It is baffling that in 1983 Lucky Luke’s creator had to depict the character without his trade mark cigarette hanging from his lips to cater to a US audience, but the mainstream publishers did not do this until almost two decades later.
And so it has been 15 years since Wolverine, Nick Fury and others “stopped smoking” in comics yet it still seems (from the comments on the thread) that it is intensely controversial. I vaguely recall that Wolverine gave up smoking to start reading books instead? I assume the idea was to encourage kids not to smoke, and to encourage kids to read through the vehicle of an iconic tough guy character?
Was the idea of smoking cigars as an indicia of being tough from Clint Eastwood movies?
There are a couple of pipe smokers in the linked story - Professor X, Bruce Wayne, Iron Man. I assume pipes are for the erudite professorial types, and cigars are for the tough guys.
In Japanese manga they seem to smoke cigarettes rather than cigars or pipes (except for that one Japanese guy in the linked story who has some monster pipe which he throws about and hits people with).
It would be interesting if there was a study which showed that children taking up smoking dropped after the 2001 Queseda-directed ban on the depicting of heroes smoking ni Marvel Comics.
No idea whether DC permits it or not but thinking about it, it has been a very long time since I have seen a character smoking in a DC comic.
Yes, she had a coughing fit and declared it “nasty! Bleaaargh!”
There have been multiple mentions of his cigars being the nastiest, cheapest ones he can find, and also of being a way to avoid smelling other things. I mean, think about it… any time anybody in all of Westchester County has eaten asparagus, he can tell!
Yep, that set of panels is in the link. I quite like Wolverine’s wry smile as Kitty is almost puking her guts up.
The link also has a panel sequence where Superman tells Jim Gordon that he has lung cancer, leaving Gordon looking at his lit cigarette.
So, did Sherlock Holmes start the “smoke a pipe if you’re a genius” theme in literature? Seeing the image of Professor X lighting his pipe as he demonstrates that he is the smartest guy in the room, and Reed Richards sucking on his pipe as he works out how to find Sue Richards, all indicates pretty clearly that pipe smoking is for the smarties and communicates to readers that the pipe smoker is intelligent.
(I had always thought it was a seafarer thing - like Haddock in Tintin.)
Wolverine stopped smoking solely because of Joe Quesadilla’s edict when he became “EEK” of Marvel that smoking could never be depicted due to his personal feelings on the matter due to the death of a close relative by way of lung cancer.
Never mind that Wolverine’s completely immune to the ill effects and thus it’s almost as silly as when they made him wear a helmet on the X-Men cartoon when he rode a motorcycle, Joey Q has the feelings.
Thing (made of rock) and Nick Fury (infinity formula) also had to stupidly stop as well.
When did he start again? After one of the many reboots? I remember a 90’s storyline where he had a heart attack or some other major malfunction, and he quit after that. Actually made sense unlike the Marvel nonsense.
For the likes of Wolverine, the in-story reason could well be the same as the out-of-story reason: Wolverine knows that a cigar or a bike crash can’t hurt him, but he still doesn’t want to be a bad influence.
OK, OK, Wolverine has never been the sort to worry about what sort of influence he is. So say instead that Prof. X ordered him to not be a bad influence.
This is exactly the reason. He’s constantly ending up as mentor to young girls, and at the time that he gave it up, was an official teacher at the Xavier school, so he figured he should stop.
