Can anybody remember why Wolverine became so popular in the first place? Back in the day, Wolverine was the bad boy, the loner who rebelled against authority. He was the guy who referred to Charles Xavier as ‘Chuck’ and we loved him for it. We always knew he secretly had a heart of gold, but Wolverine was the guy who would get in your face, disobey orders and run off whenever he felt like it. He’d smoke cigars, pound back the beers and chase skirts.

It feels good to be a bad role model

But nowadays, Wolverine has become the exact authority he used to rebel against.

He has replaced Xavier as the headmaster of the School for Higher Learning, where he’s directly responsible for dozens of young mutant students. He’s a leader among the X-Men, and has served on more X-squads than anyone else, including when he was leader of X-Force. He’s also one of the most active and respected members of the Avengers, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Wolverine is one of the greatest superheroes on Earth.

So when is Marvel going to come along and take all of that away from him?

Join me after the jump!

First of all, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Wolverine’s current status quo is a bad thing. That’s not the point of this article. I’m not saying he has to go back to being the loner rebel, or that he ever will. I rather like Wolverine’s position in the X-Men these days. I’ve never been happy with him as an Avenger, but that’s neither here nor there. He’s a hugely popular character and Marvel has taken full advantage of that, putting him in as many comics as possible and raising his profile higher than it has ever been before.

I’m just wondering when Marvel is going to do to Wolverine what they’re currently doing to Spider-Man. When do they put the Wolverine genie back into the bottle?

Do Adamantium bones also need calcium?

Allow me to explain.

Comic books rely on the status quo. As much as they may try new ideas and new stories from time to time, everything in comics is cyclical, and everything old is new again. It’s why Bruce Wayne will always be Batman, even though Dick Grayson may step up and don the cowl from time to time. It’s why characters like Superman, Captain America and the Human Torch all come back from the dead before too long. It’s why the X-Men didn’t stay in San Francisco for very long, and why there is once again a mutant school in Westchester.

And it’s why Marvel has done everything in their power over the past several years to return Spider-Man to his roots.

NERD!!!

Spider-Man is really the dweeby Peter Parker, who was bitten by a radioactive spider and decided to use his new powers to fight crime. Because with great power comes great responsibility. The young Peter Parker always had money problems, he was never a very good boyfriend and he was generally disliked by the citizens of New York. The Daily Bugle ran daily headlines about how ‘Spider-Man is a Menace’ and the people believed the papers. Everybody from the hot dog vendors to the police thought Spider-Man was no good, even when he was directly helping them.

But then, especially over the past 10 years, everything started going right for Peter Parker. First he settled down and married his super model girlfriend Mary Jane Watson. Then he was invited to join the Avengers, becoming one of the most high profile superheroes in the world. He got a job working for Tony Stark. His Aunt May was doing great. And he became so comfortable in his endeavours  that he even unmasked on national TV. It all made sense within the context of the story. But from a sales and marketing perspective, Marvel found that they had written themselves into a corner.

Spider-Man’s popularity was built on him being a down-on-his luck guy who could never catch a break. That’s what the new movies were billing him as, after all. But in the comics, Spider-Man was married to a beautiful wife, had a cushy job, and was one of the top superheroes in the world. Who wants to read about that?

He was also fist-bumping presidents

So Marvel started systematically taking Spider-Man’s world apart.

First came the dissolution of his marriage to Mary Jane, because apparently kids today don’t want to read about Spider-Man the husband, they want him to be a swinging single. But Marvel also didn’t want Peter Parker to be a divorcee or a widower, so they wrote some insanely convoluted story where a super-villain used magic to rewrite time, changing history so that Peter and Mary Jane were never married, they’d only ever been in a long term relationship. Boom, he’s single again. That’s one problem down.

Currently, Marvel is putting out the comic Superior Spider-Man, telling a story of Doctor Octopus taking over Peter Parker’s body and posing as the real Spider-Man. The story isn’t over yet, but there are already hints that Marvel plans to use this to destroy Spider-Man’s reputation. We already know that Spider-Man is going to be fired from the Avengers.

Cap is much better at this than Donald Trump

When Superior-Spider-Man is over and Peter Parker returns, it’s entirely possible that Spider-Man will be back to being a down-on-his luck nobody, who can’t get a girlfriend, no longer has a cushy job, and has lost the respect of both his fellow superheroes and the city at large. Marvel will have effectively undone all of the storytelling they’ve built up for Spider-Man over the past decade or so, returning Peter Parker to a more familiar, and marketable, status quo.

So I’m wondering, when are they going to do the same thing to Wolverine?

Like I said in the beginning, Wolverine used to be the bad boy loner, the rebel without a cause. It’s what made him so popular in the first place. But much like Spider-Man, Wolverine has spent the past 10 years or so rising to the top of his game. He was invited to join the Avengers, and is now one of their most stalwart members alongside, Captain America. For a period in the mid-00s, Wolverine was in pretty much in every single X-Men book and on every single team. No matter the premise or the book’s relationship to the rest of the franchise, Wolverine was there; and he was also off having solo adventures in his solo series. Wolverine is the de factor leader of the X-Men these days, now that Cyclops has become a pariah. Wolverine even founded the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, and serves as its headmaster.

Tie and all

Wolverine has become Charles Xavier and Captain America. He’s still gruff and tough and goes on many snikt-based adventures, but you can no longer call him a rebel. He’s no longer the loner who gets in the face of authority and does whatever he wants.

Wolverine has become The Man. Can Marvel really sustain him in that lofty position? Do they even want to?

Or one day, perhaps some day soon, will Wolverine’s world start to fall apart? It happened to Spider-Man. You better believe it could happen to Wolverine. The only question is when…and how, I guess. I’d really like to see how they do it. Maybe Doctor Octopus possesses him too!