Wolverine (Vol. 1) #2

 

"Debts and Obligations"
Published: October 1982
Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Frank Miller
Inker: Josef Rubinstein

What's Going On?
Wolverine in recuperating at Yukio's, after his loss to Shingen in last issue.  He awakes to find ninja assassins, a group known as The Hand, about to attack.  Wolverine protects his new friend, and a bunch of faceless ninja cannon fodder serve their purpose and die. 

To repay his debt to Yukio, Wolverine offers to scare (and mmmaybe kill) the crimelord that sent The Hand after her.  Little does Logan know that Yukio is secretly working for Lord Shingen; she is tasked with the job of eliminating Shingen's only remaining rival in the Japanese criminal underworld --- and then she is to kill Wolverine!  Gasp!  Ignorant to all of that, Wolverine helps Yukio get where she needs to go.  In the process, Wolverine protects Mariko from an assassination attempt.  You would think that would earn the man some points with the little lady, right?  Well, to protect her, Wolverine went berserk and slaughtered a bunch of assassins before her eyes.  It seems that "savagely killing" is not one of Mariko's turn-ons, so she is horrified and Wolverine is extra depressed as the issue closes.

Worth Noting:
- This is the first time Wolverine faced The Hand, and the first time The Hand were seen outside the pages of Daredevil.

- Yukio as a lusty assassin?  Yeah, that happened.  Most, if not all, of Yukio's later appearances cast her as a carefree adventurer, rather than a hardened killer.  As for her attraction to Logan, I believe that is also something kept to this miniseries.

Art!
I was pretty happy with Frank Miller's pencils in the first issue, but a few things started to bother me in this one.  Why is the art so sparse?  There are a lot of panels here without any background whatsoever and Miller's attention to detail comes and goes, sometimes noticeably on the same page.  The action sequences are all still choreographed well, but I don't know if Miller ever really captures the savagery of Wolverine.  Wolverine berserk looks a lot like Wolverine in control to me.

Even with those issues, there are still some stellar pages that play toward Miller's love of the over-the-top.

Ninjas are terrible marksmen, apparently

Writing!
This issue is interesting, in that it has Wolverine do what he does and he still ultimately loses.  That quickly becomes a theme for Wolverine, but this is the first major instance of it I can recall.  Really, this is one of the few times to this point where he has been shaken up (the Proteus and Dark Phoenix stories being the others).  Claremont keeps the series going with lots of action and some subplot advancement.  He was a little less successful with the fleshing out of Yukio, though.  This is her first proper appearance, and she comes across as dangerous and mysterious, which is good.  It's a little weird seeing her hit on Logan so shamelessly, but it kind of fits her wild character.  There are a few points with Yukio, though, that are just painful to read...

Retrospectively Amusing:
- The first page of this issue has Yukio being frightened and pleading for Wolverine to wake up and fight.  In no other scene does she act desperate or ask for help, even when surrounded by ninjas about to kill her.  The page works on its own, but when you consider the character Claremont was trying to mold here, the same character who plays "chicken" with the bullet train in the next issue, it sticks out like a sore thumb.  Issue-to-issue contradictions are pretty common, especially early in a character's development, but page-to-page contradictions are always amusing.

- Yukio introduces her catch phrase in this issue: "Gotcha!"  She only uses it in her first few appearances, but it is awkward every time it is used.

Uncanny X-Men #162

"Beyond the Farthest Star"
Published: October 1982
Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: Dave Cockrum
Inker: Bob Wiacek

What's Going On?
Okay, after last month's flashback issue, we are now fully into the Brood Saga.  We find Wolverine on the run on an alien planet, fighting off the flora and fauna of this landscape, as well as killing any Brood (or "Sleazoids") that he encounters.  As Wolvie tries to make sense of the mess he's in, we flash back to the events leading up to this.  Basically, he remembers Deathbird showing up at the end of Uncanny #161 and then he remembers everything being okay.  Or was it?  In the flashback, Wolverine keeps seeing things looking pretty dire --- he and the X-Men are clearly the worse for wear and are surrounded by Sleazoids --- but only for brief flashes.  Every time he tries to concentrate on those flashes, he gets more and more disoriented.  In the end, it turns out that the X-Men are all having some psychic wool pulled over their eyes.  They have all been implanted with Brood Queen eggs, and the result of that looks like this:

The X-Men will transform into a Brood (is that the singular of "Brood"?), and that Brood will have their memories and abilities, but will presumably serve the Brood faithfully.  Wolverine has been sick and hallucinating the entire issue because his healing factor is fighting off the implanted egg.  The issue closes with Wolverine coming to the realization that, if he cannot find a cure for the others, he will have to kill each and every one of the X-Men.

Where Did All the Subplots Go?
In a rare turn for Chris Claremont, this issue is entirely devoted to a single plot thread.  We do not flash back to Earth, we do not focus on any of the other X-Men, and we do not catch up with Deathbird and Lillandra.  This is just Wolverine catching us up on the Brood plot and setting the stage for the next few issues.  I don't know how often this happens, but I'm going to be keeping an eye out for it in the future.

Art!
I'm a bigger fan of Dave Cockrum's initial run on Uncanny than this one, if only because of how well he designs characters.  After all, the costumes he created for the All-New X-Men became the standards for each of them.  But this issue really showcases Cockrum's strengths.  He does a gret job with science-fictiony stuff, and the two-page spread (that was too large for my scanner, sorry) he does of the Broodworld was excellent.  We are also treated to a rare full-page splash of Wolverine doing what he does best:

There are a lot of issues where Wolverine goes berserk, but they are usually only a few panels in a larger story.  This is Cockrum being given the room to show off, and it's pretty cool.

Writing!
One of the nice touches in this issue is the acknowledgement that Wolverine would normally follow his instincts if he was conflicted.  Claremont gets around that by having the illusion in Wolverine's mind being powerful enough to play havoc with his head and make him question his sanity.  When I was rereading this, my immediate reaction was, "Since when does Wolverine wait to stab things when his senses tell him to stab?"  That explanation made sense and doesn't take up too much of the story to explain.  Well done.

I'm a little less sold on Claremont's choice to take the X-Men back to space, though.  This is a pretty good issue, but the team has already met alien civilizations twice (the first appearance of the Imperial Guard and the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga, by my count) during his tenure as writer.  Space adventures have always struck me as missing the point of the X-Men.  Oh, well.  At least this story is off to a good start.

Retrospectively Amusing:
Cockrum's choice on how to show Wolverine's body almost-but-not-quite becomign Brood-like looks an awful lot like Wolvie is doing an impression of the Fantastic Four's Thing:

The letters page is also pretty funny for modern readers.  The bulk of the mail has fans overreacting from the very end of Uncanny #155, which ended with Colossus appearing to die at the very end of the issue.  At that point, Chris Claremont had been writing this title for five years.  Did anyone actually believe he would let an established character die such a cheap death?  The overwhelming message from the letters is that Claremont was being too cruel to the X-Men and the fans.  I can't imagine their responses to the Mutant Massacre.