Return of Wolverine by Soule and McNiven

[Uncanny X-Man]

So I've just listened to the Marvel podcast and it was interesting (the wolverine part of the interview start around the 38 minute mark)


General :

- Return is the third part of the trilogy (Death of Wolverine/Hunt for Wolverine/ Return of Wolverine) where Logan will be found
- There is a story centric reason for the hot claws, Soule didn't add this new power just for being "extreme"
- It's not a power, more like a curse similar to his adamantium skeleton
- Logan can use the hot Claws but it's not always the best for him
- Soule said that Wolverine has been through a lot since he died, he has a new outlook on the superhero landscape
- Soule wants to bring him back closer to his original statu quo so "the guy people feared, the fact no one know anything about him or what is going to do, the X-Men even asked themselves why Xavier brought him in"
- Soule said he wants people to be frightened of Wolverine but that doesn't mean he's just gonna turn him into a murderer
- He wants to bring back this unpredictability but in order to do that some changes had to be done to Logan
- Soule said : "If I had one mandate to my Wolverine series, other than the hot claws, it will be returning that mystery, returning that danger, returning back that sense of we don't know who this guy is"
- Soule praises the Old Man Logan and All New Wolverine books


About the Hunt of Wolverine :

- The story is called "The Hunt for Wolverine" not "finding Wolverine"
- One important thing for Soule was to make sure each mini would be great on its own and wrap up satisfactorily
- All mini has to work individually but also as part of the whole Hunt saga and also as something leading up to the return of Wolverine
- Dead Ends will recap all these discoveries and the teams will try to put all the pieces together
- Soule said : "The ending of Dead Ends will have people hyped for Wolverine number one or whatever it is"
- Hunt for Wolverine serves as a background for Return of Wolverine,


About the Return of Wolverine :

- Return of Wolverine will tell you where Wolverine had been, what he was doing and what's he doing now
- Fast paced story, it's a journey where Wolverine goes to one place to another
- Story start in Hell but it's not a litteral thing though
- Sort of feels like a Marvel metaphor of the afterlife, but the book takes place in our world
- It's like a nightmare for Logan or for any people to wake up in this place after coming back from the dead
- The question Soule asked is : What would it be like to come back from the dead?
- There is a new, major significant female vilain whose motivations will be explained during the Hunt
- Soule said : "She is phenomenal, she has a unique powerset and an unique worldview that hasn't been done before".


About Wolverine :

- Soule wanted Logan to die with dignity during Death of Wolverine
- Hunt for Wolverine is about Logan legacy within the Marvel Universe
- Return of Wolverine is not about Wolverine's past, it's about who he is going to be in the future, what is he going to bring to the Marvel Universe, what's he wants out of his new life. It's a second chance for him.
- Despite all the tragedies in his life, Logan isn't going to be weight down by all of this
- Soule wants to give him a fresh start


If you think I missed something important, feel free to add any comments

Thanks for posting this! I like what I'm reading here, especially the part about restoring Wolverine's aura of mystery. I think making him less ubiquitous (as in, only part of ONE X-Men team and that's it) and getting rid of the majority of his doppelgängers would go a long way... Claremont's rule that "less is more" when it comes to Logan very much still applies.

[Gylfie]

So I've just listened to the Marvel podcast and it was interesting (the wolverine part of the interview start around the 38 minute mark)


General :

- Return is the third part of the trilogy (Death of Wolverine/Hunt for Wolverine/ Return of Wolverine) where Logan will be found
- There is a story centric reason for the hot claws, Soule didn't add this new power just for being "extreme"
.......

Thanks for posting it. Sounds good.

[WeaponX]

Laura has her role as the Enigma Force's chosen heir, if any writer ever decides to make use of it.

Are you reading hunt for Wolverine Adamantium agenda?

[comicscollector]

So I've just listened to the Marvel podcast and it was interesting (the wolverine part of the interview start around the 38 minute mark)


General :

- Return is the third part of the trilogy (Death of Wolverine/Hunt for Wolverine/ Return of Wolverine) where Logan will be found
- There is a story centric reason for the hot claws, Soule didn't add this new power just for being "extreme"
- It's not a power, more like a curse similar to his adamantium skeleton
- Logan can use the hot Claws but it's not always the best for him
- Soule said that Wolverine has been through a lot since he died, he has a new outlook on the superhero landscape
- Soule wants to bring him back closer to his original statu quo so "the guy people feared, the fact no one know anything about him or what is going to do, the X-Men even asked themselves why Xavier brought him in"
- Soule said he wants people to be frightened of Wolverine but that doesn't mean he's just gonna turn him into a murderer
- He wants to bring back this unpredictability but in order to do that some changes had to be done to Logan
- Soule said : "If I had one mandate to my Wolverine series, other than the hot claws, it will be returning that mystery, returning that danger, returning back that sense of we don't know who this guy is"
- Soule praises the Old Man Logan and All New Wolverine books


About the Hunt of Wolverine :

- The story is called "The Hunt for Wolverine" not "finding Wolverine"
- One important thing for Soule was to make sure each mini would be great on its own and wrap up satisfactorily
- All mini has to work individually but also as part of the whole Hunt saga and also as something leading up to the return of Wolverine
- Dead Ends will recap all these discoveries and the teams will try to put all the pieces together
- Soule said : "The ending of Dead Ends will have people hyped for Wolverine number one or whatever it is"
- Hunt for Wolverine serves as a background for Return of Wolverine,


About the Return of Wolverine :

- Return of Wolverine will tell you where Wolverine had been, what he was doing and what's he doing now
- Fast paced story, it's a journey where Wolverine goes to one place to another
- Story start in Hell but it's not a litteral thing though
- Sort of feels like a Marvel metaphor of the afterlife, but the book takes place in our world
- It's like a nightmare for Logan or for any people to wake up in this place after coming back from the dead
- The question Soule asked is : What would it be like to come back from the dead?
- There is a new, major significant female vilain whose motivations will be explained during the Hunt
- Soule said : "She is phenomenal, she has a unique powerset and an unique worldview that hasn't been done before".


About Wolverine :

- Soule wanted Logan to die with dignity during Death of Wolverine
- Hunt for Wolverine is about Logan legacy within the Marvel Universe
- Return of Wolverine is not about Wolverine's past, it's about who he is going to be in the future, what is he going to bring to the Marvel Universe, what's he wants out of his new life. It's a second chance for him.
- Despite all the tragedies in his life, Logan isn't going to be weight down by all of this
- Soule wants to give him a fresh start


If you think I missed something important, feel free to add any comments

Thank you.
I was looking forward to more details about the return of the Wolverine.
Looks like Soule will be writing a great new Wolverine limited series imo.

[Gylfie]

Thank you.
I was looking forward to more details about the return of the Wolverine.
Looks like Soule will be writing a great new Wolverine limited series imo.

I agree. If I ignore the hot claws for a moment, I have to say this interview sounds promising.
I recently finished Charles Soule's 2014/2015 inhumans run and I liked Auran's and Frank McGee's (Nur) story. Auran was killed by Black Bold while he was mind controlled by Maximus very early in this run. As I learned that she was resurrected in uncanny inhumans, I picked up uncanny inhumans #15-#17 only for this reason. This 'resurrection' came with a price and I have to say I liked how Charles Soule wrote this. If he handles Logan's resurrection similar, I am sure I will enjoy this.

[Hush]

I agree. If I ignore the hot claws for a moment, I have to say this interview sounds promising.
I recently finished Charles Soule's 2014/2015 inhumans run and I liked Auran's and Frank McGee's (Nur) story. Auran was killed by Black Bold while he was mind controlled by Maximus very early in this run. As I learned that she was resurrected in uncanny inhumans, I picked up uncanny inhumans #15-#17 only for this reason. This 'resurrection' came with a price and I have to say I liked how Charles Soule wrote this. If he handles Logan's resurrection similar, I am sure I will enjoy this.

That's really interesting, I like this idea that resurrection comes at a price. If I remember correctly, during Soule's Astonishing X-Men, Old Man Logan said he died a few time and each time he came back as a different man.

Maybe it was a hint or some foreshadowing about Wolverine's resurrection or it could be that Soule really like this idea. Anyway I can't wait to see what Soule is going to do with Return of Wolverine

[Gylfie]

That's really interesting, I like this idea that resurrection comes at a price. If I remember correctly, during Soule's Astonishing X-Men, Old Man Logan said he died a few time and each time he came back as a different man.

Maybe it was a hint or some foreshadowing about Wolverine's resurrection or it could be that Soule really like this idea. Anyway I can't wait to see what Soule is going to do with Return of Wolverine

I think Soule likes the idea, that coming back from death should mean something and not going back to business..
Auran was pieced together out of other people memories,which her daughter collected. They wrote their interviews into a book. Reader was given the book and he read her back to live. That's what her daughters hoped for. The person who came back was full of contradictions and went through a nightmare and hell because of it.
In the end she was a different person who left her daughters to find herself.
Of course, the mechanism behind Wolverine's resurrection will be different but I am really intrigued, based on this interview, how he handles this one.

[Hush]

I think Soule likes the idea, that coming back from death should mean something and not going back to business..
Auran was pieced together out of other people memories,which her daughter collected. They wrote their interviews into a book. Reader was given the book and he read her back to live. That's what her daughters hoped for. The person who came back was full of contradictions and went through a nightmare and hell because of it.
In the end she was a different person who left her daughters to find herself.
Of course, the mechanism behind Wolverine's resurrection will be different but I am really intrigued, based on this interview, how he handles this one.

Thanks for the info, you're right Soule really like this idea of resurrection coming at a price. This Reader's thing is interesting, he was mentioned in the sollicits of Daredevil 607 which is a direct follow up to Weapon Lost. A nightmarish version of Matt Murdock called Mike Murdock was created by this Reader and it has all the memories and abilities of Daredevil but also its own motivations.

Of course it's just sollicits and it could just be some misleading info but maybe something similar happened to Logan.

[PlotDevice]

About the "hot claws", you guys are completely missing the point, just imagine the possibilities. It could be used to fight against ennemies enhanced with some adamantium

These are the comics, not the movies. In 616 Marvel adamantium cannot cut adamantium. The claws being superheated does nothing to the claws cutting ability, which is already absolute. Wolverine has been tossed into molten vats of metal before and it did nothing to the adamantium bits.

- Soule wants to bring him back closer to his original statu quo so "the guy people feared, the fact no one know anything about him or what is going to do, the X-Men even asked themselves why Xavier brought him in"
- Soule said he wants people to be frightened of Wolverine but that doesn't mean he's just gonna turn him into a murderer

All for this. Been saying this for years.

Also the weight of his adamantium skeleton is really an handicap for him, swimming is a torture and if he didn't have some form of super strength he couldn't move at all.

The whole "swimming" issue wasn't a problem until fairly recently. Back in the day Wolverine regularly swam with zero issues. Fighting Magneto he swam down underwater to cut Storm free and shared his own breath with her. There are multiple times that he has been able to outmaneuver and kill sharks as large as Great Whites under water and kill them, including breaking ones back and hurling it into a boat from the water for dinner. Not to mention he fought evenly with Tiger Shark in the water back in the Madripoor days. During which he was trapped underwater for quite some time.

most of his solo writters agreed that his healing factor doesn't work if he gets drown, he has been close to bite the bullet for that in more than one ocassion.

I seem to recall Wolverine being punched into the vacuum of space fighting the Shiar Imperial Guard back when his healing factor was nothing. Someone remarked with shock that he was still alive.

The only other pro I can think of, was during the 90s when Hama revealed in Wolverine vol.2 #91 that the adamantium bonding process was similar to a chemo-teraphy for Logan. The goal was to stop his mutation which was like a tumor giving him visions and driving him crazy.

The metal slowed his healing factor, which stopped his physical and mental feral regression mutation. His feral regression wasn't really driving him crazy, that's simply accumulated psychological trauma he's acquired over the years. His feral regression simply had him start looking at people like they were prey, basically his already present instincts became far more overpowering to the human side of his personality. Basically without the adamantium he would become more like Creed both mentally and physically.

That's really interesting, I like this idea that resurrection comes at a price. If I remember correctly, during Soule's Astonishing X-Men, Old Man Logan said he died a few time and each time he came back as a different man.

People seem to forget that Wolverine has DIED before. Fatal Attractions: He was dead on the Blackbird and came back to pull Jean back into the plane. Wolverine # 175: He died with NO HEALING FACTOR. As soon as Leech's power dwindled he came back and killed everyone and escaped. This along with the whole (dude got punched into space and survived) and the whole (dude swam in a molten vat and survived) and the whole (dude was burned to a skeleton and survived) has always made me wonder at the whole How to Kill Wolverine Club. I don't doubt that lack of oxygen or some such could kill him, but when said corpse is returned to oxygen rich environment he should come back online. And as much as I hate the X-Men movies, they actually had this happen in DOFP.

[TheCape]

@PlotDevice
Is true that the whole swinging thing wasn't a problem for him originally, i basically read like 135 issues of his first solo and he actually can swim without much trouble (he is basically an olympic athlete to be honest), but in a storyarc written by Archie Goodwin (issue 17 to 23 if i remember correctly), he has a fight with Tiger Shark and it ends with him stucking him on a rock at the bottom of the sea and Logan get desperate to get out alive because according to him, his healling factor would not work if he gets drown, i think than is when that particular weakness started to pop up.

[Hush]

These are the comics, not the movies. In 616 Marvel adamantium cannot cut adamantium. The claws being superheated does nothing to the claws cutting ability, which is already absolute. Wolverine has been tossed into molten vats of metal before and it did nothing to the adamantium bits.

You do know I was joking right? I don't think Logan will use his new "hot claws" to cook anything either lol. But to be honest it wouldn't be the first time Logan "heated up" his claws in order to fight against an armored enemy in the comics (even if that doesn't make a lot of sense) :

The whole "swimming" issue wasn't a problem until fairly recently. Back in the day Wolverine regularly swam with zero issues. Fighting Magneto he swam down underwater to cut Storm free and shared his own breath with her. There are multiple times that he has been able to outmaneuver and kill sharks as large as Great Whites under water and kill them, including breaking ones back and hurling it into a boat from the water for dinner. Not to mention he fought evenly with Tiger Shark in the water back in the Madripoor days. During which he was trapped underwater for quite some time.

Like any superhero's weakness it's inconsistent, just look at superman and kryptonite, it's one of his weakness yet sometimes it's just slowing him down and other time it completely stop him for good same thing with the effects of magic, it has never been consistent and it depends on the writer.
I mean even recently Logan took down most of Nuke's henchmen while swimming underwater during Death of Wolverine. Hell even Sabretooth (with an adamantium skeleton) took down a Wendigo while underwater.


So in my opinion, I don't think this "water weakness" contradict previous stories, Logan has superhuman strength so it helps him deal with foes underwater but that doesn't mean it's not painful or difficult for him to move underwater with all the adamantium inside his body.

The metal slowed his healing factor, which stopped his physical and mental feral regression mutation. His feral regression wasn't really driving him crazy, that's simply accumulated psychological trauma he's acquired over the years. His feral regression simply had him start looking at people like they were prey, basically his already present instincts became far more overpowering to the human side of his personality. Basically without the adamantium he would become more like Creed both mentally and physically.

The accumulated psychological trauma might have played its part and the metal was indeed used to slow down his regression but it was clearly his mutation that was driving him crazy. The consequences of his feral regression were much worse than just looking at people like they were prey, he even said it himself :

Attachment 67487

Of course along the years it became inconsistent like everything related to Wolverine's powers and backstory lol.

People seem to forget that Wolverine has DIED before. Fatal Attractions: He was dead on the Blackbird and came back to pull Jean back into the plane. Wolverine # 175: He died with NO HEALING FACTOR. As soon as Leech's power dwindled he came back and killed everyone and escaped. This along with the whole (dude got punched into space and survived) and the whole (dude swam in a molten vat and survived) and the whole (dude was burned to a skeleton and survived) has always made me wonder at the whole How to Kill Wolverine Club. I don't doubt that lack of oxygen or some such could kill him, but when said corpse is returned to oxygen rich environment he should come back online. And as much as I hate the X-Men movies, they actually had this happen in DOFP.

Most people do know about Wolverine's many deaths, the fact that Logan died many times since his first appearance was one of the criticism towards Death of Wolverine. Same thing for his healing factor, it wasn't the first time he lost it but Cornell wrote it like it was something new for Logan that was never done before (he should have read the Hama and Tieri run before writing this nonsense).

What's interesting for me, is that Soule wants to use Logan's death to do something different with him and not just bringing him back without any consequences. That's not something new that's for sure (I mean he died and became an host of the Phoenix Force after his resurrection in Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine for example), but it's a step in the right direction and maybe a way to bring Logan back closer to his original characterization.

[PlotDevice]

@PlotDevice
Is true that the whole swinging thing wasn't a problem for him originally, i basically read like 135 issues of his first solo and he actually can swim without much trouble (he is basically an olympic athlete to be honest)

No. To be honest he is FAR beyond olympic level atheletes. They are all still in the human range. He is well beyond that.

In a storyarc written by Archie Goodwin (issue 17 to 23 if i remember correctly), he has a fight with Tiger Shark and it ends with him stucking him on a rock at the bottom of the sea and Logan get desperate to get out alive because according to him, his healling factor would not work if he gets drown, i think than is when that particular weakness started to pop up.

Once again this is theorizing about what can kill him, not actual fact. If it was fact he would have to have drown by then, which would prevent him from being in the story. The simple fact that he survived the vacuum of space before this Story in Uncanny should imply he could survive drowning, if returned to an environment in which he can breathe. You can hold your breath under water. You cannot hold your breath in space. Space > Water.

The accumulated psychological trauma might have played its part and the metal was indeed used to slow down his regression but it was clearly his mutation that was driving him crazy. The consequences of his feral regression were much worse than just looking at people like they were prey, he even said it himself.

Uh... no. Wolverine does not have a "CRAZY" mutation. Never in the entire history of Wolverine has it been his mutant powers that made him insane. If he's talking about his MUTATION making him crazy, he's obviously referring to the mental aspects of his feral aggression affecting him. Making him think and react more like a predatory animal than a human. This goes back to the Department H flashback waaaaay back in the day when he almost kills Mac Hudson over what everyone else assumes is nothing. The simple fact is (something that has been forgotten) Logan's senses and instincts (FROM HIS MUTATION) cause him to react to minuscule tells that humans could never detect. Logan's senses and instincts probably told him Mac was subconsciously acting toward Logan in a specific way because Mac was becoming aware that Logan and Heather were attracted to one another. Logan's drive to be an Alpha and dominate his rival for his desired mate caused him to rage out in what others assumed was a psychotic state.

That being said, Logan has surely accumulated a lot of mental anguish and stress from the constant internal battle between being a Man and the pull of the Beast. The stress of his CONSTANT feral regression is probably more detrimental than Creed's because his adamantium has held his in check longer, and unlike Creed he chose to fight it. IMO this is why Logan when truly berserk is worse, and more unstoppable than Creed. Creed is about 50% berserk/running on instinct all the time. Logan holds it at a dam at about 25% and it builds constantly. When he gets truly angry it slams straight to 100%.

Aside from all of that... Logan is actually crazy. He is crazy aside from the whole being feral, howling at the moon, my vision goes red stuff. He has had a very long emotionally/mentally/physically traumatic existence. His "NORMAL" insanity is not from his powers though. It's from his history. Logan's life alone is waaaaaaaay more than enough to drive 20 people insane. You top the violence, loss, and tragedy with a MASSIVE amount of mind *uckery and you have a whole different ball of wax. Logan has had repeated mind wipes, false memory implants on top of other memory implants like a sloppy patchwork quilt. Even worse is the fact that some of the implants had truthful elements of the actual events to make them seem authentic. Even after House of M restored his memories he was still so messed up he had to go on a massive rampage because he couldn't understand how it all fit together. Even before he was messed with by telepaths like Aldo Ferro the Weapon Plus program basically had people using drill motors in his ears to scramble his brain like eggs after every mission.

[TheCape]

No. To be honest he is FAR beyond olympic level atheletes. They are all still in the human range. He is well beyond that.
Once again this is theorizing about what can kill him, not actual fact. If it was fact he would have to have drown by then, which would prevent him from being in the story. The simple fact that he survived the vacuum of space before this Story in Uncanny should imply he could survive drowning, if returned to an environment in which he can breathe. You can hold your breath under water. You cannot hold your breath in space. Space > Water.
Uh... no. Wolverine does not have a "CRAZY" mutation. Never in the entire history of Wolverine has it been his mutant powers that made him insane. If he's talking about his MUTATION making him crazy, he's obviously referring to the mental aspects of his feral aggression affecting him. Making him think and react more like a predatory animal than a human. This goes back to the Department H flashback waaaaay back in the day when he almost kills Mac Hudson over what everyone else assumes is nothing. The simple fact is (something that has been forgotten) Logan's senses and instincts (FROM HIS MUTATION) cause him to react to minuscule tells that humans could never detect. Logan's senses and instincts probably told him Mac was subconsciously acting toward Logan in a specific way because Mac was becoming aware that Logan and Heather were attracted to one another. Logan's drive to be an Alpha and dominate his rival for his desired mate caused him to rage out in what others assumed was a psychotic state.

That being said, Logan has surely accumulated a lot of mental anguish and stress from the constant internal battle between being a Man and the pull of the Beast. The stress of his CONSTANT feral regression is probably more detrimental than Creed's because his adamantium has held his in check longer, and unlike Creed he chose to fight it. IMO this is why Logan when truly berserk is worse, and more unstoppable than Creed. Creed is about 50% berserk/running on instinct all the time. Logan holds it at a dam at about 25% and it builds constantly. When he gets truly angry it slams straight to 100%.

Aside from all of that... Logan is actually crazy. He is crazy aside from the whole being feral, howling at the moon, my vision goes red stuff. He has had a very long emotionally/mentally/physically traumatic existence. His "NORMAL" insanity is not from his powers though. It's from his history. Logan's life alone is waaaaaaaay more than enough to drive 20 people insane. You top the violence, loss, and tragedy with a MASSIVE amount of mind *uckery and you have a whole different ball of wax. Logan has had repeated mind wipes, false memory implants on top of other memory implants like a sloppy patchwork quilt. Even worse is the fact that some of the implants had truthful elements of the actual events to make them seem authentic. Even after House of M restored his memories he was still so messed up he had to go on a massive rampage because he couldn't understand how it all fit together. Even before he was messed with by telepaths like Aldo Ferro the Weapon Plus program basically had people using drill motors in his ears to scramble his brain like eggs after every mission.

Good point about his swimming skills, as for what can kill him, we only had speculation, but when it comes to his healing factor, that thing has been all over the place for the last decade, he survived to being nuked by Nitro because a single piece of flesh was still there, but for another side, there is always the implication that he doesn't receive oxygen for an extended period, he at the very least would shut down, Daken for example was killed after Wolverine drowned him (althought you might argue that his healling factor wasn't as strong) and Creed (well a clone of Creed) was killed by decapitation. But as Hush said, superhero weakness had become inconsistent over the years, Superman's weakness to Kryptonite is a good example, it happens with special skills too look how inconsistent the Spider-Sense seems to be under every writter.

I also had to give credit to Logan for not going completely insane after the amount of **** that he has seems and live, his mental resistance is inhumaman.

[Centrions]

Good point about his swimming skills, as for what can kill him, we only had speculation, but when it comes to his healing factor, that thing has been all over the place for the last decade, he survived to being nuked by Nitro because a single piece of flesh was still there, but for another side, there is always the implication that he doesn't receive oxygen for an extended period, he at the very least would shut down, Daken for example was killed after Wolverine drowned him (althought you might argue that his healling factor wasn't as strong) and Creed (well a clone of Creed) was killed by decapitation. But as Hush said, superhero weakness had become inconsistent over the years, Superman's weakness to Kryptonite is a good example, it happens with special skills too look how inconsistent the Spider-Sense seems to be under every writter.

I also had to give credit to Logan for not going completely insane after the amount of **** that he has seems and live, his mental resistance is inhumaman.

It wasn't because of a single piece of flesh. It was because his brain and eyes were still intact along with the rest of his skeleton (Which should be impossible for the eyes and brain to survive if the rest of his organs didn't).

But I agree his healing factor has fluctuated way too much to the point where it basically depends on the writer of the day to say whatever his weaknesses are.

[TheCape]

It wasn't because of a single piece of flesh. It was because his brain and eyes were still intact along with the rest of his skeleton (Which should be impossible for the eyes and brain to survive if the rest of his organs didn't).

But I agree his healing factor has fluctuated way too much to the point where it basically depends on the writer of the day to say whatever his weaknesses are.

I forgot about that, but yeah you're right, it also was written by everyone's favorite writer in this board, Guggenheim .