Current Events > Wolverine is a cool character in concept. Took some imagination.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Most super heroes there isn't a lot of imagination involved. Superman is basically perfect. Batman is a rich guy who's super intelligent and uses his money and technology to stop crime. Spider-Man mimics a spider, has web, crawls on walls and has spider senses. Thor is a god. Captain America is a super human. Hulk is a big ball of anger.

But Wolverine, dude is forever old, has super healing, but then has bones that come out of his hands, then later (or before, fuck if I know his entire origin), they use his super healing to bind the strongest metal to his skeleton, since he can heal before dying, and then the bones that carve through his hands become blades. Now he can slice and dice shit as if he's carrying 3 swords in each hand.

The amount of creativity going into that is more than the other characters I mentioned combined. That's some truly crazy shit. Then he went on to become one of the biggest fan favorites world wide.

ClayGuida posted...

But Wolverine, dude is forever old, has super healing, but then has bones that come out of his hands, then later (or before, fuck if I know his entire origin), they use his super healing to bind the strongest metal to his skeleton, since he can heal before dying, and then the bones that carve through his hands become blades. Now he can slice and dice shit as if he's carrying 3 swords in each hand.

He had the claws and metal bones first, healing came later.

Basically the writers were sitting around and realized what would happen to someone who coated their bones in metal and needed a way to explain why Wolverine doesn't have adamantia-leukemia.

So the bone claw shit was a backstory? That's why I wasn't sure. I'm literally basing my knowledge off the X-Men show, video games, and then movies.

ClayGuida posted...

The amount of creativity going into that is more than the other characters I mentioned combined. That's some truly crazy shit. Then he went on to become one of the biggest fan favorites world wide.

I'm watching thhe xmen show from the 90s and holy shit Wolverine is insufferable, not only does he talk so much shit, he can't even back it up. He loses to every human being because he's nerfed by censorship not allowing him to cut flesh. If it's a robot or mechanical he has like a 25% chance to win.

I honestly don't get what wolverine did to become popular because in the show he's just straight trash. All the xmen kind of suck in the show for the first 3 seasons. They get...SOMEWHAT better in season 4 though.

The bone stuff was first introduced in IIRC the mid-90's, but that's entirely a guess from memory.

Basically Magneto pulled all the metal out and then people liked the idea of Boneverine so it stuck around.

For a lot of comic characters, a new writer will try to shake things up, while ignoring everything the last writer did. Wolverine seems to be what happens when you don't ignore it and just adding and adding until it snowballs out of control.

Honestly I didnt care about Wolverine until the 2000 movie

DrizztLink posted...

The bone stuff was first introduced in IIRC the mid-90's, but that's entirely a guess from memory.

Basically Magneto pulled all the metal out and then people liked the idea of Boneverine so it stuck around.

Yeah this is right. He never knew his past before so he thought the claws were added with the adamantium.
he was only chosen for the adamantium skeleton because his healing system is what made it possible for him.
and unless it changed, thats also why he never remembered his past, it was his mind kinda erasing horrible tragedies from his past as part of his healing powers.

but he always had a healing factor. It was just super weak before the 2,000s.
hed be shot in the gut by a gun and hed be out healing for a day or 2.
after the early 2000s 20 gun shots would barely slow him down.

That's hand waiving away a lot of character depth for the other superheroes while going into more detail about Wolverine...

It's not like there aren't more compelling stories about the trials, powers, origins, etc of those other characters than just "guy with spider powers" for example.

aarrgus posted...

That's hand waiving away a lot of character depth for the other superheroes while going into more detail about Wolverine...

It's not like there aren't more compelling stories about the trials, powers, origins, etc of those other characters than just "guy with spider powers" for example.

This.

"Wolverine is more creative than Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and other characters combined" is just an outright false statement.

Part of the issue with comics is that unlike most manga, there are a billion interpretations and backstories for characters, and some of them combine elements from multiple places. IMO the commonly accepted story now is that wolverine always had all of his abilities, except for the adamantium. In fact, his healing factor was even greater than it is now. You see, the adamantium is constantly poisoning him, but the healing factor keeps it at bay -- but there's relatively less of it to go around for other injuries.

Honestly in the 90s we loved a good edgy character, and wolverine fit the bill.

I guess. It's at least more creative at a conceptual level than "guy who runs fast", but on the other hand, the writers have often done pretty creative stuff with those simple ideas in turn.

The guy tends to be too edgelord for me. Of course, that's based entirely on adaptations, for the simple reason that I never cared for those enough to get into the actual source material.

I always liked Superman though. He's supposed to represent an ideal, so naturally being near-perfect is the point.

I mean if one were so inclined you could say Wolverine is nothing but an ill tempered short dude with sharp bones and good at clotting, while Superman has super strength, nigh invulnerability, heat vision, freeze breath, flight, and at different times has been able to erase memories with kisses, time travel, and produce miniature clones of himself from his hands.

ClayGuida posted...

The amount of creativity going into that is more than the other characters I mentioned combined.

Wolverine was also like 40 years later than Superman. At the time Superman was done, it hadn't been done before.

Tyranthraxus posted...

Wolverine was also like 40 years later than Superman. At the time Superman was done, it hadn't been done before.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnceOriginalNowCommon

Prefer the old name of "Seinfeld is Unfunny" since it encapsulates the idea better.

But in essence, Seinfeld (to a modern viewer) seems stereotypical and predictable since it uses a lot of modern comedy practices. The issue is that when it aired, they were brand-fucking-new and practically revolutionized comedy, so people in later generations see it as a generic rip-off when the issue flows the other way.

Who's idea was it to make him nearly a dwarf though? Like 5 feet 2 or 3? He's shorter than Vegeta, and only an inch taller than Krillin, lol.

Tyranthraxus posted...

Wolverine was also like 40 years later than Superman. At the time Superman was done, it hadn't been done before.

Eh... it kinda had. It just wasn't commercialized. You had tall tales and epic poems which had a lot of the same ideas.

Wolverine came about because the creator learned that wolverines fend off bears and decided that would make a good story for a Hulk (the bear) fight.

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

Eh... it kinda had. It just wasn't commercialized. You had tall tales and epic poems which had a lot of the same ideas.

Not like Superman.

Let's just go by Action Comics #1 for a second.

• Dude is an alien but also a good guy! Aliens were almost universally depicted as invaders or other enemies at the time. Good aliens weren't really a mainstream thing until Star Trek.
• He busts down the governor's door to cancel a wrongful execution. He could have just stopped it himself but he didn't because he doesn't want to just be good. He wants other people to also be good & do the right thing.
• He knows with his powers he could easily get everyone to like him, but he actually wants people to like him for who he is as a person and not because of his flashy heroic feats. (Ackshually yes we all know he wasn't the first one to have a secret civilian Identity but he made it very popular while nobody could probably even tell you the name of the first one who did it without looking it up.)
• Bullets just bounce off him holy shit!!!

All these things were pretty new ideas at the time.

"I can smelly REALLY far."

"That does not help us"

His super powers and the lore of him is a great concept but him as a character is as over done as they are with any other anti-hero.

ClayGuida posted...

Most super heroes there isn't a lot of imagination involved. Superman is basically perfect.

A lot of Superman's powers came later. Originally, he was just strong and bullet proof (no flying, no heat or x-ray vision, no super speed).

DaxNovalis posted...

A lot of Superman's powers came later. Originally, he was just strong and bullet proof (no flying, no heat or x-ray vision, no super speed).

He couldn't fly but his strength did let him jump really far.

The flight power happened because in the original cartoon the animators complained it was too hard to animate him jumping everywhere.

Tyranthraxus posted...

Not like Superman.

Let's just go by Action Comics #1 for a second.

* Dude is an alien but also a good guy! Aliens were almost universally depicted as invaders or other enemies at the time. Good aliens weren't really a mainstream thing until Star Trek.
* He busts down the governor's door to cancel a wrongful execution. He could have just stopped it himself but he didn't because he doesn't want to just be good. He wants other people to also be good & do the right thing.
* He knows with his powers he could easily get everyone to like him, but he actually wants people to like him for who he is as a person and not because of his flashy heroic feats. (Ackshually yes we all know he wasn't the first one to have a secret civilian Identity but he made it very popular while nobody could probably even tell you the name of the first one who did it without looking it up.)
* Bullets just bounce off him holy shit!!!
All these things were pretty new ideas at the time.

Oh, I misunderstood you. Yeah, there were a lot of new ideas with the specific character. I thought you were alluding to his general consensus status as the first superhero.

I've never really understood why he represents a new genre when ideas like superpowers, incredible odds and episodic adventures have been around forever.

Tyranthraxus posted...

He couldn't fly but his strength did let him jump really far.

The flight power happened because in the original cartoon the animators complained it was too hard to animate him jumping everywhere.

Yep. Leap tall buildings in a single bound and all that

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

I've never really understood why he represents a new genre when ideas like superpowers, incredible odds and episodic adventures have been around forever.

There's a few things uniquely Superhero that don't pertain to older shit like Beowulf. They didn't all start with Superman, some came before and some came later but here's what I expect when someone says Superheroes.

• Secret Identity
• Recurring villains (sometimes associated with Heroes Don't Kill)
• Sidekicks & Team ups
• Minions / Goons / Mooks

Now sure sidekick is an idea literally in Gilgamesh but it's the way it's combined with the other things. Secret identities is the big one, though. In most historical literature, this was exclusively the realm of deceptive assholes like Loki. Sometimes you got someone to do it briefly to prove a point or for a specific reason like Odesseus but the idea that you would just have a double life was very uncommon.

And when Achilles kills Hector, Hector doesn't come back for round two. It's up to other people to get revenge. And the illustrated comic format is what allowed minor or subservient antagonists to shine. You don't usually have the time in oral traditional poetry meters to devote to Batman beating up Bank Robbers when you need to be talking about the Joker. But in comics that can just be a panel or two.

And yeah plenty of superhero mediums deviate from these concepts but they're usually acknowledged in some way even if it's just to say that we're literally doing the opposite of that.

So while there's definitely similarities I feel like Superheroes has enough distinguishing features to really be their own thing.

Tyranthraxus posted...

There's a few things uniquely Superhero that don't pertain to older shit like Beowulf. They didn't all start with Superman, some came before and some came later but here's what I expect when someone says Superheroes.

* Secret Identity
* Recurring villains (sometimes associated with Heroes Don't Kill)
* Sidekicks & Team ups
* Minions / Goons / Mooks

Now sure sidekick is an idea literally in Gilgamesh but it's the way it's combined with the other things. Secret identities is the big one, though. In most historical literature, this was exclusively the realm of deceptive assholes like Loki. Sometimes you got someone to do it briefly to prove a point or for a specific reason like Odesseus but the idea that you would just have a double life was very uncommon.

And when Achilles kills Hector, Hector doesn't come back for round two. It's up to other people to get revenge. And the illustrated comic format is what allowed minor or subservient antagonists to shine. You don't usually have the time in oral traditional poetry meters to devote to Batman beating up Bank Robbers when you need to be talking about the Joker. But in comics that can just be a panel or two.

And yeah plenty of superhero mediums deviate from these concepts but they're usually acknowledged in some way even if it's just to say that we're literally doing the opposite of that.

So while there's definitely similarities I feel like Superheroes has enough distinguishing features to really be their own thing.

But you also have guys like Zorro and Sherlock Holmes who mark almost all the boxes. Zorro doesn't have superpowers, and Sherlock doesn't have a secret identity, but between the two of them you really have the whole genre.

And yes, Sherlock Holmes does have superpowers.

RetuenOfDevsman posted...

But you also have guys like Zorro and Sherlock Holmes who mark almost all the boxes. Zorro doesn't have superpowers, and Sherlock doesn't have a secret identity, but between the two of them you really have the whole genre.

And yes, Sherlock Holmes does have superpowers.

Zorro is pulp along with stuff like Dick Tracy & Buck Rogers which basically were the precursors to superheroes.

It's no coincidence that Superman was created shortly after those guys.

Spider-Man is most definitely a deep and complex character. And unlike other superheroes, the writers don't even reward him for his sacrifices.

Sheiky-Baby posted...

Who's idea was it to make him nearly a dwarf though? Like 5 feet 2 or 3? He's shorter than Vegeta, and only an inch taller than Krillin, lol.

The animal he's named after is tiny too but has enough batshit aggression and ruggedness that it can and will fuck with just about anything.