X-Men (film series)

Time to delve into our favorite Canuck Mutant’s best brawls. He’s had a ton, and more often than not they are all entertaining. Because the thing is Wolverine is not a terribly skilled fighter. Sure, he can hold his own with the best of them but he doesn’t have the training or skill set of an Iron Fist or Daredevil.

His healing factor gives him a huge advantage because he can take just about any abuse thrown his way. I mean, the guy survived having Adamantium ripped out of his body. ( Thanks to Magneto in the Fatal attraction series.) Small in stature but huge in heart, he keeps coming back for more no matter the odds or the pain. Without further ado, let’s begin!

5. Wolverine vs Shingen Yoshida: The Wolverine by Chris Claremont & Frank Miller.

By now every Wolverine fan has either read or has heard of ” The Wolverine” mini series by Chris Claremont & Frank Miller. There’s even a movie “loosely” based on it. It’s a great story , and one that affects Wolverine himself in a personal nature. He returns to Japan after many years and desires to reconnect with his old flame, Mariko. There’s just one problem that stands in the way of their love. her crime boss father Shingen Yoshida.

It doesn’t help matters that Shingin is a master swordsman and martial artist. They fought twice in this mini series but the last fight sequence is beautifully rendered by Frank Miller and Joe Rubinstein. Wolverine is thoroughly outclassed throughout most of the fight but as mentioned before, he just doesn’t quit. One thing is for certain at the end of it all. Sometimes honor must be compromised for the greater good.

4. Wolverine vs Hulk: The Incredible Hulk #340 by Peter David & Todd McFarlane

Undoubtedly one of the best rivalries in comics. While Wolvierine and Hulk have been uneasy allies at times, they mostly don’t like each other. Wolverine was introduced to the world via a Hulk comic and it wasn’t a peaceful encounter & in this particular issue of the Incredible Hulk the stakes go up quite a bit.

Firstly you have Todd McFarlane on art duties. Known more for his Spider-man run he did draw Hulk first as he developed his style. The cover alone is legendary and impossible not to want to pick up and read.

The fight is a bloody affair and it leads to one of the more interesting developments in Hulk lore. Like Wolverine, Hulk also has a healing factor. Let’s just say the Hulk gets revenge for his questionable defeat.

3. Wolverine vs The Hellfire Club: Uncanny X-men # 133 by Chris Claremont & John Byrne

This one is always a fan favorite and for good reason. it’s just such a cool comeback story and you want to root for Wolverine all the way. You get to see him do what he does best and in our cases, it’s very nice.

Certanly the highlight of the X-men’s battle with the evil Hellfire Club. John Byrne drew the hell out of this sequence and the last part of the fight is written brilliantly by Chris Claremont.

A special treat for me was to see this issue get the animated series treatment back in 1992. Not as good as the original but satisfying nonetheless. I particularly love the image here!

2. Wolverine vs Cyclops: Schism: by Jason Arron & Various artists

This was the fight everyone wanted to see. It’s been boiling for years and it finally came to fruition during X-men: Schism.

The funny thing is that in this story Wolverine was the more level headed one. Cyclops has become more of a ruthless tactician and you knew that eventually they were not going to be seeing eye to eye. Or eye to visor in Cyclops’s case.

This particular issue was drawn and inked by Alan Davis. A marvel veteran and comic legend.

It’s surprisingly brutal. You get to see both combatants use their powers all out. They’re playing for keeps in this one. The anger is raw and you can see it in the fight. It’s a long battle but it still manages to get cut short by those annoying Sentinels!

1.Wolverine vs Sabretooth: Wolverine # 90 by Larry Hama & Adam Kubert

You knew that Wolverine vs Sabretooth had to show up on this list at some point. This is personally in my top 3 comic rivalries of all time. It’s a fight that never gets old.
They had an epic battle during the Mutant Massacre storyline but this vicious affair takes the cake. It was the fight to end all fights…sort of. It’s pretty much a full issue of action. There’s even a two page fold out during the main battle. That’s right, the fight was so intense that normal pages could not hold it.

The end of the fight is just so appropriate and totally bad ass. If you’ve never seen Wolverine threaten with two claws before (see below)

Then you know what happens to Sabretooth at the end. I remember taking my sweet time to read this one because I wanted to take in every nuance of the battle. It’s still fairly easy to find I think. I urge you to seek it out and enjoy the visual spectacle for yourselves.

Stay tuned for our next installment of great Comic Book Battles and don’t forget to read our first installment which featured Superman!

Next time I’ll feature Captain America!

It’s no longer a secret that Fox is looking to bring a live-action X-Men series to television. The success of series like Flash, Arrow and Gotham have proven to studios that the demand for live action superhero programming on television exists. For the 15-years the only live action tales to be had featuring Wolverine, Magneto and Nightcrawler were on the silver screen. So far, the experience that the X-Men films deliver in 2-hour movie installments is entirely different than what I got from the X-Men comics that I grew up reading. For every detail that the films get right in terms style and Hollywood bombast, they miss the mark on integral elements of the best X-Men stories. Aside from the action, fans love the X-titles for their heartfelt family dynamics and soap opera style plot twists. You know… the actual stuff that held fan’s interest for the 35-years before the films. I’ve mentioned before that X-Men stories are ripe for television’s long-form narrative delivery. Unfortunately, in 2015, putting an X-Men series on network television is a terrible idea.

When looking at the current batch of superhero shows on television, it’s clear that there is more emphasis placed on hero than on super. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Arrow exist in worlds littered with super powered meta-humans. Each series minimizes the involvement of these characters because super powers are expensive to render on television budgets. Relative to their big screen adaptations, comic book televisions series have extremely tight budgets. For every action set-piece on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the producers have to plan smaller episodes with fewer effects to balance out the season’s budget. Now that we’ve seen Magneto levitate an entire football stadium in X-Men: Days of Future Past, will fans be content with TV budgets? Do fans want a television series in which Cyclops spends more time being “emo” than using his optic blasts? Fans have asked for an X-Men series that strikes an improved balance between action and characterization for years. The trade off is that a television budget means an X-Men series would lean too heavily upon dialogue. Fans don’t want a series where it is too expensive to have superheroes use their powers more than once an episode. Heroes (Heroes Reborn) is returning to the air to fill that void.

Fox intends to take the series in the same direction as their other comic-adaptation series Gotham. The show will take place in the X-Men’s world and center around one of the team’s bit players. The most likely story will focus on Multiple Man as he operates a detective agency. Despite Gotham’s ratings success, Fox’s Batman series has yet to strike a chord with fans of the Batman movies and comic books. Gotham has turned off fans by serving up shallow versions of familiar characters and introducing plots that disrupt the Batman mythology. Gotham doesn’t work for Batman fans because it doesn’t offer well rounded versions of their favorite heroes and villains. Gotham acts less like a prequel and more like a placeholder. Giving X-fans a show based in the world of their beloved mutants and only providing fleeting glimpses of those characters is not the way to go. If Fox uses the Gotham approach they will just be cashing in on the X-Men’s name recognition by tantalizing fans with a long season of teases.

Before making it to air, Gotham’s initial premise was much different than the current iteration. Early drafts of the series focused on the Gotham City Police Department solving street level crime. The difference from the draft and what is currently airing is that the show did not involve a litany of Batman’s deadliest adversaries. In theory, a Gotham show offering stories about cops chasing crooks who are the guy who works for the guy who works for the Joker or Penguin is an interesting concept. It is unrealistic to expect a network not to pressure show-runners into emphasizing the most marketable aspect of their show (the famous characters). The first several episodes of Gotham felt as though the show’s writers were on pace to introduce every Batman rogue under the sun. Fans were put off by how contextually inappropriate most of these appearances were. In keeping with the Gotham model, X-fans can look forward to a series that offers “D”list X-men villains and watered down adaptations of Mr. Sinister and Apocalypse. Gotham isn’t the only show guilty of forcing villains into the hero’s timeline far too early.

Despite the lower production budget, TV’s long-form storytelling model makes it the perfect medium for telling X-Men stories. HBO and Netflix are examples of ambitious televison done right. HBO’s Game of Thrones and Netflix’s Marco Polo are both programs that are too expensive and ambitious to work on network television. A 10-13 episode season of X-Men gives writers roughly a dozen hours of television to create expansive stories. 12-hours is enough for talented writers to fit in well-rounded versions of the X-Universe’s large roster of heroes and villains. Disney-Marvel beat Fox to the storytelling sweet spot with their 5-series (Daredevil, A.K.A. Jessica Jones, Ironfist, Luke Cage and The Defenders) mega-deal. Without factoring in inflation, Netflix’s Marco Polo series budget of $90 million is $15 million higher than the budget of Bryan Singer’s original X-Men film. As of 2015 the X-Men brand has proven its global appeal (Days of Future Past earned $116,490,000 in China alone). Wouldn’t a Netflix “X”-series have been a safer bet than the untested and poorly received Marco Polo? A $90 million, 10 part X-men Netflix series would give X-fans the series that they deserve. An X-series requires a large cast of characters, reliance on special effects and epic battles. A proper representation of the X-Men must have more in common with Game of Thrones than Gotham.

When it comes to creating television series, the fantastic, over the top sci-fi and fantasy elements offered in comic books present a challenge. Now that Hollywood understands that putting super heroes on TV is lucrative, market over-saturation is inevitable. Studios love the guaranteed dollars that come with tapping into pre-existing markets. Gotham’s success means that we can expect a flurry of prequel and spin-off television shows about comic book characters that no one asked to see. The television model that Gotham offers is relatively cheap, easy and most importantly, it works. Comic book fans looking to get their live action super hero fix on TV must temper their over-zealousness and not ingratiate themselves to the networks with the keys to our comic book television kingdom. There was a time not too long ago that studios and networks won us over by just pandering to our nerdy niche tastes. In 2015, comic book fans are far past the point of getting excited because their childhood heroes are finally receiving mainstream recognition. So far, slavish gratitude resulted in the hollow fan service that we call Gotham. Comic book fans are at the point where they can demand quality over quantity. The next time you are perusing your favorite blog and see a tasty little tidbit about Fox bringing an X-Men series to television, ask yourself if you believe they are capable of creating the show that you want to see. If not, don’t feel like you are selling out your comic book loving brethren and sistren when you leave a reply in the comments section exclaiming, “No thank you!”

Source: TVInsider.com