Grady Hendrix Sure Loves Wolverine



Grady Hendrix has written a very amusing profile of the popular superhero Wolverine for Slate, as the character has a movie out today. The fact that the character has his own movie now and comics fans aren't flipping out shows how much things have changed for both comics and movies in the last decade or so. The fact that Wolverine has a movie out and its success isn't being portrayed as a potential vote of no-confidence for Marvel and/or the entire superhero movie genre show how things have changed in the last year. If nothing else, you should read Hendrix's description of the character's back story as it came to be filled in by competing 1990s lesser lights. It's hysterical.

I think Hendrix has the parameters of Wolverine's appeal pretty much down. I might place greater emphasis than he does on the fact that the character has knives sticking out of his hands. Marvel upped the violence factor in a lot of their best-remembered 1970s comics in a way that likely titillated some readers and allowed other, older kids of the kind who tend to value "realism" to continue to take comics seriously. I'd include Daredevil's ninjas and the Punisher as other icons of that era's raising of the stakes to reflect other, more violent boys' media. But no one screamed "not Superman" more than Mr. Stabby there.

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