Wolverine on teams

Mini-post! Because I have thoughts about Marvel, like, all the time. The Wolverine is coming out this week and it's in the line that also had X-Men Origins: Wolverine in it, as far as I know. Not sure when it happens, not sure how it fits into any other movie, whatever. The movies are a big deal for Wolverine (well, kind of. You know, as big as these movies are) because they allow Wolverine to be brutal and angsty and everything else that we love from Wolverine. I was watching a commercial that had a pull quote that said it was "the Wolverine movie fans have been waiting for." Obviously the ad campaign will say things like that but it got me wondering what made it deserving of such specific praise. Of course, as that's being said over the commercial, the video is of various clips of Wolverine in action and using his claws a whole bunch. The key is that we want to see Wolverine being violent and rather unkillable (though this movie posits, allegedly, what if he was killable?), which is why X-Men Origins: Wolverine got a sequel despite being, you know, kind of objectively terrible. But it was a decent action movie and that's all we want from Wolverine. That's what makes for fun Wolverine stories, too, in the comics. Obviously we want some deeper character business in the books, especially since he's been around now for 30 years or so and we like not to be bored. So Wolverine solo books are (typically) nice because it's kind of that fun story we like from him where he beats a bunch of guys up, heals, maybe gives us some character and some sadness and we all move on.

That's why Wolverine should probably choose never to be on a team. He's almost too powerful. Like, he's not, but that healing thing always gives him the edge, which means he is ALWAYS knocked out or horribly damaged so that his healing takes a while to kick him back in. No one else EVER gets that.

It's only EVER Wolverine who is charred to a crisp or beaten mercilessly or punched half a mile away. Maybe he just doesn't play defense as well as the others because he knows he'll heal. I don't know. What I do know is that, even on the occasions when this happens in his solo book, he doesn't have to resent the rest of the people he's supposed to like simply because they didn't get pretty much killed on the first attack. I like Wolverine. I think he's an interesting character and I think that the Marvel Universe has done pretty well by him. I even rather like the way he interacts on teams. But for his own sake he should probably never join one again. Poor guy.