite all that I’ve just written about Aaron’s tenure with the character, Aaron isn’t abandoning the character. There is, as mentioned 2724 words ago, “Wolverine and the X-Men,” a book that finds Aaron pushing Wolverine in a different and less insular direction. My only hope is that as Cullen Bunn takes the reigns from here, he brings to the table the same somewhat serious and respectful tone that Aaron had throughout the book. Given Bunn’s body of work so far, I can’t imagine why we could expect any less, but given Aaron’s, I don’t know why we would.


Matthew Meylikhov

Once upon a time, Matthew Meylikhov became the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Multiversity Comics, where he was known for his beard and fondness for cats. Then he became only one of those things. Now, if you listen really carefully at night, you may still hear from whispers on the wind a faint voice saying, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not as bad as everyone says it issss."

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