Today, we look at how Wolverine lost one of his seemingly unbreakable adamantium claws in the alternate future timeline that belongs to Marvel's original Guardians of the Galaxy!
This is "Provide Some Answers," which is a feature where long unresolved plot points are eventually resolved.
STUCK IN THE FUTURE
A common way of writing comic books in the old days, especially at DC under editors Julius Schwartz and Mort Weisinger, was to come up with a cover first and then write a story based on the cover. Mort Weisinger would ask kids to suggest stories that they'd like to see and he would also accept cover concepts (the first assignment that Cary Bates ever had at DC is when he came up with a cover concept that became the cover of Superman #167. He would then have his writers come up with a story based on said cover concept. Schwartz would do the same, although he would typically come up with the cover ideas himself. Back in the day, comic books primarily were purchased on the strengths of the cover, so it just made sense to first come up with an outlandish cover and then come up with a story to explain the cover (like the cover might have a superhero turning into an insect and the writer has to figure out how to get the superhero into an insect in the story...and how to get them back to normal).
I bring that up because it speaks to the challenges of a writer having to deal with someone else establishing a major part of their story and having to adjust accordingly. Another similar example to the cover issue was Adventure Comics #354 (by Jim Shooter, Curt Swan and George Klein), when we got a look at the future of the Legion. This was the longest "Adult Legion" story that we had seen at this point, with Superman traveling to the future to meet the adult versions of the Legion of Super-Heroes. During this story, Shooter introduced a number of twists (like which Legionnaires would end up married to each other and the names of dead Legionnaires who had not yet actually joined the team). For YEARS, Legion writers treated what Shooter wrote in this story as sacrosanct, which is hilarious, as Shooter was only a teenager when he came up with these future plot twists, but they were treated like they were gospel until Paul Levitz eventually established during his famous run on the Legion that the future was no longer set in stone.
To make a longer story somewhat shorter, this is what writer Michael Gallagher was dealing with during his run on Guardians of the Galaxy, when he tried to fill out the past of the future based on clues that writer Jim Valentino had left in the book.
WOLVERINE'S GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT GRANDDAUGHTER DEBUTS
In Guardians of the Galaxy #8 (by Jim Valentino and Steve Montano), Marvel's original Guardians of the Galaxy (who were heroes in the future, with the initial team consisting of a different hero from a colony in the Milky Way, with colonists on each planet developing abilities based on their home planet, alongside an astronaut from our time period who was trapped in cryogenesis for 1000 years and an alien he befriended when he arrived in the future to learn that the galaxy had mostly been conquered by the alien Badoon. The Guardians fought back against the invading aliens) came across a planet named Haven, which was full of mutants and was led by Wolverine's great-great-great-great granddaughter, the villainous Rancor!
Rancor became a recurring villain in the series, and in Guardians of the Galaxy #23 (by Valentino and guest artist Mark Texeira), she fights against one of the Guardians' newest recruits named Talon. She then reveals that she has a blade made up of one of Wolverine's famous adamantium claws (in a recent story, CBR wrote about how Doctor Doom turned the rest of Wolverine's skeleton into a suit of armor) that she claims was removed by Gladiator, the most powerful member of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard...
It's a throwaway line, but one that the writer who followed Valentino on the series, Michael Gallagher, felt like eventually following up on when he detailed the past of Marvel's future.
LEARNING THE PAST OF MARVEL'S FUTURE WITH THE GALACTIC GUARDIANS
Over his two-year run on the Guardians of the Galaxy, Jim Valentino introduced a number of fascinating new heroes, including a futuristic version of Wonder Man known as Hollywood (Wonder Man's ionic form could survive forever). Eventually, there were so many excess superheroes that Valentino had one of the original Guardians, Martinex, form a second superhero team known as the Galactic Guardians, starring these other heroes.
In 1994, Michael Gallagher wrote a miniseries starring the Galactic Guardians (with art by the then-regular Guardians of the Galaxy art team of Kevin West and Steve Montano). The first issue continued a series of back-ups by Gallagher that started in that month's Guardians of the Galaxy #50. With art by Yancey Labat and Scott Koblish, Gallagher explained how the mutants who flew through outer space looking for an ew planet happened to fly into Shi'ar space and Gladiator attacked them and in the ensuing fight, tore off one of Wolverine's claws before allowing the mutants to continue to their new planet...
So that is how it happened. That story also sets up the idea that Gladiator IS strong enough to do that to Wolverine, which is interesting in and of itself.
If anyone else has a suggestion for a comic book plot that got resolved after a few years (I tend to use two years as the minimum, as otherwise, you're probably just in the middle of the actual initial reveal of the storyline, ya know? But I'll allow exceptions where a new writer takes over a storyline and has to resolve the previous writer's unresolved plots), drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!