Wolverine #1

[kojiro]

Wolverine is working with some supervillains.

Comments

[chrisdv]

...Why would Wolverine even listen to Inferior Spidey, when he knows full well that he's been acting like a complete idiot for months? And since when is Wolverine a mercen--

Fuck it. One issue & this is already too dumb.

[skjam]

Apparently there is one thing the Offer can do that Wolverine couldn't resist turning to the dark side for. Alternatively, this is part of a long con by Wolverine and somehow what we saw wasn't what actually happened.

[cainofdreaming]

Or LMD.

[alexanderlucard]

Of the Albert robot.

[sadoeuphemist]

It's like one of those silver age covers where Superman is leaving Jimmy Olsen and Aquaman to die of thirst in the middle of the desert, and taunting them with a pitcher of water. You're supposed to say, whoa, what's going on with Superman in this cover??? and then read the rest of the book to find out.

Except replace 'cover' with 'first issue' and 'rest of the book' with 'rest of the series.'

[akodo_rokku]

Motto. This is so blatantly a set-up and I've really enjoyed Cornell's Wolverine so far, I'm willing to see it through.

[long_silence]

So that "I won't kill people (outside of my secret black ops X-Force group) anymore so that I can lead a better example for my students" thing didn't last long did it?

[alan_smithee]

This isn't going to be real, it will be a bluff to draw the reader in - it will be a shape-shifter, a LMD or something as part of a con.

[majingojira]

Honestly? That sort of hypocrisy wouldn't surprise me in the least if they went all the way for it. We're in a Post-Arena Marvel Universe now.

[alan_smithee]

Why would it be 'hypocrisy'? Comics have been doing that sort of thing for as long as I've been reading comics - at least 30 years.

[majingojira]

True, wrong word: Stupidity. Basically, because this is Post Arena, it has to be a 'real' kill to 'really' matter even though there will be minimal if any followup or impact regarding t his death and no funeral scene because "Funerals are Boring".

[alan_smithee]

Eh? Why would we have a impact or a funeral scene for what is effective a plot device rather than a character?

I don't understand why you keep mentioning Arena as if it is a court order that forces writers to do a certain thing?

[majingojira]

Basically, to effectively use a plot device character for a death scene, they have to matter. And to matter, they must have focus and repercussions from the death should follow. Imagine if Gwen Stacy wasn't mourned for years upon years after her death. Imagine if Emma Frost did not become violently protective as a result of her Hellions being slaughtered by Sentinels. If it has no impact, then the plot device doesn't matter.

And I mention Arena because looking at that gives us an idea how modern series handle death scenes most of the time: as throwaway impact moments. There, fully developed characters were thrown into a proverbial wood chipper to make fertilizer for other characters, but because it was poorly applied with most of the characters receiving only a thin coating of narrative nourishment that it was downright wasteful.

[arbre_rieur]

I disagree. What about the murder at, say, the beginning of a Law and Order episode or Sherlock Holmes mystery? They're not meaningful, usually, but they work as a plot device.

[majingojira]

Most of those examples are, frankly, plot devices first, characters second. They die, and then we find out about them. There's no real emotional attachment to them. They are little better than Ensign Rickys in Star Trek, the disposable Red Shirts who die just to show that the situation is serious. They are useful, but whenever a 'name' character is used in that manner, it's frankly repulsive.

Speaking of Ensign Rickys, Star Trek actually gives examples of this. In "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "Skin of Evil", name cast member Lt. Tasha Yar was killed off in the exact same manner as any other throw away Ensign Ricky. No build up, just zapped and dead. No one liked it. The writers realized this a bit too late and made an episode to give the character (and the actress) the proper sendoff they deserve in "Yesterday's Enterprise".

But it is possible to have such a character be an actual character first and a plot device second. Warren Ellis did it a few times in his Thunderbolts run. He had several nameless grunts in Thunderbolts Mountain just talk before they die. They simply shot the stuff with regular, human dialogue, just moments before they are blown to bits or otherwise killed. Some times, it's really humanizing talk about how little the guards are paid and also serves to humanize Swordsman (basically, him being noble, or trying to be/concerned with 'his underlings'), and other times it's the madness induced comedy lines that come later, which endear and horrify. My favorite being "Man, my kid's gonna be pissed. I told him he could dress up as Iron Man and send his little buddies to the concentration camp I built him in the back yard." Fun times.

I give Arena crap (and use it as a hallmark of things going wrong at Marvel) because it does something that other Trek series have done. Star Trek Voyager's "Fury" explicitly comes to mind, where a beloved character was brought back as a villain just to be surprising. When a character is brought back as evil, or brought back just to be killed, the audience is generally made up of 3 types: people who don't know the character (and are thus indifferent unless the writer makes the readers care); people who know and didn't care about character (who might be bemused by the idea, but otherwise unmoved); and people who knew and liked the character (who will be hurt or insulted by this). You can probably guess how "Fury" was received. About as badly as meeting the "Kirk should die on the bridge" cry from the fans with "BRIDGE ON THE CAPTAIN!" in Star Trek: Generations. It's the same sort of outside the box thinking that reminds you why that box exists in the first place.

Basically, it's all about when the information is revealed, and the status of the character in the narrative prior to their death scene. It takes a lot of skill to make a reader care about a character that's already dead. And a name character should never, ever be used a plot device alone.

[arbre_rieur]

I think we're talking at cross-purposes. I thought you were saying even plot device characters need to have meaningful deaths, but it seems like you're actually saying the opposite? That it's the characters who are more than plot devices who need meaningful deaths?

We're not in disagreement then on the principle, though I'd quibble with your specific examples. I've seen plenty of fans criticize "Yesterday's Enterprise" specifically because they find the idea that a death that isn't some grand, big-damn-hero thing is meaningless or unbecoming to be annoying and almost anti-Trek. What the characters *should* have done, when Tasha talked about wanting a more meaningful death, is point out that she died doing her duty, trying to save lives with no regard for her own, and one should never consider that meaningless or inferior.

Star Trek novelist Chistopher Bennett wrote an incisive piece about that. Let me see if I can dig it up... Here we go: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/01/star-trek-the-next-generation-rewatch-yesterdays-enterprise#232644

Main characters deaths' should be meaningful to the story, but conventionally heroic, larger than life self-sacrificing deaths are not the only way to do that.

[majingojira]

Yeah, I had a feeling I was going off a bit and we probably do agree, but I'm just bad at expressing it. It happens. Originally, I was basically going on about how the death featured in the original post can probably be a real kill because it being 'real' rather than a cop out is the only way for it to matter these days, given precedent by things like Arena. "The deaths are real, because that's the only way they would matter".

As to Yesterday's Enterprise, I'll stick with SF Debris' analysis of the events. He makes fart jokes about it.

I get that for some people the 'random death' in the line of duty is more dramatic, but the thinking behind it is something that has escaped me. Not that we can't just have deaths in the line of duty as long as the focus is on the character who dies. Tasha, for example, didn't really have that.

I've watched too much Gundam for that.

But as you said, it should be meaningful to the story, have focus in it. It doesn't have to be a heroic sacrifice, but it does have to matter.

I liken it to a serpent. If it doesn't coil (build up), it has no impact. If the venom does not linger, the bite does not matter.

[rainspirit]

It's a sad state of affairs when readers mistake a possible decoy/clone with a protagonist doing "business as usual."

[filthysize]

He should change his name to The Offerer.

[donnblake]

Huh. That's a neat power.