Nostalgia. When we have fond personal memories of something from our past it can sometimes mean that we look back on those things with 'rose tinted spectacles'. We believe them to be better than they were. Our memories can play tricks on us. Sometimes of course things get complicated, and we can convince ourselves that we are just being nostalgic when in actual fact things really were better the way they were.
Growing up in the 90's, my first exposure to Marvel Entertainment was through animation. The X-men, Spider-Man, Silver Surfer, Fantastic Four, Iron Man and Incredible Hulk animated shows of the 1990's had me in awe and without a doubt captured my imagination in a way that would last for over 20 years. To this day, I believe that X-men:TAS and Spider-Man:TAS are the very best animated shows that Marvel has produced and only Spectacular Spider-Man and Avengers:EMH have even come close. But maybe that's the nostalgia kicking in and maybe I'm straying from the point of this editorial.
There was one character in particular that kept me coming back to the X-men animated series, Wolverine. I was a huge Wolverine fan and I had never even picked up a comic book. He was a loner. He was a smart-ass. He was the toughest son of a bitch I had ever seen. It wasn't until much later that I found out that everything I loved about this character was down to the work of Chris Claremont. It turned out that this Wolverine (like most of the work of the 90's animated series) was adapted from stories written by Claremont. Having since gone back and read a lot of those stories I can still say Claremont's Wolverine is MY Wolverine. THAT is the character that I think of when I think of Wolverine. I will say that I don't want to take anything away from the writers and the entire crew behind X-men:TAS, they did phenomenal work but I believe it was very much a case of taking their cue from Claremont's comics.
So fast forward to as recently as 3-5 years ago. I had been reading modern comics for a while now and was frustrated. I was frustrated because MY Wolverine wasn't appearing in the Marvel universe anymore. Suddenly, I see Wolverine on an Avengers team. This loner who only joined the X-men because he wanted to escape Gneral Chasen and Department H, and only stayed because he believed in Charles Xavier's dream, was now just hanging out with the Avengers. Like he was such a team player. Like the X-men don't really matter too much anymore, I'll live at Avengers mansion. Suddenly, this smart-ass who didn't answer to anyone, is taking orders from Iron Man and Captain America and choosing to save the world from
The Hood while the mutant population is being decimated. Suddenly , this tough son of a bitch who wasn't exactly one for pleasent conversation, is acting all chummy with the Avengers. Hanging out and making jokes about how he's on so many teams. And then playing head teacher to a bunch of kids in the classroom?! No, this isn't the Wolverine.
I could go on for another three paragraphs about how ridiculous the healing factor had become since those early days, but I think that's a pretty burnt out discussion at this point. Suffice to say, HE WAS A BADASS BECAUSE HE WASN'T INVINCIBLE - NOT BECAUSE HE WAS!!
Anyway, fast forward to present day and Wolverine is dead. Losing his healing factor, he was killed making a sacrifice (which I actually like) in a book I didn't read. Now we all know that soon The House of Ideas will bring him back, so my question isn't 'when?'. My question is 'who?'. Who will Wolverine be when they bring him back? Now maybe Wolverine has always been the same character. Maybe it's just nostalgia that makes me believe that the Wolverine I grew up with was a very different character to the Wolverine that died last month. Whatever the truth is, I continue to hold out hope that when the old canuckle-head does return, he will be the badass loner without a past that Wolverine was always meant to be.
P.S. Thanks for reading (if you made it through!). I obviously don't own any of these images they all belong to Marvel Entertainment. I found them on google and am not entirely sure how the legal copyright and referencing works on this site.