I tend to take Claremont at his word in the foreword to TPB - the idea was to grow the character, to flesh out the character. Never in the history of comics has a comic, let alone a solo miniseries, been written with the intention of making a character less popular.

I don't buy the story about this book being done to 'make him less popular' either. Wolverine really was obnoxious, though, early on. This shows just how far Wolverine has come from his early X-Men days, when Nightcrawler was actually considered the favorite character and the letters pages typically said 'Get rid of that obnoxious Wolverine'. Surely 'Wolverine fights ninjas' is actually a cliche at this point.

In any event the elements of this mini-series helped define the character in ways that only added to his popularity. It doesn't really ring true to me, as a lot of care was put into this series and it does quite a bit for Wolverine's character development. The legend here is that Chris Claremont actually wanted to put the runaway popularity of Wolverine in check, so he and Frank Miller teamed-up to do a Wolverine story that removed him so much from the elements that made him popular, and into a world of ninjas, samurai, and debates about honor that the demand for a Wolverine ongoing series would die down. Title: 'I'm Wolverine.' / 'Debts and obligations' / 'Loss' / 'Honor' It was just a nightmare.Issue(s): Wolverine #1, Wolverine #2, Wolverine #3, Wolverine #4 Kathryn goes off and writes a screen treatment for X-Men that was eaten alive by all the idiots who have a piece of Spider-Man because Marvel during its evolution has sold off the rights time and time and time again. About 20 minutes later all the Lightstorm guys and I are looking at each other, and we all know the X-Men deal has just evaporated. And at one point Stan looks at Cameron and says, ‘I hear you like Spider-Man.’ Cameron's eyes lit up. That's what we were playing,” Claremont said.īut it quickly fell apart when Lee brought up another possible project. “Just think about this for a minute: James Cameron's X-Men. When Cameron launched his own studio, Lightstorm Entertainment, in 1990, Claremont and Marvel Comics mastermind Stan Lee went to his office to pitch him an “X-Men” movie.Īlso read: Chris Claremont's Dream X-Men Movie: James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow, and Bob Hoskins as Wolverine Claremont recalled a scene in the 1984 film “Lassiter” in which Hoskins pushes open a door and shoves the much taller Tom Selleck, while berating him.Īlso read: Bob Hoskins, ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ Star, Dead At 71Ĭlaremont said that in that moment, Hoskins captured the essence of Wolverine. In the comics, Claremont noted, Wolverine is short and feral, hence his animalistic name.

Wolverine claremont