Not that Jason Bourne is such an amazing accomplishment, but his story is just very similar. Wolverine is like a combination of Jason Bourne and Henry Chinaski, but in a superhero context. Bourne's basic premise is that he's a government assassin that had his mind fucked with in training and lost his memory, and now fights the people that made him, while trying to reconcile what he remembers of the things he's done in the past with his new more sympathetic perspective towards people.
Wolverine's character is more complex, but part of his story is that he was part of a govt. assassin program that fucked with his mind in training and he lost his memory, and now a big part of his mythos is reconciling his animalistic dehumanized side with his very humane side.
and Henry Chinaski was the autobiographical protagonist for four of Charles Bukowski's novels. He was this like total mess, this kid that was horribly ugly with painful boils on his face and back, his father beat the shit out of him for years, and he had no friends and only contempt for people. he was this hard drinking, nihilistic brute that would fight anyone anywhere over anything- and just wallow in his own vile self-hatred. but at his heart he was this beautiful person that wrote and read ravenously, that was only so hard because he was secretly so sensitive and early on he was crippled by a harsh life. when i read Ham on Rye, i felt like i was reading the real origin of Wolverine.
Wolverine has this beautiful mythology where his 'super-power' is to heal. what a profound innovation. rather than arbitrary, cliche' super powers like lasers from eyes and flying, he had this internal ability to heal himself. its such an elegant symbol. especially how he's this tragic amnesiac, who doesn't know where he came from- his whole mythology is that he's trying to figure out who he is, and no matter how much he can heal cuts and scars on the outside of his body he can never heal his insides and find peace. what an incredible character; an archetypal antihero as a superhero whose power is to be a better person.
he's very much about universal themes of redemption and trying to reconcile who we are with what we do, and where those urges to act self destructively come from. he's like a combination of two polar sides: a profoundly wise, enlightened almost post-human way, crossed with like a pre-human evolutionary stage that is devoid of higher thinking, and because of those extremes he lives tortured by striving to find the middle; to find humanity.
like all comic book lore, he's exaggerated into the unreal with claws that pop out of his hands, epic battles with aliens and robots- but at the core he's this very insightfully designed character. i often wonder if Len Wein, the creator of wolverine, had these ideas in mind when creating him. his myth has definitely been enhanced and re-focused by great comic writers over the years, for him to finally arrive at the complex version that he's at now: his side as a meditative zen sort of guy that reads poetry; his insane barely human side; his anti-hero, loner, cynical, pragmatic side where he just wants to drink a beer, fuck a whore and travel the country on his bike; and his idealistic heroic side where he leads people into glorious battles with unbending moral clarity.
i realize you may think I'm overstating, to discuss a comic character as if he was Odysseus or something, but i really think wolverine is on par with that kind of character. however, just because the compendium of his myth is on that level, it doesn't mean that the majority of his stories are. unfortunately, most writers use him in very singular narrow ways- he's the cool guy everyone loves that says funny shit in a smart ass way and kicks ass. and that's cool, but I'd love if just once wolverine were written like Bukowski or Jack Kerouac write; he needs to be like a combination of Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise from Kerouac's On the Road. Wolverine requires a really great writer to truly write a story of him that does justice to his full myth.
and his art should be better too. I'm all for comic characters being interpreted differently by different artists and writers- that's part of the great nature of a living mythology, like the passing down and retelling of folk tales. but again, I'd like to see more artists go for really bold imaginings of him- to really render him in a way that evokes more than just super hero aesthetics, like David Mack did in Echo: Vision Quest, or Mark Millar. I haven't drawn wolverine in years, and I've never tried to draw him the way i think he should be drawn.
he needs to be like 5 feet tall, ugly as hell, scraggly black hair pouring from his head in all directions, unshaven, but still you can make out his signature mutton chops, and sort of elude to the points his hair comes to, but definitely not all perfect and clean. he's never in a costume. just a a white wife beater, blue jeans, big brown boots, and a leather jacket, riding a motorcycle. He's Michael Moorecock's Elric crossed with James Dean lol.
And as for the movie, now that i mention it. Definitely someone could do a great dramatic and underplayed Wolverine film, where a character named Logan only symbolically relates to the comic character. But, if you want to go the action route, it needs to be like huge. like fuckin epic. it would need to be NC-17, directed by Quentin Tarentino and Russel Crowe would play wolverine- no gelled up weird hair like Hugh Jackman has though. It would be like 300 meets Taxi Driver.
if i could only write one comic story, it would be wolverine. I'm not saying I'm so good that i could pull it off, but i do know the character enough that I'd love to try. it wouldn't be for kids though. it probably wouldn't even be a comic. i think if i could give one thing to comics, it would be that i wish i could take the brilliance and sophistication of the comic mythologies and raise them in their presentation to the level of great classic myths like Ovid, or Homer, or Virgil, or Dante, or Sophocles so that people could see how much is really there, and how much these myths matter.
nuff said
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