Spider-Man Versus Wolverine #1 (February 1987)
Written by James Owsley (aka Christopher Priest)
Penciled by Mark Bright
Inked by Al Williamson
Coloured by Petra Scotese
Spoilers (from thirty-five years ago)
One-shots used to be incredibly rare things when I was a kid. Miniseries had only just caught on when this extra-long one shot showed up on the stands, pairing two of Marvel’s most popular characters, Spider-Man and Wolverine. I remember reading this a few times over, and being struck by how good the story was.
That makes sense to me now, as this was written by James Owsley, before he changed his name to Christopher Priest. Since the early 2000s, I’ve been a huge fan of Priest’s writing, and have been slowly working my way through his entire output for these columns (I still need a couple of issues of his Steel and Xero runs before I can write about them). This book is probably his most acclaimed, or is at least tied with his Black Panther series.
I don’t remember a lot of the story now. There’s some stuff about the Berlin Wall, the KGB, and I believe that Spidey kills someone, or allows someone to die. I was a huge Wolverine fan at the time this came out, which was in an era where the X-Men didn’t interact a lot with the rest of the Marvel Universe, making this seem extra special.
I’m curious to see how it’s held up.
Let’s track who turned up in the title:
Heroes
- Wolverine (Logan)
- Spider-Man (Peter Parker)
Villains
- Charlemagne
Guest Stars
- Storm (Ororo Munroe; X-Men)
- Havok (Alex Summers, X-Men)
Supporting Characters
- Kate Cushing (Daily Bugle)
- J. Jonah Jameson (Daily Bugle)
- Ned Leeds (Daily Bugle)
- Mary Jane Watson
- Aunt May Parker
Let’s take a look at what happened in these books, with some commentary as we go:
- The comic starts with Wolverine narrating, talking about a time years before when he and his friend Charlie were being attacked by fifty Soviet operatives in East Berlin. The Soviets wanted Charlie dead. We learn that Charlie, short for Charlemagne, is Logan’s best friend, and a renowned freelance operative. Charlie was hurt, so it was down to Logan to take care of their enemies, which he did by going berserker on them. Once they were all dead, Logan realized that Charlie had disappeared, leaving behind a charm as a message. In the present, Spider-Man (black suit era) is swinging through New York when he hears screams. He finds a kid running down the street freaking out, and when he talks to her, she mentions that something happened to Sophie and Burt. Spidey knows them as kind shopkeepers, and goes rushing to their store. He finds them both dead, with single shots in their foreheads. Feeling conflicted, he takes a photo of their bodies. Later, at the Daily Bugle, his photo is praised by Kate Cushing. J. Jonah Jameson calls Peter into his office to try to talk him into accepting a photojournalist assignment to El Salvador. Jonah is interrupted by Ned Leeds, who has an urgent thing to talk to him about; Peter uses this as his chance to slip out. He rushes to Queens where he’s late for dinner with his Aunt May, some other people (was she taking in borders?). Mary Jane Watson is there, and they leave to go on a date or an outing to a movie in Times Square. After the film, Peter’s Spidey-sense goes off, and as he changes into his costume, he hears gunfire. It seems like there is a sniper shooting into the crowded Square, but Spidey can’t find anyone. The cops think he’s the shooter, and open fire on him, so he leaves, feeling guilty that he didn’t do more. He goes to MJ’s apartment and feeling upset, ends up kissing her, which is outside their boundaries. He leaves. Ned Leeds tells Jonah (just how long was their conversation?) that he has a ton of info showing that Sophie and Burt were KGB, as were the two sniper victims in Times Square. He has a list of other operatives, and wants to investigate. Peter feels ineffectual and screwed up, so he decides he should quit being Spider-Man (the black suit comes off, so he’s stopped wearing the symbiote by now, but this is pre-Venom). He feels like going on a trip. Ned explains to Jonah that the killer is Charlemagne, and suspects that he’s hunting down former clients. As Peter stands in his apartment door, hoping MJ will call, Jonah calls to give him the assignment of assisting Ned. Logan arrives in West Berlin, having realized that Charlie has returned. We know that leaving the X-Men was hard for him (this is just after the Mutant Massacre), but he felt the need to find his old friend. As he walks around, he knows he’s being followed. He attacks his followers, who turn out to be muggers, scaring them away. Then he hears shots and sees that two KGB agents who have been following him have shot the muggers. They are about to throw down, but instead, the agents back off. Minutes later, Logan finds their bodies, and catches Charlie’s scent. He meditates, and the next day, while walking around again, smells Spider-Man, who is walking around with Ned. Logan isn’t sure if he can trust Spidey, because in this era, the X-Men don’t know him that well. He decides to confront Peter in his hotel room, revealing that he knows his identity. He has him put on his web spinners (he didn’t bring his costume), and they go out across the rooftops. Logan brings Peter up to date on some of what’s happened, and tells him that he should go home. Annoyed and a little scared, Peter returns to his hotel, only to find Ned Leeds dead, and KGB agents waiting in his room. Logan comes in through the window and saves him by killing them all. They escape, and for whatever reason, Peter doesn’t even go back to his room to get his stuff, he heads to a bus station. He stands in the ticket line thinking, and decides he needs to take action to avenge his friend. He finds a costume shop, hoping to find something more suitable to wear. The store is closed, but he is able to talk to the shopkeeper, who has a classic style Spider-Man suit he made for his son (it says ‘Die Spinne’ on the back). He convinces him to sell it to him, and then goes off in search of the spider-tracer he put on Logan before. He realizes that Logan’s gone over the Berlin Wall into East Berlin. He makes his own way over the wall, barely missing landing on a landmine, and getting shot at by soldiers. He tracks the tracker to a hotel room, where he wakes up a man and woman; Logan found it and gave him the slip. Logan goes to a steel mill that was a KGB front, and finds everyone in it dead. Charlemagne is waiting for him, and we learn that she’s a woman. They embrace, and go to the massive house she’s been living in. Charlie explains that she has been made by her enemies, and knows that she doesn’t have long to live. It’s suggested they go to bed together. Later, they go out for dinner at a very fancy restaurant (East Berlin looks a lot more opulent than I would have expected), and Logan realizes that the food has been poisoned. Charlie knows that everyone in the restaurant is ready to attack her, and just then, Spider-Man busts in to warn Logan about the food. Peter immediately realizes he’s messed up, and that’s when everyone starts shooting at them. Logan and Spidey get into the fight, and Charlie slips away from all of them. They start looking for her, and Logan brings Spidey up to date on things (by this point, he’s suited up in his brown suit). They head to a safe house they know is full of KGB and/or other agents, and break in to start fighting. Logan suspects that Charlie is in the basement, but it’s just full of more bodies of people she’s killed. Peter feels like he’s in over his head and wants to go home now, but also wants to avenge Ned, so he stays. They go around tearing up East Berlin, but everywhere they go, Charlie’s been there ahead of them. Peter and Logan end up arguing, and Logan makes it clear that he blames Peter for his plans falling apart, and that finally pushes Peter away. We see both of them reflect on things, with Logan feeling like he was too hard on him, and Peter feeling guilty (Owsley gets Peter). Logan meets with Charlie in a cemetery, and she knows that she won’t live much longer. She wants Logan to be the one to kill her, although we don’t hear their dialogue, only Logan’s narration. When Logan pops his claws, he flinches, not killing her instantly. He prepares to finish the job, but Spidey pulls his claws aside with a web. They argue briefly, and Logan prepares again to kill Charlie. Spidey pulls him aside, and they start to fight. Logan makes it clear that Peter is making Charlie suffer, and their fight continues. Peter recognizes it as one of the toughest fights of his life, and starts smacking away at Logan’s skull. They end up in a standoff, with Logan’s fist beneath Peter’s chin. He explains that Peter’s morality is out of place in this world, and that’s when a helicopter shows up above them. Peter struggles to stand, and feels his spider-sense warning him. A hand approaches the back of his head, and he turns and punches his attacker, whom he thought would be Logan, hard in the head. It’s Charlie he hit, and as she falls, Logan goes to her. He holds her as she dies, and Peter struggles with what happened, even though he knows that Charlie did that on purpose. Our heroes realize that they are surrounded by men with guns from multiple agencies. The tense moment ends when Logan tells them that Charlemagne is dead. The lights from the helicopter go out, and everyone disappears. The next day, Logan helps Peter slip out of the country with a fake passport. Peter is clearly stunned still, and boards the plane in a daze (Logan is taking a later flight). When he gets home, he thinks about being Spider-Man some more. The phone rings, and it’s Jameson talking about how good his photos are. Peter can’t bring himself to tell him about Ned. There’s a knock on the door and it’s Mary Jane. She confirms that they’re still friends and they embrace.
This is a pretty powerful comic. Owsley/Priest structures the story beautifully, and by narrating from both Logan’s and Peter’s perspectives, gives us a lot of insight into both characters. Priest’s writing is often very political, and the way this doesn’t feature any supervillains (okay, I know Ned Leeds was Hobgoblin, but that’s a whole other story and doesn’t impact this one) makes it stand out.
Priest has a really good handle on Peter Parker and the intense guilt he tends to feel about just about everything. When he can’t save people from a random sniper, it makes him question if he does any good as Spider-Man, and then later, when he was manipulated into dealing that final punch to Charlemagne, he is frozen with indecision. Add to that his sense of inadequacy as a nephew and friend/wannabe boyfriend, and you get the entirety of Peter in this one comic.
Priest’s Logan is pretty interesting too. This is the era where we still didn’t know much about the most popular Marvel character, and by retconning Charlemagne into his past, establishing that she’s his ‘best friend’, I’m sure he created a lot of speculation among Wolverine fans trying to position their friendship into the established timeline for the character.
The interactions between Peter and Logan are the big draw in this book. Aside from Secret Wars, and maybe an issue or two of Marvel Team-Up, these two characters really didn’t know each other at this point. Priest really leans into this, with Logan showing much more impatience with the hero than he does with his younger X-Men teammates. At the same time, he never really just explains what’s going on to Peter, which probably would have made things easier for both of them. This is because there’s no trust between them.
Charlemagne is an interesting character that probably doesn’t stand up to a lot of scrutiny. She’s a world class operative and assassin, who has worked with just about every major spy organization, yet no one knows where she lives or that she’s even a female? It’s clear that she and Logan are more than friends, but her motives for bringing him to Berlin are a little suspect – why couldn’t she just call him? More than anything, she exists as a plot device to bring Peter and Logan together in an exotic location. I find it interesting that all of the agencies she’s worked for and with exist in the real world. SHIELD, Hydra, AIM, or any other similar group is left out completely.
I kind of wonder about the portrayal of East Berlin in this comic, as I always thought that things were a lot more grim and poor there than in West Berlin, yet Charlie is living in a grand home with a sizable staff, and she takes Logan to a very posh restaurant. Was this an inaccuracy? I’m sure that writing comics before the internet existed made research into things like that much more difficult.
Mark Bright and Al Williamson are terrific artists, but this is very much a 1980s house style Marvel comic, without a lot of flourish or individuality. The art is great, but there’s nothing about it that stands out to me. Bright went on to have a long and productive relationship with Priest, giving us books like Quantum and Woody together.
I love the format of this book. At 64 pages, it’s a very satisfying read, and the quality of the paper is very nice (was this Baxter paper? I love that there was a time when we knew the names of paper stocks). I’m not sure why Marvel didn’t put this into its graphic novel format, but like that it exists in this format.
I was tempted to read the issue of Web of Spider-Man (#29) that Priest wrote as an epilogue to this book, but I’ve been thinking about tackling that series in its own column some day (I’ve been reluctant to dive into the bigger Spider-Man titles, but since this one was always a tertiary book, that has some appeal to me).
Next, I’m going to turn to the biggest event miniseries in DC’s history, which I’ve never actually read all the way through in order before.
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