Wolverine’s complexity as a character relies on the densely layered conflict between his human and beast sides. The former seeks to retain agency and control over the course of his life, and to build lasting relationships with women who embody a gentler, subtler humanity that Logan can seem to entertain. The beast, on the other hand, knows wants freedom–the freedom to kill, to love the darker, more chaotic, Circe-like women to which Wolverine’s shady part-time superhero career brings him into contact, and the freedom to revel in its lower nature.
But as we saw last time, whether it’s the beast or the man that gets the girl, tragedy follows. This theme continues as we examine another of Wolverine’s defining moments, the death of Silver Fox in Wolverine vol. 2 #10.
HAVE YOUR CAKE, EAT IT TOO
This one’s a classic with all the fixings. Chris Claremont at his peak, John Buscema and Bill Sienkiewicz, Wolverine, Sabretooth, and bits of Wolverine’s elusive past. Remember, this is before Wolverine remembered everything, back before he had any clue he was part of Weapon-X. The cover alone promised answers to things only hinted at in the pages of Uncanny X-Men:
Notice something? Where are Wolverine’s claws? Where are the costumes, the larger than life poses? Gone are the trappings of superhero norm, present is the down and dirty aesthetic that ran through the first twenty or so issues of Wolverine’s first ongoing series.
Wrapped in a frame narrative of Logan (incognito as Patch) investigating crime in Madripoor, we’re treated to a series of flashbacks that flesh out the death of Wolverine’s long-lost lady love, Silver Fox:
The look on Logan’s face in the final panel says it all. Sabretooth, out of costume, sits at the bar licking icing off a slice of cake, and when he implies he killed her because she resisted rape, Wolverine flies off the handle. But this is a pre-X-Men Wolverine, a pre-supervillain Sabretooth, and the bar fight quickly spills out into the Canadian wilderness and takes on new proportions.
This is no superhero. As Wolverine tells us, this is “as close to human as I ever came,” a man seeking revenge for the murder of his beloved (7). The conflict, then, drives Logan farther from his humanity, setting up a pattern of conflict that goads the beast-human inner war for control: as Logan responds to violent aggression, the beast in him gains more and more control, and the human–weakened by the later addition of adamantium bones and claws–falls further behind.
Wolverine is a reactionary character, like many superheroes reacting to the plots of their respective supervillains. What sets this apart from the standard superhero narrative is the focus on personal revenge and loss. What’s more, Sabretooth is the better of Logan in every way: “I’d never met my match ’til that day” (10). A human being can’t possibly stop Sabretooth–he’s too strong, too fast, too impossibly big and powerful. The final panel shows the slack hand of a injured Logan sticking from the wood pile while Sabretooth, face shadowed in menace, stands ready, weapon in hand. The specter of the beast looms, embodied in Sabretooth’s curiously slack shoulders, watching Logan, aware that he, too, will embody it.
THE FALL
This issue, much like the mini-series discussed last post, is a katabasis–a journey to the underworld. The difference here is that Wolverine returns to the world of the living only to take a beat-down:
The mythological journey to the center of darkness has been reversed–the minotaur, the gorgon, lies not at the center of the labyrinth or lair, but at the peak of the mountain, the high point. Strange that the finish line should mark both the completion of an ordeal and death, in the classical sense. There, Logan’s rage is unleashed, and part of him is subsumed both by the beast and the fight against Sabretooth. In order to beat his enemy, Logan has to take the plunge, let the berserker out:
CONCLUSION
Both men survive, but only Sabretooth is truly intact. Wolverine’s wound, the one his healing factor can’t heal–made all the more significant because of his mutant healing ability–is the inevitable loss of his humanity in order to defeat foes such as Sabretooth–animals, blood-thirsty killers. This ties into what I call the hero’s wound, an essential principle for superheroes holding that a character have a wound, physical but preferably emotional or psychological, that can’t be healed in order to perpetuate the inner or outer conflict necessary for character development.
Wolverine’s wound, then, is simple. A man is no match for animals like Sabretooth, but a fellow berserk animal is another thing entirely.
Curiously, Silver Fox wouldn’t be fleshed out until the later days of Hama and Silvestri; by then the 90s comic book spec-boom was in full swing and Wolverine stories, like most superhero stories, were in a bad place, full of ridiculous fly-by-night conventions, personalities, and illusionary industry pressures. We’ll come back to Silver Fox, but not as a defining moment; this is as close as it gets to a treatment of the character in any real depth.
Next up: I dig a little deeper into Wolverine’s childhood before the retcon. Stay tuned!
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Tags: berserker, Bill Sienkieiwcz, cake, Chris Claremone, John Buscema, Logan, Marvel Comics, NO!, Patch, Sabretooth, Silver Fox, superhero, supervillain, the wound, Wolverine
