Experiencing Windsor-Smith's Weapon X

Reading Barry Windsor-Smith’s Weapon X masterpiece

We’re knee deep in the Weapon X season and for many of us there is snow on the ground and a chill silence. That makes it the perfect time to re-read the inspiration for this month’s Marvel Snap season, Barry Windsor-Smith’s haunting Weapon X tale told in 9-page chunks in Marvel Comics Presents 72-84. 

Here are some interesting tidbits from the development of this run that illustrate just what an eccentric genius Windsor-Smith was in his prime:

• He got the idea when pitched a completely different idea for an 8-page job in Marvel’s anthology series, Marvel Comics Presents, which he promptly turned down. Instead, he was immediately intrigued by working within the 8-9 page constraint to tell a satisfying narrative story.
• He didn’t pitch his idea. Instead he just started it and brought the first few pages in to editor Terry Kavanagh, which was definitely not the usual procedure. Harder to reject and easier to just dive in!
• Kavanagh approved Windsor-Smith’s idea (surely blown away by the pages), but when Marvel’s sales team saw the pages they thought they were way too good to be released in Marvel Comics Presents and wanted to give them fancy coloring and release them as a prestige hardcover, something that was pretty rare at the time. Kavanagh had to fight to keep it in MCP. After all, the page constraint was basically the entire impetus of the story.
• The Professor character was controversial. Some inside Marvel were worried that he would be mistaken for Professor X. But it wasn’t some random coincidence. Windsor-Smith knew readers would draw a parallel between the Professor and Professor X. It all serves to add to the unnerving mood of the story and the psychological impact on Logan. How much of this was even real?
• He just came up with the entire idea on his own. He didn’t take any input from Chris Claremont or anyone else who may have had long-term plans for Wolverine. Apparently, Claremont did have an idea that it would end up being Apocalypse that was responsible for Wolverine’s infusion of adamantium. Windsor-Smith did change his story slightly so that “the Professor” reported to a mysterious boss, leaving the door open for Claremont to implement whatever ideas he wanted. Still, I can’t help but think that if Windsor-Smith hadn’t been hit with a stange bolt of inspiration about an alternative release format, we would have ended up with a very different origin for Wolverine!

The Origin of Wolverine

Most superheroes don’t come in without an origin story. The very first appearance of Spider-Man shows him getting bit by a Spider! But Wolverine first appeared as an antagonist to the Hulk in The Incredible Hulk 180. Weapon X is briefly mentioned and kind of implied to be the government agency of Canada he works for, and from there Wolverine goes on to join the All-New All-Different X-Men. He’s a bit of a mysterious man without a past for most of the early Claremont issues. I’m sure a large part of this was an intentional aesthetic choice by Claremont, but it probably had as much to do with Cockrum preferring Nightcrawler to Wolverine and storylines focusing more on him and Claremont’s favorite ladies, Storm and Jean Grey, and everyone’s favorite, Colossus. It’s only when John Byrne joins the book that Wolverine begins to take on more of a central role and gets more character development. Nightcrawler only learns Wolverine’s “real” name four years in!

Claremont had a reputation for letting things simmer for a while. Like a really long while. So, it’s a bit of an understatement to say fans were yearning to finally get some information on Wolverine’s origin 26 years after he joined the X-Men. Would Claremont have gotten around to eventually sharing his vision for how Logan became Wolverine? Maybe. But Windsor-Smith swooped in and gave us his version instead. It’s an atmospheric body-horror mystery that features voiceovers on images of a tortured Logan more than it does Wolverine. And the best way to read it really is as 8-9 page chunks. Each one has a theme and a crescendo of its own. In the first issue, you can almost feel Windsor-Smith relishing the format as he intercuts between an aimless Logan getting into trouble and wasting his life away while also showing the Professor building out his team of Dr. Abraham Cornelius and Carol Hines with an incredible economy of visual storytelling. It’s a really foreboding issue and could honestly be read as a stand-alone experience.

The storyline really kicks off in issue #73, as we see some government goons abduct Logan. He’s placed in a vat of mysterious liquid and has adamantium pumped into his system while a series of almost hypnotic chant-like scientific instructions surround the images in narration boxes.

The experiment continues, and it becomes clear it’s not just a physical transformation. Both Logan and the reader have trouble separating reality from what appears through the red visor on that iconic headset Logan is fitted with.

Windsor-Smith evokes classic 80s horror films like The Thing and Alien as Logan rampages through both the Weapon X facility and his own mind. You can almost see the flashing lights of a malfunctioning science lab and hear the corresponding blaring alarms.

I definitely recommend checking out Barry Windsor-Smith’s original Weapon X story. It ends on a horror-movie-style cliffhanger, as the artist intended, but if you want to read what happens next, check out Wolverine 48-50 which continues the tale and reveals the final fate of the Professor. Of course, this is Marvel, so a lot of Wolverine’s backstory was later filled in/retconned. The 2001 Wolverine: The Origin series was marketed as finally revealing Wolverine’s origin. Weapon X was retconned by Grant Morrison to be an extension of the super soldier program, renamed Weapon Plus, under the auspices of Department K, etc, etc.  None of the subsequent stories are bad and many are definitely worth a read, but I just mentally compartmentalize all of them separately and don’t let them detract from each other, only enhance. A little cognitive dissonance and headcanon goes a long way to enjoying comics!

If you’re looking for more Windsor-Smith, check out Monsters, a graphic novel he just recently released after working on it for about 30 years. It was originally conceived as a Hulk story! It’s fun to imagine what project he would have transformed Weapon X into if Kavanagh had rejected it!