| Posted: 17 July 2010 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | 9
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JB on where he and Chris went wrong with Wolverine-- From "Focus on John Byrne" (Fantagraphic Books - 1984)... ---- On the subject of what makes a good comic book hero... BYRNE: They have to be good role models, don't they? They have to have a kind of transcendent goodness about them. Like what Len Wein said about goodness always triumphing over evil because it's nicer. In many ways, thats true, that is the bottom line of every comic story, that reaffirmation of good triumphing over evil. The trick then is to make that triumph interesting, which is usually best acheived by making evil interesting, or sympathetic or something that one might look at and say, "Oh, was this necessarily a good triumph over evil." SANDERSON: Well, there's another side to that too which is not just ambiguity about the evil but the ambiguity about the good, with reference to Wolverine, a character which you like a great deal, but can be characterized as the Pyscho-as-Hero. BYRNE: Oh, sure. SANDERSON: And the question here is, when you have a hero like that, is that somehow diluting the ideal of what a comic book hero should be, since he's far more violent, far more tolerant towards killing than the archetypal role model is. BYRNE: I think handled correctly, which is something I myself never did while I was doing X-Men. I never really got the proper handle on how Wolverine should have been handled. Handled correctly, Wolverine should serve to reaffirm the good triumphs over evil aspect of the other characters rather than of himself, because this guy is obviously a pyscho, not well in the mind. And so we cannot hold him up and say "Here's a good role model, kids." But what we can do is to say look at the other X-Men and see how in the process of fighting villains and generally saving the world for truth, justice and the American way, they are also dealing with this time bomb ticking away in their midst, which is Wolverine. That scene I've talked about before with him casually disemboweling one of the X-Men and then sort of going "oops" because he's realized he's done it, could be a very telling scene if such a scene could be done. Because it would underline exactly who and what Wolverine really is and it would also underline how the rest of the X-Men are dealing with him. And I don't think it would serve in any way to diminish the character of Wolverine, the hair-trigger, the danger of Wolverine, the major selling factor of the character. Where Chris and I went wrong was in trying to justify what he is instead of just cutting loose and saying "Look out kids, you don't want to be in the same room with this guy."
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