Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

227 – Wolverine, Killing

Art by David Wynne. Wanna buy the original? Drop him a line!

In which Cowboy Poet Wolverine is the best Wolverine; the Masters of the Universe basically had Internet Cat names; Miles has an Early Metallica moment; Wolverine: Killing is just ludicrously excellent; and the hawk joke somehow keeps going.

X-PLAINED:

  • An eccentric approach to ecoterrorism
  • Wolverine: Inner Fury
  • Wolverine: Killing
  • The narrative limits of Bill Sienkiewicz
  • Various Terrors
  • The Whale and/or Shark
  • Microminibots
  • A trap
  • Mr. Big
  • A sexy coffee cup
  • Literary allusions
  • Atmospheric narration
  • Urban despair
  • A peculiar community
  • Cowboy Poet Wolverine
  • A thematic meditation
  • Depressingly exceptional representation of a lady in peril
  • King Hiss
  • The world according to Logan
  • The theoretical microbrewery scene of an imaginary enclave
  • Regional differences in IPAs
  • Feelings and their various sources
  • The symbolism of Wolverine’s costume
  • Home
  • How Archangel sleeps
  • Adamantium vs. Vibranium

NEXT EPISODE: This ‘n’ that ‘n’ Rusty ‘n’ Skids!


Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog!

Find us on iTunes or Stitcher!

Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here!

We’re in the process of migrating our official shop to TeePublic! Click over to check it out! (You can still find the designs we haven’t moved yet at Redbubble.)

14 comments

  1. Chichester is a small city on the south coast of Britain near Portsmouth. It is pronounced chit-chester, so I assume the writer would be the same.

  2. D.G. Chichester and Bill Sienkiewicz were 50% of the team on the great Doctor Zero comic (Shadowline / Epic) of the late 80s. There Sienkiewicz was working over Denys Cowan’s pencils, and it was frequently trippy but usually coherent.

    Terror started his “life” as Shreck, first appearing in another Shadowline comic, St George, also co-written by D.G. Chichester. After the Shadowline got canceled (sob — Doctor Zero and St George were easily my favorite Marvel comics of the period), he got re-imagined as Terror in the Marvel universe. I think I read a bit of Terror, Inc, but really didn’t like it. Shreck was a very effective creepy villain — especially considering that the Shadowline universe was significantly lower-powered than the 616 — but not much interesting as a protagonist.

    Anyway, I cannot believe I didn’t read Inner Fury back in the day — seeing part of the Doctor Zero team back together would have been irresistible to me, even if I was getting bored with Wolverine by then. The art looks vaguely familiar — maybe I read it once and threw it away in disgust? I dunno. Kent Williams would have been a strong draw for me too, and I don’t recognize Killing at all.

    1. Just seconding Sol’s appreciation for the Shadowline books. Young me liked them an awful lot.

      I sort of feel that if the same thing had been tried a few years later, it might have succeeded better. I’m not saying that they were as good as Robinson’s Starman – I don’t think that they were – but there was a certain basic similarity to his trick of doing superhero stories with a Vertigo sensibility. Only Robinson got to do it after that Vertigo sensibility had crystallized and established itself as something that one could immediately recognize and that a lot of people already knew that they liked. St. George in particular stands out as the sort of thing that could have flourished in that vein.

      1. I’m so glad others remember the Shadowline imprint too! I rather liked the Powerline title, with two low-level Shadows discovering their powers were vastly amplified by proximity (for no readily apparent reason), and the impact that had on the established hierarchy who didn’t like the idea of being usurped, never mind Shadows going semi-public as costumed superheroes.

    1. That’s now how his adamantiumafying works! It’s not inside is Bones, it’s a thin coating over the exterior of the bones. I know because I’m the one that put it in him MUWUHAHAHAH MUWAHHAHAH

      1. Wow, haha, I remember those wacky Wolverine Vol 2 issues with Johnny Appleseed or whatever. I can honestly say I never thought I would hear those issues covered on an X-Pod

  3. When did this guy stop smoking anyways? Why was there never a story about him quitting? I understand it happened at the same time as Ben Grimm, Reed Richards & even the Red Skull not smoking anymore and I think it’s around the time you’re covering now.

    Was there ever a Claremont story (maybe in an annual or backup story in Classic X-men, have you done all those stories yet?) about Wolverine quitting smoking? Maybe I imagined it.

    Even though he can heal his lungs he wants to set an example for Kitty/Jubilee after he smells cigs on her and she tells him she’s following his lead. It could be fun & metatextual cause the reason he has to quit smoking in real life is exactly because he’s setting an example for kids.

    Just having him no longer smoke, even in flashbacks is really unsatisfying although I understand why the company did it.

    I was going to say that the Red Skull smoking is actually probably good, he’s an evil skull nazi who is often shown as being old and in poor health coughing (if I remember it right).

  4. A Stinkor note: Well over 30+ years later and my Mom still complains about how that toy smelled. Also how Moss Man’s fun would trap dirt and be gross.

  5. Fin Du Monde is a solid Quebec-brewed beer that’s pretty easily available at any craft beer store/liquor store with a decent import section (wanna recommend a Canadian beer that should be readily available no matter where you are in the US).

    And, oh man, those FF graphics ARE NOT what I remember.

    …I still love that opening sword fight though. And occasionally will still hum “Waltz to the Moon” randomly.

  6. I unreservedly love the new She-Ra cartoon, but I don’t think any series which has characters called “Netossa” (who tosses magical nets, and which they at least TRY to lampshade) and “Peekablue” is in any position to cast stones at Stinkor. 🙂

    I mean Glimmer’s repeatedly calling a character “Aunt Cassie” is a valiant, but not quite sufficient, attempt to salvage her full name of “Castaspella”, which is about as subtle a name for a sorceress as Stinkor is for an over-committed skunk Furrie.

  7. The whole ‘adamantium vs vibranium’ debate is all a bit silly in the first place, because, well, metals just don’t work that way. Metals can’t be easily classified on a nice sliding scale of strength. A harder metal is often also a more fragile metal, because hardness (i.e. being unable to be scratched by other materials) often goes hand in hand with brittleness (i.e. a tendency to break into pieces when struck). Flexibility is usually a quality of softer metals, but can make a more resilient item than harder ones. And weapons have to consider other factors, like the ability to draw and hold an edge.

    Imagine a fine sword, and then imagine bringing it down hard on a pig-iron anvil — is it going to cleave through the anvil? Of course not, it’ll shatter into a billion pieces and might leave one tiny nick in the anvil. Does that mean pig iron is stronger than damascus steel?

    The same goes for Cap’s shield versus Logan’s claws. Even if primary adamantium were “stronger” than the shield, it doesn’t mean the could cut the shield effectively, any more than that sword could slash through an anvil.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Discover more from Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading