Yesterday, I asked what was going on with Rogue in the X-Men: Regenesis Gold teaser images, and today, I have to ask: What is going on with this fight between Wolverine and Cyclops from X-Men: Schism #5?!?
The images, released yesterday to promote the underachieving event book, show what is presumably the fight that the whole series has been leading up to, because ideological debates have to become physical, because these are superhero comics (See also Infinite Crisis, The Dark Knight Returns). And to say it’s a no-holds-barred fight would be an understatement: This is definitely a no-logic-included brawl. To wit:
Wolverine demonstrates that Sentinel hands are, apparently, entirely hollow! Or, much more worryingly…
Cyclops zaps Wolverine’s face off – and he still keeps fighting.
See, here’s the thing: I know that these images are supposed to show just how intense the fight is, and how hardcore Schism is, and everything. But… This is a ridiculous fight. How does Wolverine keep fighting Cyclops when his face is zapped off? He doesn’t have eyeballs, ears or a nose, so… how does that work? Does he have radar sense to know where Cyke is? For that matter, what’s to stop Cyclops to simply zap his brain through his eye sockets? More to the point: Are we really supposed to believe that anything can get these two characters so upset at each other that they’ll fight to this point, especially when there’s a giant Sentinel trying to kill them at the same time?
There’s an exchange from the last Fear Itself interview that Matt Fraction and Tom Brevoort did with Albert on the main site, where Fraction responded to criticism about Spider-Man’s actions that this reminds me of:
Nrama: One scene in the issue that sparked a bit of discussion was the ending, with Spider-Man choosing to leave the battlefield and check on his loved ones rather than remain in the fight, with some reacting, “Oh, Spider-Man would never do that!”
Fraction: But look, he did it! It sees print, so it happened!
And… that’s just a terrible response; it’s the same thing as Fraction’s comment in the Comics Alliance interview, the idea that the writer can make anything happen because they’re the writer. I’ve already gone into the “I don’t think that’s necessarily true on a character level in a shared universe” part of that, but this example in Schism goes beyond that: Literally, how is Wolverine managing to do anything when he can’t see/hear/smell anything? I know he has a healing power, but still: He feels pain, right? Wouldn’t having your entire face blasted off kind of cause you to be paralyzed by pain, even if it for some magical reason didn’t kill you and/or stop you from being able to attack anyone because you have almost no sensory input – Touch would be overwhelmed by the feeling of your face being zapped off, you’d think, and taste won’t help.
I know, I know, I’m thinking about it too much and it’s just meant to be cool. But… it’s not cool; it’s taking what’s already stretching credibility and pushing it way past the point of no return, and I feel like that just undermines all future stories – Why don’t we just behead Wolverine now? He’ll probably recover, after all – and it’s one of those scenes that doesn’t work in context, but happened because the writer says it did. That kind of thing might work for the story once, but in the long term, it cheapens the world the characters exist in, and lessens the dramatic tension moving forward. But then… short term thinking seems to work out pretty well these days, doesn’t it…?
September 9th, 2011 at 9:53 am
that’s why i don’t read comic’s with wolverine anymore,he use to be able to be knocked out lol now hes invincble sad….
September 9th, 2011 at 9:55 am
I don’t know whether I agree with Matt because I love him or I love him because I agree with him but in serialized world, if you want to obsess about continuity then if it is printed it did happen and if you, the reader, want to worry about how that fits in with the context of the character you know and love then that is your responsibility. I doubt any writer at the professional level working on a licensed, serialized property has no regard for how the character has behaved before or what their character is. The fact that the writers ideas may not coincide with that of the readers is not something that the writer should worry about especially if readers want creative stories.
To make this even longer, I have a friend who I have not seen in a while. We started talking about philosophy and religion and his views were radically different from those I remember him having. Does that mean he is wrong? Or that somehow either the conversation I had had previously or the one I was currently having didn’t happen?
September 9th, 2011 at 9:56 am
Wolverine has, IMO, been a parody of a superhero, intentionally or unintentionally, ever since he became a hero. He can slice things up with his claws without being penalized, and is short, gruff, and ugly, but attracts hot chicks anyway. I doubt that anyone inside Marvel takes his healing power seriously these days, it’s part of the joke.
Were his power reality-based, it could be overloaded pretty easily, since his body needs oxygen to function, just like any human metabolism does. Just pump, say, cyanide, into his system — http://cyanidepoisoning.blogspot.com/2004/10/biochemical-basis-for-poisoning.html — until his cells all stop functioning; he’ll be dead. The world would get along without him just fine.
SRS
September 9th, 2011 at 9:58 am
Wow. I guess there is one answer to all these questions: its just a really crap comic.
“When I start worrying about pandering to an audience, well, that way lies the X-Men.” -Neil Gaiman
September 9th, 2011 at 11:28 am
Fear Itself and Schism pretty much slammed the door on me for the Marvel Universe.
September 9th, 2011 at 1:57 pm
@Shawn Kane,
Or, y’know, you could skip those books, and still buy the Marvel books you DO like…
Why close the door on the whole universe due to those two books?
September 9th, 2011 at 2:09 pm
well in fairness to shawn like 75 out of the 100 books marvel produces each month is tied in with some crossover.
September 9th, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Didn’t Punisher also zap Wolvie’s face off (with no other effects) during Garth Ennis’s run on the book?
September 9th, 2011 at 5:02 pm
Graeme, you know I love your posts…
…but I just have to point this out.
We’re reading comic books. Comic books are meant to be read primarily by…kids.
That said, I think Wolverine is indeed a parody of a superhero BUT kids want to see a dude melting another dude’s face off while he gets stab in the hand! This fight looks epic!
We’re on bought time guys. Always remember that. If you’re over the age of 21 and you’re THIS invested in Marvel and DC Comics…you need to remember that these books are for kids and that you continue to choose to read them because you enjoy re-visiting your youth.
That’s why I still love the goddamn X-Men with all my heart. This fight looks sick!!! >:P
September 9th, 2011 at 7:36 pm
Yep. Just about the stupidest thing I’ve seen in a comic for a while. Okay, I didn’t see it in a comic, I saw it on this blog, because guess what? Thankfully, I don’t read the X-Men anymore!
September 9th, 2011 at 10:14 pm
So wait, it’s a comic book about a guy with an unbreakable metal skeleton and claws fighting a guy who shoots lasers(no wait “concussive beams” whatever the hell they are) out of his eyeballs and a six story evil robot and the biggest problem you see is “hey, shouldn’t the metal skeleton guy be more disoriented in this panel”?
September 9th, 2011 at 10:17 pm
You write for a comic book website and do not know about beserker rage in close quarters? It’s classic wolverine. Wow. Sad.
September 10th, 2011 at 12:44 am
All the stuff that Wolverine shrugs off on a regular basis and you cry foul at him fighting on without a face??? This is only the 30th time this has happened. All you people crying about Wolverine need to chill out. It’s not like this is a new idea. For god’s sake he survived getting punched into space by the Shiar Imperial Guard back in the 1970′s and that was before he even had a healing factor.
Wolverine is still cracking jokes after taking a 10-hit combo to the face from Hulk every Tuesday. Nothing Cyclops does can possibly be worse than that.
For the record it’s pretty easy to find your opponent when you are SITTING RIGHT ON TOP OF THEM!!! Scott is holding his hand for god’s sake, how could Logan not know where he is?
You really want to talk about ridiculous fight scenes? How about the page before where Scott (a man with normal human durability) punches Wolverine (a man with a virtually unbreakable metallic skull) in the face and somehow does not break every bone in his hand. Back in the day Sabretooth used to break his hand after decking Wolverine, and even without adamantium his bone structure is super-dense. People like Cyke, Daredevil, or Cap punching Wolverine and not crying like a four year old girl with a skinned knee is far more idiotic than an indestructible killing machine fighting on with no face any day.
September 10th, 2011 at 4:22 pm
jeremts Says:
You write for a comic book website and do not know about beserker rage in close quarters? It’s classic wolverine. Wow. Sad.
Exactly, it’s been established multiple times that this is how Wolverine reacts to this type of extreme injury. If the writer had him retreat in pain like Graeme suggested we would be hearing complaints about how its “out of character.”
September 10th, 2011 at 6:29 pm
I stopped thinking about what Wolverine could fight back from after reading him being reduced to a skeleton during his Civil War tie-in and coming back from that in a few pages.
September 11th, 2011 at 3:43 am
Close your eyes. Hold your arms out to your sides. Close your eyes. Now touch your nose. If you are not drunk you probably didn’t miss, get it? Even if he didn’t have a beserker state, Wolverine has been in hand to hand feral combat for over a century with a pretty straightforward “in someones face” battle stance. That blog post is so off the mark its almost trolling.
September 12th, 2011 at 4:25 am
Hey the high and mighty matt…..,wrote it must be true!
September 12th, 2011 at 6:48 am
First is Schism an “underachieving event book”? I honestly don’t know how it’s selling. Second, “the fight that the whole series has been leading up to, because ideological debates have to become physical, because these are superhero comics” do you have a problem with this? I’m asking because, yeah they do in comics, because that’s a conceit of the genre, especially in Marvel comics.
That being said, I’m looking forward to most of the Regenesis titles.
September 12th, 2011 at 9:52 am
…where did the flames come from? Per the Thing, “I been on the business end of that thing, an’ I know Cyclops’ blast ain’t hot!” (From Byrne’s Fantastic Four #250!) It’s a concussive blast, not heat vision; or there’d be a trail of flames everywhere Cyke went.
I wish that was the dumbest thing there. Maybe Cyke’s a Skrull–oh, too soon? But I’m not paying for this, so I shouldn’t say anything.
September 13th, 2011 at 2:10 am
Mr Graeme,
You hate,hate,hate Marvel. We know, we get it.
These are comics, relax. If Wolverine is said to be a gay cyborg from the future who slept with his mother to give birth to himself, we either take it or leave it. It’s comics. Graeme represents everything wrong with comic fandom today, that is spouting pseudo intellectual nonsense and making it seem like seasoned opinion whereas what’s really being driven is some childish agenda.
September 13th, 2011 at 2:13 am
By the way,
Schism has been brilliant. Again, Mr Mcmillan’s trolling is just ridiculous.
His podcasts rant are more ridiculous at savagecritics.com. The dude’s a joke.
September 13th, 2011 at 11:06 am
There sure is a lot of anger, hostility and uncritical thinking going on in this comment section. It’s no longer enough to intelligently and politely respond to or debate an issue with which one happens to disagree. For example, @Chalres above (is it supposed to be Charles by any chance?), the commenter finds it necessary to reduce the discussion to childish name-calling. This sad resort to name-calling is entirely ineffectual because @Chalres now completely lacks credibility so his taste in comic books are brought into question, which explains why he is of the opinion that “Schism has been brilliant.”
I’ve found this lack of civility to be the case in comment sections all across the internet, whether it’s here, the Huffington Post, or Entertainment Weekly. I guess this is what happens when people can post anonymously, because I doubt most of these comments would be made to Graeme’s face. They are cowards all.
September 13th, 2011 at 3:33 pm
poster adam lipkin is correct – i also remember this happening and it being the punisher who did it. his face grew back. i don’t recall him being out of commission either, so actually this is kind of not dramatic at all for me. nice try, schism-writer. epic fail!
September 13th, 2011 at 8:04 pm
now bub’s just because i once was a mutant who had a healing factor and still felt pain and was not invincble befor.You have to realize matt fraction’s version of myself,see now if i sprout wing’s and fly it is because he say’s it is,understand bub!