MFT: Wolverine Publicity

There are some things that can be considered both entirely reasonable and absurd in the same time. Case in point - Wolverine Publicity. 

Wolverine was one of the biggest draws in the Marvel Comics fold back in late 80’s up to late 90’s. No wonder why - his hard boiled tough guy demeanor and badass attitude was appealing to the target audience like nothing else. He was different from the rest of the X-Men. Wolverine was enigmatic, the information about him was scattered but even a slightest glance was enough to understand that he was a real deal. 

Needless to say it did wonders to the sales figures. His first solo series made a significant splash in the sales and his appearances were always an attention grabbers. Soon enough publishers took notice of this and started to exploit character’s popularity. And so Wolverine started to appear in the other Marvel titles.

This phenomenon became one of Marvel's most infamous marketing practices known as Wolverine Publicity.

On a conceptual level - there is nothing wrong with the popular character showing up in the other titles. It happens all the time, especially if the other title is just starting out and needs to establish itself or just struggling to gain momentum. Cameos of an established and popular characters in the comics are reasonable business practice. If done right, it may even help to get the other title over with the fans by proxy. If done right...

Superman does it all the time and no one complains. But Wolverine Publicity is infamous for a reason. 

At first, Wolverine’s appearances were moderately reasonably justified. He could show up because the heroes needed his help to solve a particular problem. His first X-Men appearance in Giant-size X-men was like that - the team got lost and so Xavier hired Wolverine Then there were stories were his presence was welcomed but not exactly necessary. Anyway, it was a nice touch short of being slightly overbearing. Wolverine was drawing target audiences attention and that often gave the other titles a positive sales rub.

Then things started to go out of control and the whole cameo thing started to make no sense. It was going in an increasingly random direction with Wolverine showing up, the story stopping dead so that he could pop his claws and say one of his catchphrases. And then the story went on as usual. It started to get annoying after a while but it worked. 

At some point Marvel became so reckless they didn’t even bothered to put Wolverine in the stories itself instead just keeping him on the covers.

The most infamous was the one for comic book adaptation of Anita Blake series. It had Anita Blake fighting off Wolverine and that had nothing to do with the story, it was the cover-only thing. And there was a little text in the corner notifying “Wolverine does not appear in this issue”.

This phenomenon was even mocked in one of the issues of “Moon Knight” that also had Spiderman and The Punisher on the cover and the text “Wolverine does not appear in this comic” right in the middle of the cover that was continued by “But with Spiderman and The Punisher guest-starring, we have a feeling you won’t mind".

Just think about it. How reckless a publisher should be if it is so confident that people are going to buy anything with a presence of a particularly popular character even if it is a cover-only affair? Then it all came crashing down as the overall comic books sales started to wine down. With sales, constant Wolverine spotting became less and less frequent until it quietly died down.

In a way, Wolverine cameos of that era are something of a genre of its own. A kind of comic book haikus. Relentless and senseless pieces of something popping out of nowhere, making no sense and dissipating into ether.