Best let the mysterious be
I agree: Wolverine is ridiculous.
Claremont, despite his histrionics, never violated the central tenet of Wolverine’s appeal and left the Canadian’s mysterious past mysterious. Alas, when he left the X-Men in 1991, suddenly everyone wanted to play with the coolest character in the Marvel universe. In just a few years, writers and editors clumsily managed to graft every single antihero trope onto his backstory. According to his new biography, Wolverine has been, at various times, a Canadian cowboy, a ninja, a private eye, a secret agent, a bootlegger, a mercenary, a bodyguard, a caveman, a victim of the Holocaust, a Vietnam vet, a World War II vet, a corrupt cop, and a lumberjack. Also, he was raised by wolves; he was raised by native Canadians; he is the reincarnation of a warrior from a race of humanoid dog people; he was at Hiroshima when the bomb fell, and all his girlfriends died (11 to date). Oh, and he’s saddled with five children.
He was much cooler when we couldn’t know who or what he was. Or even how he became what he is. When we look back at his lifestory, we get the sense that comics are filled with lame stories. Then we must grow up and accept that Wolverine is pretty lame himself.
