Spider-Man Vs. Wolverine: "High Tide"

[superboyprime]

"These 'ideas' are not ideas at all. Ideas bring life to these legends and extend/renew their freshness. Chopping off Aquaman’s hand did nothing for Aquaman, marrying off Clark Kent did nothing for Superman. They sold some comic books, but these are dead ideas in that they lead to dead ends. Marvel *completely* misinterpreted and distorted Spider-Man vs. Wolverine to use it as justification to marry Pete and MJ, when the point of that story was the *exact* opposite: why theirs would be a dysfunctional and unsustainable relationship. Years later, Marvel did it again, completely missing the entire point of my BP/Storm flirtation–the unconsummated love since childhood–and married them off. No offense to the writer, but it was a dead idea in that all it did was build a dead end to T’Challa’s future and make him less interesting. Having Batman run around with an un-dead 10-year old violates everything Batman is about." - Christopher J. Priest

Comments

[starwolf_oakley]

I am just going to sigh sadly.

[freezer]

Motto.

I mean, SERIOUSLY, all the times Spidey's waded into a crowd of gun-toting mobsters or gang members... All the times he's fought and fought alongside The Punisher? THIS makes him freeze up? BULLSHIT.

And that's not even factoring in that BS about Superman and Spidey's marriages.

[silicondream]

"I don't even notice my Spider-Sense! Which is weird, because making me notice and react to unexpected dangers is kind of its thing! This must be like that time Daredevil went deaf whenever he got nervous!"

[starwolf_oakley]

Also, did Charlie know Spider-Man had a Spider-Sense? Was she genuinely going to attack him to set it off? From time to time, someone mentions "It is like he knows where the danger is going to be!" Someone watching Spider-Man fight could tell, if he/she knew what to look for.

Still, it's been said if you ask seven writers how Spider-Man's spider-sense works, you will get seven different answers.

[lyricalswagger]

I normally like Priest but I didn't like this at all.

[philippos42]

So, Jim Owsley wants to rail against premise changes? Really? He killed Ned Leeds as a writer, and killed off Jean DeWolff as an editor. What did those stories accomplish? And killing Jean probably helped set up the early Spider-Marriage period, by clearing out one more ambiguous piece of supporting cast.

(Also, I don't think there's been an actual good T'Challa story since Don McGregor and Gene Colan did that quasi-realistic one in MCP.)

What can I say about Jim Owsley? I liked him as Spider-Man editor. He printed Ann Nocenti's weird little Spider-Man stories, and those were pretty good. He was funny.

But as a storyteller, sometimes I think he's a pretentious ass who veers from dark to snark.

...And yet, he's still better at this stuff than the forgettable hacks who do the vapid potboilers with his characters.

So...so...No, still, he can take his stupid pen name and his noir pretensions and his old flames as plot devices to die by the end of the case, and crawl away again. If he's that stuck in bad 1960's tropes, who cares? And if he helps set up situations that he doesn't understand and/or hates, well, who needs him?

Grr argh, Jim Owsley.

I have a longstanding affection for Al Williamson, or I think I do, but he made something of a strange inker for Doc Bright here.

[redmagpie]

I know nothing about this guy but from what you've said (and this story) it seems like he has an obsession with the whole 'SUPERHEROES MUST BE FOREVER ALONE' thing. I hate that thing.

[philippos42]

I...think by the time he did Quantum and Woody he was getting past that? Maybe? I mean, he does write women as at least a little more than props, sometimes.

I got bored with that series, though.

I vaguely remember this "Spider-Man versus Wolverine" special from when it came out, but I couldn't have told you who wrote and drew it. It's weird realizing that this is by Owz and Doc, who would go on to be much better known for Quantum and Woody--which I wanted to like, but which I seem to remember being really bored by.

[redmagpie]

I remember it coming out. Was it about time travel or police stuff or something?

[beyondthefringe]

Quantum and Woody was an extremely entertaining (to me) comic about the world's worst super-hero team, put out by Valiant/Akklaim/whatever some ten years back or so. They were best friends/total opposites who were caught in an accident which gave them energy powers and they had to clang special bracelets together every 24 hours, so they were basically stuck with one another.

And there was a goat.

[bruinsfan]

I'm just waiting for him to team up with Dave Sim and form the League of Bitter Zealot Divorcées.

[philippos42]

Sorry, I have a real mixed bag of feelings about Owz. I sort of liked the downbeat Puma/Beyonder story he did for Secret Wars II (even if it was ultimately meaningless page filler with some similar bones to this). He could be a good editor, on Spider-Man for Marvel and on various things for DC. He worked as editor and then as writer on the Ray revival, which had some neat elements. (On the other hand, that means he gave Joe Quesada an early big break, but who knew, right?)

But he annoys me as a writer sometimes, and after knowing him as "Owz" for years, the pen name "Christopher Priest" drives me up the wall.

(And I thought Jean DeWolff was cool, and killing her off seems like a waste now.)

All of that before the fact that flat-out dissing Pete/MJ is a fast way to my bad side.

[redmagpie]

Is there a story behind him changing his name or was it just a thing he did? That sort of sounds like there's something wrong with wanting to change your name, there's not, I am just curious.

[laughing_tree]

It's not a pen name. He legally changed his name to Christopher Priest, and it's what he goes by in daily life. At the time of the change, he talked about it in a letter column and said he was feeling more in touch with his religion lately (he's an ordained minister) but I'm not sure if that was the actual reason or just a joke.

[philippos42]

No, I understand that once he was a freelancer, he was free to change his working name. And I'm pretty familiar with his stuff, so to me they're just different names for the same writer.

It's just, especially if it's because he is an ordained minister, "Christopher Priest" (later just "Priest" to avoid confusion with a writer who's actually named Christopher Priest) is an oddly religious pen name. It rubs me the wrong way. "Jim Owsley" sounded like a cool guy. That he calls himself "Christopher Priest" somehow bugs me, even though I get it.

It's not even like his work has remarkably Christian motifs, not that that would make it better. I just...I recently decided to go back to calling him Owz because that's what I think of as his name.

[lyricalswagger]

It's really rude to decide that you're going to call someone what YOU think they should be called, instead of calling them what they SAY they should be called.

[philippos42]

Oh, yes, yes it is. I know. I'm aware I'm being rude.

I mean, he was still "Owsley" when he wrote this, but even in general I call him "Owz" because personally find the particular pen name "Priest" tacky. "Christopher J. Priest" is a little better.

[beyondthefringe]

I normally like Priest as a writer, but my god, this is dark and it just feels very off-tone for Peter Parker. I get the noir/Cold War thriller voice, but it doesn't work in this case. Even at his worst, Peter's not that dour, and Wolverine feels a bit exaggerated as well, like he was trying to channel Frank Miller and failing.

A bleak story, and a misfire in a lot of ways.

[arrogantcur]

Some people just shouldn't write Spider-Man. Claremont wasn't able to write a very good Spidey, to name one.

J.M. DeMatteis usually wrote a more serious, less jokey Peter Parker, and that's fine in small doses; sometimes, like in "Kraven's Last Hunt", you can't blame Peter if he isn't in the mood for witty banter. But when I was reading ASM with DeMatteis the regular writer, I got tired of things being so serious all the time.

Part of the appeal of the character is the quips. If you can't write good quips on a regular basis, you should write a different book.

[steverodgers5]

I like his Wolverine. But then I kind of feel that very few people get Logan's voice right outside of Claremont. Possibly Peter David. But that's about it for me. Can't stand the way a lot of recent writers have written Logan..

[steverodgers5]

At the time, the fact that this was a more serious story was actually refreshing. Because it hadn't been done to death by that point. The grim and dour 90es were still to hit the character..

[reveen]

Yeah, sorry. I ain't bovvered. You can keep your crappy crawling in my skin noir Spider-man.

[glprime]

From the quote alone I was like, "Yeeeeaah, you're a fun sort, aren't ya?"

[skemono]

Hnh. *checks timelines* So this came out in 1986, Spidey had been doing his thing for over twenty years, and we're supposed to buy that he's an "amateur"?

[arrogantcur]

This would have also come a year or two after the original Secret Wars, let's remember.

A story in which Spider-Man wound up fighting the team of Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Rogue, and Wolverine, and managed to hold them all off long enough to escape.

To be honest, Shooter kind of made the X-Men look like chumps there, which as a fan of both Spidey and the X-Men I wasn't too happy about. But it was canon, so how the hell did Wolverine go from "Can't beat Spider-Man even with backup" to "Can shrug off all of Spider-Man's best shots and win the fight"?

Here's what anybody who writes Wolvie needs to remember about him:

-He can heal very fast from injuries that normal people wouldn't heal from;
-His bones don't break unless it's the '90s;
-His claws can cut through anything;
-He has animal senses allowing him to track people like a bloodhound or sense if somebody is an impostor because of their scent;
-He has no other powers besides those. He may have a lot of experience and a lot of combat training, but that doesn't make him superhuman.

Meanwhile, Spider-Man is faster and stronger than Wolverine by quite a lot, has excellent reaction time, and has a spider sense which makes him damn near impossible to hit. Wolverine beating Spider-Man is as believable as Captain America beating Spider-Man. It shouldn't happen.

I don't buy the idea that Peter would think letting Wolverine grapple with him was a good idea, not for one second. His whole style of fighting focuses on evasion. His standard MO is "stay out of reach, dart in and punch the guy, dart away before he can hit me, repeat until end of fight".

This is because when somebody does manage to grab Peter and keep him from bouncing all over the place, it usually ends badly for him. (E.g., Doc Ock.) Peter knows this. And he isn't an amateur, so there is no way he would ever make such a stupid, rookie mistake.

And even if he did, this is a guy who could lift ten tons, while Wolverine has the strength of a normal guy who works out a lot. It should've been easy for Spider-Man to throw him off.

[skemono]

I don't actually have as much of a problem with the fight going much of the way it did. Yes, Spider-Man is stronger & faster than Wolverine and has his spider-sense to boot. He should be near impossible to hit, but he gets hit so often anyway I have a hard time being upset about that. Also, Wolverine's healing factor and adamantium mean that Spider-Man, despite his strength, can't really damage him much. (Well, at least with Wolvie's healing factor as it is today--I don't know how easily he could shrug off organ damage or a concussion in '86.)

Yeah, he could easily pick up Wolvie and throw him around, so he could toss him off in the end, but not necessarily before Wolvie could pop his claws. Don't object terrible to that, either.

I do, however, object to the fact that Spidey is being written like a moron and a coward who's never been in a fight before. Did he just forget that he has web shooters? (Did Priest forget he has web shooters?) Pin Wolvie down at the wrists so he can't move his hands and use his claws to cut himself free. Bam, Wolvie is incapacitated.

[arrogantcur]

You're right about Wolvie's durability, and I would never say that Logan was out of his league taking on other superhumans.

This is a guy who made his debut fighting the Hulk, after all.

But that being said, if you're in a fight with the Hulk, the trick isn't hitting him. He's a very big target, and if you have claws like Wolvie's you can do a good deal of damage to him without actually killing him. Wolvie also has a quickness advantage, I think; looking at the Hulk's Wikipedia entry, it doesn't say he is superhumanly fast. So Logan could dodge most of Hulk's punches and heal from the ones he couldn't dodge.

Whenever Wolverine's in a fight against somebody slow enough or unskilled enough for Wolvie to hit him or her, and/or if it's the kind of fight where both participants hit each other and it might come down to who can withstand the most punishment, then Wolverine has a good chance of winning.

But that isn't the kind of fight he was in with Spider-Man who, yeah, could've done any of the things you said to neutralize him.

I think the best Wolverine could hope for would be a stalemate, wherein Spider-Man couldn't punch him hard enough to knock him out, but he couldn't punch or cut Spider-Man at all.

Then again, I'm not sure I buy the idea of Wolverine being unable to be knocked out or knocked down. Pretty sure he has been knocked out before (although I can't think of any specific incident off the top of my head). As for being knocked down, one of the first issues of UXM Claremont ever wrote included this scene:

http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/5/57316/1105507-cyke_chris03.jpg

[silicondream]

He's been KOed lots of times, I think. Superior Spider-Man's done it; Thing's done it with a simple head bonk; Pip the Troll (in his superstrong phase) did it with a chunk of ice in Infinity War; Jahf did it by punching him into orbit; some flying lady did it once by throwing him to the ground with "meteoric force"; the "wild Sentinels" did it in the first arc of E for Extinction; and so forth.

If there was ever a scene showing that he couldn't be KOed, I haven't seen it--but I'm not a Wolvie expert.

[silicondream]

Doesn't Wolverine officially have low-level (like, just past peak human) superhuman strength and speed? That's why he's so agile despite his heavy skeleton, and I seem to recall various older scenes where he was tearing free of metal chains and stuff.

But yes, that doesn't mean Spidey couldn't just web him up, or dodge his claws and smack him unconscious. They're on different levels.

Oh, and given Logan's healing factor, the "You don't have the guts to kill" line makes no sense. Normal people survive broken necks; if Peter snapped Logan's neck, I'm pretty sure he'd heal up fine in the end.

[arrogantcur]

I double-checked on Wikipedia and it turns out that in addition to the stuff I mentioned, he has superhuman reflexes and "animal-like attributes". Reading further, it does mention superhuman strength in the sense that "he pretty much HAS to be superhumanly strong in order to move with such a heavy adamantium skeleton".

I'd be interested in seeing his Handbook entry, since that would tell us for sure exactly how strong he was. I think that when I read it back in the day, it listed him as having the "strength of a man his age, height and build who engages in intensive regular exercise", but am not completely sure.

There's also the question of whether Spider-Man could break his neck at all because, you know, adamantium spine.

[silicondream]

Yeah, I know there's some inconsistency in whether 616 Wolverine's bones are inseparable (and what would make them that way--tiny adamantium chains at the joints?) Professor X thought it was feasible to separate Logan's head from his body; OTOH, I think some super-strong dudes have tried and failed to tear him limb from limb.

Still, you don't need to separate vertebrae completely to damage the spinal cord or cut off blood flow to important parts of the brain; just twist them a little farther than they go naturally. It'd be worth trying, anyway.

[starwolf_oakley]

Actually, in the 1980s, lots of characters called Spider-Man an amateur. The Puma, Silver Sable, the Kingpin. It wasn't that Peter hadn't been doing this for a while, it was more that certain things were out of Peter's wheelhouse.

[sarahnewlin]

These scans are in such nice high bright quality. :)

Who in the world is that redheaded woman?

[lucean]

Priest's statement is so baffling. What for him does things for the characters? I guess the counter for his argument would be what did Aquaman losing his arm take a way from the character? What did Clark marrying Lois take away from the character?

This line of arguing always annoys me as it is ultimately a statement how characters should never change from the status quo, no matter when that status quo was made. In a way it is similar how Johns decided to mock the concept of Aquaman having a beard for whatever reason since the Silver Age Aquaman didn't have one.

[arrogantcur]

The main thing I want to talk about is that Priest quote too.

I got into comics at a time when Peter & MJ were married. I liked them together. I was pissed when they were broken up and I hate it to this day.

I've resigned myself to not seeing them get back together in any way that matters. (For example, SpOck's brief relationship with MJ didn't matter, because that wasn't really Peter.) Just like fans who hated Gwen Stacy dying eventually had to resign themselves to her never coming back. There was a huge uproar when Gwen got killed. But then newer fans came along, fans who had never known or become invested in Gwen, myself included. Those fans would read the old stories and might think "Gee, I kind of like this Gwen Stacy, kind of sucks that she isn't around any more. Oh well."

That's the best we can hope from younger fans of Spidey. For them to read the old trades and think "Gee, I think MJ and Peter were a good couple. Kind of sucks that they aren't together any more. Oh well."

It's been 8 years and counting. Marvel's no longer under any pressure to reunite them.

Having said all of that...I only wound up buying and reading the issues where Peter proposed and MJ agreed in 2010. I typed up my thoughts on the subject after reading those here. For those who don't want to read, though, I'll summarize them:

After reading that story, I thought that as much as I thought MJ & Peter made a great couple, and as much as I wish they hadn't been broken up...the way they got together was way too rushed and wasn't done well.

See, Peter is thinking about his life one day, and as I recall he came to a sudden conclusion: "Mary Jane is the perfect woman for me! How could I not have seen it sooner?"

At the time of the story, the two of them were just friends. They did have a history, true. But if you have an ex who shows up at your place out of the blue (despite your protests that you are getting ready to leave for the airport and too busy to talk right then) and pops the question after the two of you have been broken up for years, how are you likely to respond?

Because that's what Peter did, much to MJ's shock.

To David Michelinie's credit (Michelinie's one of my faves, btw), MJ's initial response was to say no. To tell Peter that she thought they were just friends and that this was coming out of nowhere. Before much else is said, MJ says that she still needs to catch her plane and that they can't go into this right now, and leaves.

By the end of the story, though, after Spider-Man saves her life from Alistair Smythe, she does a complete 180 and decides she wants to marry him after all.

I still think that they turned out to be a good couple, but the execution of actually getting them engaged and married was all kinds of WTF.

[starwolf_oakley]

It is an odd quote, even if you agree with the "Damian should not have been resurrected" part.

Regarding Peter and Mary Jane, "why theirs would be a dysfunctional and unsustainable relationship"

All right. Why? "Someone is always going to need Spider-Man to save them" works on a few levels. "Mary Jane has too much baggage from her parents' messed-up marriage" was used in One Moment In Time

[writeofway]

Yeah, because all those supervillains and mad scientists who actively tried to murder him and/or others were just big ol' softies and not hardened criminals/killers. Yeah, they weren't government operatives or super-spies or what not, but Spider-Man (especially by that time) is not a novice when it comes to people trying to kill him.

[steverodgers5]

This special's such an oddity because it has some important moments in it, but it seems like other writers just go out of their way to avoid it in continuity. I was especially annoyed for instance by Bendis trying to make out in his Latveria Secret War series that Logan was just finding out who Spidey was, when Wolverine had known for many many years, given when Spiderman vrs Wolverine came out.

I was as pleased as punch when an issue of Amazing a few years back actually remembered the Charlie character and had Peter revisiting what he'd done. In fact I actually said as much to Dan Slott when I met him at a convention a few weeks back.

This story really should have been important in how it affected Peter. But few writers want to acknowledge it at all..