On the Death of Wolverine by Derrick Martin-Campbell
“I fucked his windshield up, a great spiderweb crack full of my blood”
“In ‘Death of Wolverine,’ Logan takes full measure of his life and goes into a battle he knows he can't walk away from. He dies a hero's death.”
--Marvel Comics editor Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso
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“Since the introduction of Wolverine by Marvel Comics in 1974, and inspired by the immense popularity of the character, superhuman healing has become a fairly common power.”
--Healing Factor, Wikipedia
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“Come on healing powers
Come on oxycodone
Hillbilly heroin
Six inch scar
Wolverine you lucky dog”
--Dena Rash Guzman, Life Cycle
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The first really fucked up thing to happen to my body was when I got hit-and-run while riding my bike back to my Ukranian Village apartment late one November night the year I lived in Chicago. I was twenty-two, had to admire the driver’s cool Tokyo-drift turn onto West Argyle fifty feet in front of me, four a.m. Friday morning, the residential street empty but for the two of us. I can still see his expression through the windshield as my face bounced off of it: he looked terrified. I bet I fucked his windshield up, a great spiderweb crack full of my blood. I like thinking about it now.
The cop who found me, found my body in the street, the very first thing he said, awed and probably without meaning to: “Your eye ...” he said.
“I’m calling you an ambulance. Wait here.”
Realizing I couldn’t see out of one eye, I thought for sure the impact had knocked it out. I tried to talk, to complain aloud to no one, but only felt the pieces of my broken jaw float and grind against each other, heard my larynx gargle blood. I touched my hot wet face, fully prepared to find my left eyeball dangling from a horror-movie stalk, sure that it was all over, that no one would ever want to kiss a one-eyed boy. But it wasn’t. My eye still mostly worked and was in my skull, it was just hidden behind a curtain of my weeping blood.
Blood. I think blood is so cool.
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The claws may be the first thing you see, but the real meat of Wolverine is that healing factor. The healing process, normally so slow and hard to render visually, has inspired varied and often beautiful interpretations from artists drawing Wolverine comics over the years, piling up endless new and striking takes on the lyricism of bullet holes that close in minutes, lacerations and puncture wounds knitting before eyes, burns smoothing, disease retreating, even just his goofy haircut growing back after a fire, and all of this perfectly tempered by pain. Because the genius of Wolverine’s healing factor is that, even if nothing kills him, it all still hurts. You get to watch him grimace and howl through it, good heart struggling in this animal body, a hirsute, immortal Christ. Or wait, no, not Christ, that’s lazy and uncomplicated, misses the point of both. What is the point of Wolverine, then? Have you heard Marvel plans to kill him? I’ve been so excited since I found out, not exactly sure why. I try to explain but none of my non-comics friends are impressed.
“They kill superheros all the time, don’t they? They always come back.”
Of course they do. Of course they do.
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In the ambulance, the first thing they did was cut my favorite jeans off, rush me to Masonic where I sat tweaking the rest of the night away on a gurney in the corner of a busy hallway, awaiting doctors and the morning. Fear of a neck injury meant I had to lie on my back in a brace where I kept almost asphyxiating on my own blood. Unable to tell my story, rumor among the staff soon turned my bicycle accident into a motorcycle accident, for which sympathy was very low.
"We call you ‘organ donors,’” one nurse told me, stern face floating in and out of my fixed field of vision. "Looks like tonight you found out why."
I had lived in Chicago for about five months at the time, had yet to see a Midwestern winter. Autumn in Chicago is so beautiful. Winter is hard to imagine.
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If you liked enjoyed "On the Death of Wolverine," you might also enjoy reading an earlier piece by Derrick Martin-Campbell entitled, "The Filmmaker in Forest Park," here.
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Derrick Martin-Campbell is a writer living in Portland, OR. His work has previously appeared in Metazen and Thought Catalog. More information and links about Derrick Martin-Campbell can be found here.