X-Men '97

[Misfit]

If they had him holding ninja claws then they did jump to the opposite conclusion that he WASN'T born with bone claws.

Nah, like I said, the episode is framed as Wolverine remembering an adventure he had with Captain America. This Wolverine has an adamantium skeleton that has never been removed. There's no reason for his claws to exist in his memory since he's trying to remember something that happened pre Weapon X. The story from the comics the show was loosely adapting (Uncanny 268) had Wolverine using batons since he didn't have claws in the story and they just changed the batons to strap-on claws because it probably seemed like a fun idea. It's just one of the many examples of a retcon throwing off an old story. It could have been one of his classic false memories, but the other characters he encountered remember it so it did happen, but for some reason he didn't use his claws. Maybe they have since retconned the events of that story as well since they've done more Cap and Wolverine stuff since, but it's not anything I've read.

 

[altcunningham]

I didn't read this story until well after seeing it in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Did it sit with fans as badly as I've heard?

Yes. The author had a stigma among many readers. I don't remember why, just that he did. I had bounced out of the scene for a few years.

Complaints I recalled at the time were Dog's identity (or lack of who people wanted him to be), the real name reveal, the redhead character just being too on the nose, the pacing of the story, and it just being unnecessary in the wider X-Scheme. They were boring. Answers to the questions that people weren't truly turning over.

I remember the Silver Fox and the fake cabin and all that stuff having way more weight and mystery with readers at the time, and this was just kind of a nothing story.

Particularly things like the groundskeeper Logan, Dog, the redheaded woman were just so manufactured and unsatisfying meant that the meat of the mystery didn't even pay out.

That's what I remember coworkers and friends telling me until the fateful rainy evening, I just sat down at a Barnes and Noble and read the thing myself in the coffee shop. I have an eidetic memory and the only thing I even remember is that cover.

 

[MagnusPrimal]

If he ever knew, yes, because he just had no idea about his past. But he immediately assumed he was born with them as shown in the page below from #75.

This picture shows why I dislike him having bone claws. They are thicker than his adamantium ones, which shouldn’t be possible if his claws were always bone laced with adamantium, the same as the rest of his skeleton.

 

[RichardSimmonsRobot]

Origin suffered from being primarily set in a remote house in Canada in the 1830s. After 8 months of monthly reading, the overall payoff of knowing Wolverine was a plantation owner’s wimpy son, and that Logan had a lamer birth-name just didn’t land for me.

That and it explained his unending fetish for redheads. Wasn't stoked over the name reveals for either him or Rogue. Now it's just kind of an accepted "meh." Logan will always just be "Logan" to me. The Max Eisenhardt retcon was a total out of nowhere curveball for Magneto after so long that in addition to the movies keeping up the "Eric Lehnsherr" title, I've just continued it as well. I think Longshot is the only one left with no actual name beyond his codename.

 

[raybot]

I didn’t really have any pressing questions about why Wolverine liked a supermodel redhead or hated this blonde Sabretooth guy who regularly tries to kill him. The big Wolverine reveal I kept coming back for each month shouldn’t have been that he will firmly judge you based on your hair color. Paul Jenkins WTH

 

[altcunningham]

Now we need a Legends Romulus.

 

[yojoebro82]

That and it explained his unending fetish for redheads. Wasn't stoked over the name reveals for either him or Rogue. Now it's just kind of an accepted "meh." Logan will always just be "Logan" to me. The Max Eisenhardt retcon was a total out of nowhere curveball for Magneto after so long that in addition to the movies keeping up the "Eric Lehnsherr" title, I've just continued it as well. I think Longshot is the only one left with no actual name beyond his codename.

Am I the only one who doesn't necessarily NEED these things to have a back story? I would have been fine with never knowing too much about Wolverine's past. I don't care what his real name is.

 

[TheGillMan]

Am I the only one who doesn't necessarily NEED these things to have a back story? I would have been fine with never knowing too much about Wolverine's past. I don't care what his real name is.

Oh, you're FAR from the only one. MANY comics fans preferred Logan to be a mystery. We'd occasionally get a glimpse of his past, but never know if it was a real memory, or one that was implanted. It made him far more interesting, and let the readers come up with their own theories. Nothing that has been revealed from Origin onwards has really added anything to the character, and in many ways has watered him down. I'm sure there are those who like their Wolverine to have a detailed past, but I'd venture they are the minority compared to those of us who like their Logan to be a mysterious figure who constantly struggles with conflicting memories and his violent nature.

 

[hmmberto]

That's the problem with the neverending storytelling though. Comic characters that hang around for 40+ years eventually get every inch of their lives explored - especially ones as popular as Wolverine. And the "mysterious past" angle can only be stretched out for so long for a character that gets dozens of stories published about them every month for decades. I didn't need a backstory either, but it was inevitable that they'd eventually write one - and I don't think it would ever have been satisfying, no matter what it was.

 

[Thor-El]

I feel the same way about Taskmaster. I know they’ve apparently revealed his identity and explored his past and such, but as all that happened long after I stopped reading new(er) Marvel comics, I’m happy to ignore all that and keep his “identity and past unknown” intact in my head. He was much cooler as an unknown.

I stopped reading Marvel stuff (except Thor) in 2012 as a result of the AvX crossover. It all got to be too much too often. Crossovers interrupting the flow of normal storytelling. I also stopped reading DC in 2011 as a result of the Nu52. It was obvious I wasn’t their target anymore.

 

[yojoebro82]

That's the problem with the neverending storytelling

True, that.

 

[yojoebro82]

I feel the same way about Taskmaster. I know they’ve apparently revealed his identity and explored his past and such, but as all that happened long after I stopped reading new(er) Marvel comics, I’m happy to ignore all that and keep his “identity and past unknown” intact in my head. He was much cooler as an unknown.

Head canon can be a real life saver.

 

[EnigmaticClarity]

This picture shows why I dislike him having bone claws. They are thicker than his adamantium ones, which shouldn’t be possible if his claws were always bone laced with adamantium, the same as the rest of his skeleton.

Yea I also remember that being one of the original reasons I didn't like them that I hadn't thought about in over a decade until you reminded me. How do you fit roughly circular claws into Wolverine's steak knives?

Having said that different artists draw the claws differently, and some do make them wider than others. But if they're wide then you can't really have him slicing through metal like it's butter, so the inconsistency has always bugged me. So I guess the bone claws aren't any more inconsistent than the claws in general have been.

 

[EnigmaticClarity]

Am I the only one who doesn't necessarily NEED these things to have a back story? I would have been fine with never knowing too much about Wolverine's past. I don't care what his real name is.

Same, but I still enjoy back stories and I did generally enjoy Logan's including where the name Logan comes from (the last name of his real father). I didn't need it, but I liked it. And I get why others didn't, but as a fan of 19th century literature set in the same periods that Origin was set in I found it believable within the contest of what life was like in the middle of that century. Both Logan's mom and dad were horrible, but people in general were more horrible the further you go back into the past. They didn't have the benefit of constant morality tales being readily available and even broadcast to our homes in media during our formative years like all of us had.

Most people didn't like Hannibal Rising and didn't need a back story for Hannibal Lecter, but I enjoyed it. It was taken from a part of Thomas Harris's novel "Hannibal" that Ridley Scott didn't use in his film of the same name, but the idea that Hannibal became a cannibal because starving Russian soldiers marching west to Germany in WW2 during the harsh winters in the region ate his sister while he hid in their house and watched it happen is a compelling explanation for how he became the way he was in Silence of the Lambs.

 

[Misfit]

That's the problem with the neverending storytelling though. Comic characters that hang around for 40+ years eventually get every inch of their lives explored - especially ones as popular as Wolverine. And the "mysterious past" angle can only be stretched out for so long for a character that gets dozens of stories published about them every month for decades. I didn't need a backstory either, but it was inevitable that they'd eventually write one - and I don't think it would ever have been satisfying, no matter what it was.

Yup. And from a marketing perspective, it's a big payoff (financially) to finally pull-back the curtain on a character as popular as Wolverine. It was bound to happen some day, even if it only harms the character's mystique.