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Wolverine's Death: Superheroes And The Cycle Of Eternal Return

The fourth and final issue of the weekly four-issue Marvel Comics mini-series Death of Wolverine, written by Charles Soule and drawn by Steve McNiven, will be published next Wednesday.

Here follows an excerpt from a text exchange about the series between nerd-about-town Glen Weldon (Ghweldon) and a non-comics-reading "normal" of his acquaintance (Golfrguy).

Golfrguy: dude they're killing off wolverine???????

Ghweldon: Yep. Well I mean "killing" off. You know, for now.

Golfrguy: whuuuut but he can't be killed that's his whole thing

Ghweldon: No, sure. You'd think. But they've been setting this up for a while, actually. A little over year ago, Paul Cornell, who writes the solo comic, Wolverine, took away the guy's healing factor.

Golfrguy: how

Ghweldon: "How?" Never mind how. Not important.

Golfrguy: seriously tell me

Ghweldon: It's ... It's pretty nerdy.

Golfrguy: yeah I figured tell me

Ghweldon: ... I really don't think you're ready for this nerdy jelly, pal.

Golfrguy: DUDE.

“ In comics, death is not, as Hamlet called it, 'that undiscover'd country/from whose bourne no stranger returns.' No: it's Tijuana, and there's a shuttle.

- Glen Weldon

Ghweldon: He got possessed by an evil mind-controlling world-conquering sentient virus from the Microverse.

Golfrguy: ...

Ghweldon: Yep. It blew out his healing factor like the guy was a Radio Shack sub-woofer.

Golfrguy: wait whats the microverse

Ghweldon: You know, we should really take a step back here. This is the death of a superhero in a comic book, after all. And I've told you before: In comics, death is not, as Hamlet called it, "that undiscover'd country/from whose bourne no stranger returns."

No: it's Tijuana, and there's a shuttle.

So don't worry about Wolverine. He'll be back. They all come back.

Golfrguy: wait back up the microverse is that where the micronauts were from? Same place?

Code Switch

Superhero Super-Fans Talk Race And Identity In Comics

Ghweldon: Now, I know what you're gonna say....

Golfrguy: hows a virus control a dudes mind huh

Ghweldon: You're gonna say but Glen, when Mike Marts, the Marvel editor in charge of this whole thing, spoke to Entertainment Weekly back in April, he claimed that THIS death would be different.

"The concept of 'death' in comic books can seem a bit tenuous," EW wrote, understating like crazy, "... but Marts says that Marvel approached this event 'from a standpoint of finality, of closure.'"

That sound you hear? Is the noise made when millions of nerdy eyes roll and roll and roll.

13.7: Cosmos And Culture

Rise Of The Superheroes: Winners And Losers

Here's the thing: Wolverine is a corporate-owned, heavily licensed nugget of intellectual property. He's one of the company's flagship characters, and he fuels a vast merchandising machine that includes movie franchises, videogames, toys and clothing. If anything about him changes — if, Crom forbid, he dies — the bottom drops out of the Wolverine footy pajamas market.

Here's another thing: Comics are essentially soap operas: ongoing, open-ended narratives that deny their characters the very thing that makes a story a story: the ending. Endings give shape and weight to a narrative by providing exactly what Marts so disingenuously promises: Finality. Closure.

“ Superheroes go on adventures, endlessly iterating the same spandex Ragnaroks over and over ... they can't grow, they can't learn, they can't emerge from an adventure wholly and permanently different from how they were before.

- Glen Weldon

In lieu of an ending, then, superheroes go on adventures, endlessly iterating the same spandex Ragnaroks over and over. They can change, albeit in carefully proscribed ways (I'm evil now! I'm good again! I'm dead! I'm back!) but they can't grow, they can't learn, they can't emerge from an adventure wholly and permanently different from how they were before.

Writers of corporate-owned superhero comics make their peace with this: they know their tenure with these characters is finite, that they are essentially taking Daddy's precious vintage toys off the shelf and playing with them for a period of months or years. They know, too, that when they finally, gingerly, return those toys to the shelf, they must ensure that they remain unscathed, unchanged, pristine.

Iraqis Displaced By ISIS Face Another Threat: Winter

Leeza Guerges sits on the concrete floor of the unfinished building where she lives now.

She calls for her two kids, husband and in-laws to eat the eggs, meat and rice she's prepared. The meat was donated, a rare treat for the family displaced from the northern city of Mosul when ISIS took it about two months ago.

They gather together on the floor and for a moment try to forget that they can't go home, and everything they once had is lost.

They live inside an unfinished mall — basically a construction site-turned-displacement camp in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Erbil — with about 150 other families.

Kids play soccer in one area, near latrines that the United Nations put up. Aluminum barriers create small cubicles for privacy for each family. But when winter comes, this place will be unlivable.

Parallels

For Fleeing Iraqis, Kurdish Areas Are The Safe Zone

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Iraqis at the Baharka camp for displaced people face real danger as the winter approaches with sub-zero temperatures. Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images

Iraqis at the Baharka camp for displaced people face real danger as the winter approaches with sub-zero temperatures.

Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images

Guerges says she doesn't know what she'll do. We don't have money, she says, no water heater. The family has two blankets for 10 people, and winter clothes cost money she and her husband don't have.

"How will we survive," she asks, "when it begins to rain and freeze?"

It is a question many are asking now. With winter approaching, the 1.8 million Iraqis displaced by forces of the extremist group, ISIS, face real danger with sub-zero temperatures.

People are fleeing for safety, away from the battle raging between ISIS, also known as Islamic State, and the Iraqi government. Many have lost every belonging they owned and are forced to live under bridges, in unfinished buildings and tented displacement camps in the Kurdish north.

Will Parks, head of UNICEF in northern Iraq, stands in a UN warehouse where boxes of supplies are stacked to the ceiling. He speaks to his colleagues about the distribution of hygiene kits, blankets, hypothermic kits and winter clothes.

Parks and his team have been preparing for winter since June, when ISIS first steamrolled through Mosul. But even with all the preparation, they won't be able to get warm clothes and supplies to all the vulnerable families in need.

"We are running to keep up," he says.

In areas under ISIS control, from the western Anbar province to the northern city of Mosul, Parks says they can't reach families who've been displaced and need help. Those who have fled to safety but are living outside in open areas number about 170,000 in the relatively safe Kurdish north of Iraq, he says.

The dirt and gravel at the Baharka displacement camp in northern Iraq will turn to a sea of freezing mud in the winter rain. Aid workers say they don't have enough blankets and winter clothing for all those displaced by the advance of ISIS. Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images

Even if they distribute every piece of clothing and blanket they have, at least 50,000 children will be left in the cold.

"We've got military situations all around us right now, and those are threats to life," Parks says. "But winter takes lives. It doesn't bargain. You can't push it back. You can't do airstrikes to prevent winter. Winter just kills children."

It's a killer that can't be stopped. At the Baharka displacement camp on the outskirts of Erbil, the families know that.

The tents are set up in a big lot of dirt and gravel that will turn to mud when the rain pours from the sky. Aid workers are trying to elevate the tents onto concrete, to prevent flooding.

Fathi, a young policeman from Mosul who wouldn't give his last name for fear of retribution, fled four months ago, when ISIS took his city. Every night he cries.

We don't want to be here for the winter, he says. We need a solution so we can go home.

Photographers Capture The Sorrow And Pain Of Global Girls

Today is the International Day of the Girl Child. It is a U.N. event with a grand name and a powerful mission. Girls around the world, especially in lower-income countries, often face terrible things, from genital mutilation to child marriage to kidnapping. We asked five photographers, who devote much or all of their time to documenting the lives of global girls, to share photos with special significance and talk about the images.

Meeri Koutaniemi

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Isina and Naserian, both 14, await circumcision, heads shaved as part of the ritual. "It was so much more violent and brutal than I had thought," says Koutaniemi, who made the picture in Kenya this year. Courtesy of Meeri Koutaniemi hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Meeri Koutaniemi

Courtesy of Meeri Koutaniemi

Finnish photojournalist Meeri Koutaniemi first went to document female genital mutilation in Kenya in 2012, working with a Finnish film director at a safe house for girls who'd fled their families to escape circumcision or child marriage. "I felt really weak and sad," she says. "I was thinking I didn't even get any pictures."

"It made an unstoppable impact on me and a desire to continue," she says of that experience. "I was a little bit shocked that this is quite a huge human rights violation toward girls and women, and I wondered why we were not talking about it more." And then I started to think, how could I continue? So, I decided I have to make a book."

Mariella Furrer

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Sheldean Human of Pretoria, South Africa, was seven when she was murdered, then raped, by a stranger in 2007. Furrer photographed her schoolmates: "These two girls represent a situation of incredible pain and loss but they are just so dignified. It breaks my heart." Courtesy of Mariella Furrer hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Mariella Furrer

Courtesy of Mariella Furrer

In 2002, Beirut-born photographer Mariella Furrer got a three-day assignment from an American women's magazine to shoot a story on infant rape in Johannesburg. When she got to the child protection unit, she couldn't believe what she saw. "I was shocked how many children were brought in," she says.

Furrer herself had been sexually abused as a child but kept silent until her 20s. A decade after that assignment, Furrer is still giving voice to the victims. "Although I can't change what happened to these girls," she says, "I do my best to try to make a difference."

Glenna Gordon

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Gordon arranged the photos of some of the kidnapped girls, provided by their families. Top row left to right: Yana Pogu, Rhoda Peters, Saratu Ayuba, Comfort, Bullus, Dorcas Yakubu. Bottom row left to right: Hauwa Mutah, Hajara Isa, Rivkatu Ngalang.'

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Courtesy of Glenna Gordon

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Of all her photos, Gordon was most attached to the images of 16-year-old Dorcas's notebook: "The Eiffel tower is on front. I don't even know if she knew what the Efifel tower is."

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Courtesy of Glenna Gordon

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The hearts in her notebook touched Gordon deeply. "Those hearts show she's such a little girl. I drew hearts in my notebook. I still draw hearts. That made her really human to me."

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Courtesy of Glenna Gordon

Hide caption

"Dorcas and this boy must have been exchanging notes, and she copied the notes in her notebook," Gordon says. "It starts soft and gets more emotional and serious. My favorite line is when he says, 'Hi the remote control of my life. I'm now feeling so much of happiness in my heart.'"

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Courtesy of Glenna Gordon

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A documentary photographer based in New York, Glenna Gordon was on assignment in Nigeria when news broke about #BringBackOurGirls, the online campaign urging the rescue of nearly 300 Nigerian girls abducted from school by the extremist Muslim group Boko Haram. She dropped her plans and left for the town of Chibok, where protests on behalf of the girls were taking place. She wanted to take pictures ... but of what? She began collecting the girls' personal belongings to photograph, aided by Sunday Samuels, a pastor's son whose three cousins were among the kidnapped.

"The girls are missing," she says. "They're missing from my photos, too." And though she photographed only objects, she says it was an emotionally draining assignment. She grew protective of the items. When she had to switch hotels rooms, the hotel manager offered to move her things: "I was like, 'Do not touch my stuff!'"

Stephanie Sinclair

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Nine months pregnant, Niruta, who is 14, arrives at her wedding in Kagati Village, Kathmandu Valley, Nepal on Jan. 23, 2007. Niruta moved in with the family of her 17-year-old husband-to-be and became pregnant when they were engaged — considered acceptable in her society. Stephanie Sinclair hide caption

itoggle caption Stephanie Sinclair

Stephanie Sinclair

For over a decade, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Stephanie Sinclair has turned her lens on child brides. Her image is featured on the Day of the Girl website. "I don't see them as pictures," she says. "I see them as the girls they are, and I carry them around with me every day."

She sees cultural differences in the practice of child marriage in different countries. But there is one similarity. "Girls are always taken out of schools because they're giving birth right away. The girls are commonly very young, their bodies are just not prepared for childbirth. Maternal mortality rates are high. Infant mortality rates are high. The girls aren't even taking folic acid. Of course they're not! Girls can have ruptured uteruses. It is a real physical issue in addition to being a human rights issue."

She plans to continue her work: "I keep going back because I know how important this is."

Lynsey Addario

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Mamma Sessay died as she was delivering twins in this 2010 photograph. The Sierra Leonean wanted to study and earn a degree but at 14 was forced into marriage. /Lynsey Addario hide caption

itoggle caption /Lynsey Addario

Mamma Sessay died as she was delivering twins in this 2010 photograph. The Sierra Leonean wanted to study and earn a degree but at 14 was forced into marriage.

/Lynsey Addario

You may have seen photographs by American-born, London-based Lynsey Addario on the front page of the New York Times or featured in National Geographic. And you may have seen her own face in newspapers and magazines as well. Addario has been kidnapped on the job twice, in 2004 and again in 2011, when she was among a group of journalists held hostage in Libya.

Her goal is to tell the stories of civilians affected by war, focusing on women and girls, whose voices are often harder to hear. When she is not covering a war, she wanders with her camera, documenting the ramifications of childbirth on girls whose bodies are not of an age to bear children.

Day of the Girl

child marriage

International Day of the Girl Child

female genital mutilation

child rape

Postcard From Freetown: On The Beach, Life вЂ” And Dreams вЂ” Go On

Sometimes you can tell a lot about a country just by walking its beaches. That's what I did on my last day in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, where I was on assignment covering the Ebola epidemic.

Standing at water's edge, facing the sea. The smooth blue rollers come splashing in, steady, hypnotic — like oceans anywhere in the world.

But turn around and face the city and you're smacked by a shoreline fouled with plastic bottles and spray cans and yellow sewage. To the right, tangled in the brown seaweed, lies the stiff bloated corpse of a dead dog. Beyond, across the boulevard, is the gray cement skeleton of an abandoned building project.

Alie A. Koroma struggles over the sand on his metal crutches to talk to me. He has time to wander the beach. He's out of work. Akuroma tells me he used to cater to foreign tourists.

"We used to take them [on] excursions on the islands, we have beaches."

That's over now, he says, "because of the Ebola."

Further down the beach I meet four beaming girls. They look to be about 9 or 10 years old. One balances a small plastic tub on top of her head and in it is a collection of beach bounty, including a headless naked Barbie. The kids have also managed to grab some wildlife from the surf.

"Is fish. I find a fish," one tells me.

We chat for a bit as they show me their haul. They ask me my name, then dance down the sand, giggling as they go.

All the seaside restaurants and nightclubs and boutiques are shuttered because of the Ebola emergency. But an outdoor fitness club, a kind of Muscle Beach Freetown, is open.

Under the palm trees there are thick rusted barbells and a wooden bench press sitting in the sand. Four pairs of breathless young women are running through self-defense drills.

It turns out they are rehearsing for an anti-drug movie called Gunshot.

Shouting commands to the women is a hulking presence in a tight blue polo shirt: master trainer Ansumana Bangura.

"This is an action movie," he tells me, "So they are training to get their physical fitness so that we got a very good thing when they're shooting."

Bangura says Gunshot tells the story of someone who's working to prevent drug use among young people and fighting corrupt government officials.

One of the actors he's instructing is a petite 22-year-old named Frances Nicol. She'd love it if her fight scenes in Gunshot lead to a starring role.

"It actually depends on the director. We don't know what the director has for us. But somehow it's an action movie so we're getting ourselves prepared beforehand."

And so even in Sierra Leone in the midst of the devastating Ebola epidemic, a young actor can still hope for her big break.

Freetown

Sierra Leone

ebola

Most Recent Posts

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Wolverine's Death: Superheroes And The Cycle Of Eternal Return

Iraqis Displaced By ISIS Face Another Threat: Winter

Photographers Capture The Sorrow And Pain Of Global Girls

Postcard From Freetown: On The Beach, Life вЂ” And Dreams вЂ” Go On

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