I may have told this story before, but it bears repeating. As a little kid, the first comics I gravitated towards were Justice League of America. Insane covers with giant space starfish enslaving the human race and Earth's mightiest heroes hooked me. As I grew a bit older, I came to realize, nine times out of ten, whatever was happening on the cover didn't actually happen until the very last pages of the book, so I felt cheated. That's when someone turned me on to Uncanny X-Men. These were very realistic human portrayals, despite their mutant abilities, with real world problems and prejudices to deal with, and none so mentally tormented as the man called Wolverine. In the back of a longbox in a giant book store in the heart of Brooklyn, I found Wolverine #1..a bit folded at the edges and with a number markered on the cover, but still very much readable and because of the damage, affordable! That night, me and the 5 foot, hairy, brooding Canadian warrior bonded and many a day after, I clenched my fist waiting to see if claws might pop out.
