Volume 04: Wolverine: Wolverine

Wolverine: Wolverine

Author: Chris Claremont  |  Illustrator: Frank Miller

'I'm the best there is at what I do. But what I do best isn't very nice.'

In a remarkable and uncharacteristic feat of memory, I still recall the first time I heard the name 'Wolverine'. I was around ten-years-old. My neighbour, a year older than me, was raving about a new issue of a comic he'd picked up. It was most likely an X-Men comic, I don't recall that part, but the name 'The Wolverine' stuck in my mind even though I'd never seen the character and all I had to go on was that he was a short guy with retractable claws. The name was enough for my mind to fill in the blanks. And the fact that he was being referred to as The Wolverine, with a definite article attached, made it even cooler.

Many months passed (a long time to a kid) before I actually saw the character in action on the pages of my own comic and, even more remarkably, Wolvie lived up to the image I'd created of him.

Chris Claremont's four-issue miniseries (published Sept-Dec 1982) was Logan's first solo title and quickly became one of his most seminal adventures. In an introductory scene written in a first-person narrative he successfully establishes Logan's strong personality, animal instincts, mutant healing ability and draws attention to his struggle to balance savagery and violence with compassion.

Besides the customary catch-up monologue at the beginning of each issue for the people who missed the previous one, the author doesn't waste words on unnecessary exposition. He creates events that cause Wolverine to quickly question, conclude and act according to his nature, at a pace that keeps the drama thundering along. The result is a book that could be turned into a novel with minimal effort.

But if that happened then we'd miss out on Frank Miller's art. His seeming preference for small panels that tell a big story are a perfect fit to Claremont's precise wording. Many of the angles used are in a filmic style, guiding the reader's eye from one panel to the next like a good movie editor would do for live footage. To keep things interesting Miller throws in a few silhouette shots, double page tussles, and other things that are best experienced first-hand.

The book collects together Wolverine #1-4.

Verdict: