I don’t like it. The artwork is very nice, especially the coloring, but the storyline is pretty lame in my opinion. Just not what I would have envisioned. Maybe a lot of it stems from the fact I always considered the concept of Wolverine’s bone claws to be the biggest fuck-up in character developement Marvel ever came up with. When they pulled out his adamantium, they could have done soooo much with him, but they just folded to everyone saying “but Wolverine isn’t Wolverine without his claws.” So, seeing as how the storyline here focuses on that, I can’t seem to get past it. I should probably wait until the final issue comes out, but I wanted to get a few more opinions on what others thought of it.
I have no opinion because I haven’t managed to get it yet. Could you please explain it to me so I don’t have to make a new thread asking what the plot of Origin is?
Spoilers. Well, more like an entire story synopsis:
It takes place in the 1890’s and is cronicled by this red head young girl named Rose. She lives in a small town in Canada, her parents both died, so her aunt send her to be a caretaker of this young man who happens to be the sickly son of the town’s wealthy family. It’s pretty much a rip off of the Secret Garden for the first two issues. Her and sick-boy James befriend dirty son of the yard hand, a boy only refered to as Dog. Dog’s father is the abusive alcoholic Thomas Logan (who looks a lot like Wolverine). As they grow up, bad shit keeps happening to Dog, he grows attracted to Rose, he becomes jealous of James and one day attacks James and kills his dog. This, I found really interesting because it seemed as though the story was pointing out Dog was Wolverine. I liked that, it fit.
Afer this, James’ father has Logan thrown off of his land, so Thomas and Dog break into the mansion late that evening to pilfer some goods and grab James’s mother (apparently the two of them have been having a lengthy affair, and it turns out James is Logan’s bastard child). As the burglary progresses, Logan shoots James’ father and James attacks Dog, wounding him badly, and attacks Logan. Logan blows this little effort off until he realizes he’s holding his intestines in his hands and James has claws protruding from his hands. Logan’s mother than blows her brains out (I forgot to mention that James’ apparently had an older brother who died at a young age, apparently from the same poor health James’ suffers from). Rose tries to get help for them, but James’ grandfather tells them to leave and never come back. So, they leave.
They end up taking a train accross country and end up in a quary, where they work for a good many years. To hide his identity, Rose tells everyone Jame’s name is Logan. As he ages, he becomes a bit more creepy, hunting animals in his spare time with home made spears and distancing himself from others (and yet, spending lots of time with them in the tavern, I don’t quite understand that). James (now Logan) makes enemies with the camp’s cook, Cookie, and one evening after getting in a fight and having the foreman save his ass, he runs off into the woods, collapses before a pack of wolves (possibly wolverines, they never say), and eventually becomes “adopted” by them. The last book so far has him hunting with them, becoming part of the dinamite blast team of the quary, finally standing up to Cookie, runs home to see Rose kissing the foreman, running into the woods and killing the alpha wolf and becoming leader of the pack. The final scene has James’ grandfather on his death bed asking a grown up Dog to hunt him down.
I like the fact that it takes place in the late 1800’s, because it gives an interesting insight to how old Wolverine really is. And I like the savagery that he begins to accept. But it would have been so much cooler if his past was more like Dog’s than poor little sick boy who becomes a suprehealing ass-kicker. It just doesn’t fit for me. It also explains his interest in red heads. But again, the whole bone claw thing just bugs me. I recently purchased the Mutant Massacre trade paperback, and there they make reference to the fact his claws were sheathed in metal (well, sheaths) that through whatever technology was used to impliment them, made the blades extract and contract whenever he wills. Marvel Card Series II explained them the exact same way. I just feel it was a terrible cop out for marvel, and then to base his history off of some shitty idea that was developed over the past eight years, it just doesn’t seem right to me.
I HATE the bone claws. I think the diagram shown in The Marvel Universe #15 Weapons and Paraphenalia should be cannon. It shows implanted metal claws which slide out of adamantium housing. Even when the claws are retracted, the housings protrude out of the back of the hand. Then, some artist decided it was cooler if the claws just tore through the skin every time they were used. I didn’t like it but I could live with it. Then some moron gives him BONE claws! And still has them tearing through the skin! How is it, Wolvie has natural claws but no claw slits? You’d think if nature gave him claws, it would give him opening for the claws to come out of. Stupid.
Having read #4 I'm pretty sure that those are wolves. Wolverines look much more like badgers or weasels on steroids. They're also not that big. Wolvie has often said he picked the name because 'Wolverines are small, tough and have a bad attitude, just like me.' Judging from the size of the animal staring Wolvie down, I'd say it was a wolf.
I assumed right away that Dog was NOT Wolverine. They made him too much the obvious choice that they want us to pick. I assumed that Jame’s frail health was due to the healing factor not having kicked in yet.
Stuff I think I’ve figured out-
Note that James’ grandfather has claws and the pointy hair. Note also that Logan calls John, James’ father, “Soft John”. So I figure that Logan and John are half brothers. John is the legitimate heir. Logan is the product of an affair with a servant. Thus Dog and Logan have the pointy Wolverine hair of the grandfather.
Logan calls John soft because he is impotent. James and his brother are actually Logan’s sons by Lady Whatsername. Dog may be the son of Logan and another woman or he may have been given to Logan to raise since his resemblance to his father was too strong for him to pass as John’s son.
Lady W, upon seeing James’ claws says ‘Not again’. She also has 3 long scars on her back. When Granddad sees James’ and Rose he shows them his own claws and tells them to leave and never return. Thus-I figure the older son did not die. Like James’ his health was poor til the X gene kicked in. He spouted claws etc. He clawed mom and ws killed. They buried him and covered up the truth.
Just plugging dotcomics.marvel.com. They’ve got Origin, up to 5 I think, for free. You have to register, but it’s free.
No. I was reading Wolverine back in 91-93 when they were also playing with the whole origina thing. And this was following a previous brush with his “real” origin. You can only tell me “the true story, unlike the previous ones” so many times before I stop paying attention. If they’d come up with a story for hm ten years ago, they could have really sold some books. Now it’s too little, too late.
Huh. I don’t know, I kinda ignore things that make less sense whenever I like anyways. I agree with the Marvel Weapons thing: I thought that made a lot of sense when it came out, therefore, when they decide on the whole bone-claw thing, I immediately made a decisoin about the why – The guy has lived for decades with these implanted metal sheathes in his arms. He has hyperexcelerated healing. When Mags pulled out the metal, the open cavities in his arms automatically filled in with bone matter. Since his muscles were already used to contracting etc. to make the claws work, his newly grown-in bone-claws made kind of sense. The idea that h had them originally … well, I don’t know. It still makes sense in the way that his skeleton was coated in adamantium, and so would his bone-claws at that point.
It’s just geting to be too much. Too much to try to work out in my own mind because I love the character. I think you know what I mean.