 | Story of purity versus change part 3:
ORIGIN is the story of Marvel Comic's most popular character next to Spiderman, the mutant Wolverine of the X-Men. Wolverine's popularity is partly due to the quest for his forgotten past, and that origin has been "the greatest story never told" in comics. Editor in Chief Joe Quesada found Marvel to have lost the fearless spirit of founders Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and wanted to do something daring. This is it.
Originally reluctant to destroy the mystique of Wolverine, Quesada chose to risk it all. And the risk paid off.
Marvel's quest to find itself in the new millennium after creative stagnancy and financial ruin mirror the story inside.
We find that the history of Wolverine predates the Marvel universe itself, going back to the late 1800's. Not only is the time and place different from the comics, but the origin as well: like the best Marvel characters, the defining traits are not the superpowers, but the events and situations that shape the hero's character. In ORIGINS we find the young child who would later become Wolverine caught between the class warfare of the the rich and the servants working for them. Each side is faced with the voice of tradition and the admonition to "know one's place" on both sides. The rich are told it is wrong to associate with "those people" and the poor are told to stay "with their own kind." The child who would become Wolverine finds himself caught in the middle, and his "powers," the result of a mutation, direct him toward a tragic third way: regression into the animal instinct, setting him up as the "antihero" wild card he will play in the future war between humanity and mutants, the "class war" now being not between rich and poor, but homo sapiens and Homo superior.
The writing and artwork are not typical superhero comic fare because of the historical setting, relying not on standard comic conventions but on solid storytelling and beautifully rendered art. This story could have been the end of Marvel Comics, instead, it was the herald for a new age in the "House of Ideas". |
Origin by Bill Jemis
