Making the Best there is, the Best there is

Book: Wolverine
Pen: Chris Claremont
Pencil: Frank Miller

I’m Wolverine. I’m the best there is at what I do. But what I do best isn’t very nice.

Of course you have read it before. Even heard it in the movies. But imagine you haven’t. You can imagine. You are a comic book lover, after all. Imagine opening a comic book about a second-rung character who never had a solo series. These are the first lines in the book. Suddenly you get a chill. Am I about to read something spectacular? Is this the kind of book every comic lover dearly loves to discover? A bolt from the blue. A masterpiece without an advance warning. An hour later you put it down. The naked awe on your face says it all.

Wolverine was a popular side character. His propensity to use extreme force at the slightest provocation (or not) was his biggest draw. He was a pint-sized bunch of dynamite, probably as tall as Hugh Jackman’s third rib. After all, the animal he was based on was very small and very dangerous. But this violent streak also made him a pretty one-dimensional character.  Not too many writers found him that interesting beyond a point.

It was under such circumstances when comic legend Chris Claremont joined hands with a young artist called Frank Miller to bring out a four-issue miniseries. Yes, that Frank Miller. And no, I didn’t get the names interchanged. Before attaining superhero status himself and rising to (IMHO) the second position on the list of great comic writers, Miller made a name as an artist. 

Claremont and Miller did the unthinkable. They took the action to Japan. To take a hot-blooded American superhero to space was fine, but outside the US, only sporadic visits were allowed. Technically, Wolverine is Canadian, but you know how so many Americans think it is the 51st state! But to have a complete story set in another country was just not done. But the co-conspirators had no choice. They were going to treat Wolverine as a ronin, a fallen samurai. And Japan had to be the scene.

Beginning with a primeval encounter with a man-eating bear in the mountains, Wolverine travels to Japan to be with his beloved Mariko Yashida who had run away without an explanation. There he finds that Mariko was forced by her father to marry another man. Wolverine was bested in a duel by Shingen, Yashida’s father, and left for dead. He is saved by Yukio, a mysterious girl highy skilled in the art of warfare. Wolverine and Yukio join hands to escape the group of assassins known as the Hand. Together they find ways to save Mariko from her fate. 

Wolverine is an adventure story. It is also a love story. Taking the familiar trappings of a man in search of his woman, Claremont and Miller transport it to another land and culture. With minimum fuss they tell a story and they are done with it. But they do it with such precision that you are not left wondering if anyone could have done it better. You know no one could have. 

Claremont would go on to become one of the most prolific writers of Wolverine, but these four issues are probably the best he has conjured up. Miller is prodigiously, no, ridiculously talented. I usually leave discussions on artworks to the experts, but one thing that is stunning about this book is how well it holds up against the ravages of time. You do not feel that it is from a period where most of the artwork today seems silly and dated. There is a sense of motion in each page and the action is choreographed in the truest sense of the word.

The graphic novel should have stopped at four issues. Instead it adds an additional two issues from The Uncanny X-Men to it. This is a continuation of the story with a different artist, but ends on a cliff-hanger. It may work as an extra, but to club it with the Wolverine miniseries is to dilute its effect. But that’s me nitpicking. Wolverine is a game-changer. This is one of those stories that will stand the test of time. A perfect alchemy of a great writer and an amazing artist.