The Four Color Media Monitor

So, just as they did with the Punisher, they're turning Logan into a vampire as well, in another story called "Curse of the Mutants." Yep, that's something worthy of attention alright - not! It stopped being novel long ago. The X-Men faced vampirical menaces at least twice before. Even the writer of Wolverine: The Best There Is seems to understand what's gone wrong:

I kept talking to Axel [Alonzo, Marvel Executive Editor] about how tired I thought it was that all Wolverine seems to do anymore since he got his memory back was deal with his past.. It seemed like all the character did was look backward. He would despair or get angry about what happened to him and lots of people from his past would pop up. It was just bleeding the well dry and it was also a case where some things just get stretched.

This problem dates back to the 1990s, when DC - and Marvel too - began to rely more on nostalgia than looking forward to the future. (Or, as in the case of Green Lantern, they trashed the past and invalidated the future in the process.) The writers and editors themselves were looking backwards, and making little or no attempt at establishing any serious human drama, and that's why even Wolverine apparently lost ground.

Marvel's editorial staff could consider that a special supporting cast for Wolverine besides the other X-Men, with all sorts of problems he could try and help solve, might be what could regenerate interest in Len Wein's famous creation. But if they're going to send him into the afterlife and turn him into a vampire/zombie, then it's clear they're not going to.

Labels: bad editors, golden calf of death, marvel comics, X-Men