Friday 7 December 2012

Bisecting Wolverine

It's the eternal question: what would happen if you divided Wolverine in half from the top of his head down to his crotch? He has mad healing powers, so we can assume that if you destroyed the left half, a new right half would grow; if you destroyed the right half then a new left half would grow. But if you merely separated the two halves, what would happen?

We asked some of Marvel's top writers. Well, Paul and Kieron, anyway.

WriterTitlePosition on the problem of Wolverine bisection.
Jason AaronWolverine,
Wolverine and the X-Men
Actually, I forgot to ask him that. Damn.
Paul CornellWolverineNo. It wouldn't work. You'd still only get one Wolverine.
Kieron GillenUncanny X-MenYou would get two Wolverines. They then wouldn't fight. They would do the other thing.

[Update on December 11, 2012: SpaceSquid has considered the implications of Wolverine bisection more deeply than I personally would have admitted to.]

8 comments:

  1. Paul Cornell's answer begs a follow-up: which one grows into a new Wolverine? And also, if (say) the left half can't grow into a new Wolverine, that must mean that if Wolverine's right side is immolated, he must then die, right?

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    1. Exactly! And it's not just Wolverine's right side that's special, by that logic you can narrow it down to a specific part of Wolverine that is the seed, like perhaps his heart. That's not how it seems to work, so the bits of Wolverine must know, via a morphic field or something.

      On the other hand, the two Wolverines case would explain why there are so many of him on teams, without the need to involve Skrulls.

      I plan to ask many more X-Men writers this in February at London Super Comic Con.

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    2. Heh. I just wrote up my thoughts on this for the blog (it'll be up this evening), and had the exact same idea: use this to justify the eleventy million Wolverines currently in action across the Marvel U.

      I shall have to get to some conventions myself one of these days. If only I didn't hate crowds, travel, spending money and enjoying myself...

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    3. Paul did have a more specific reason for why this wouldn't work, but it was rather out-of-universe.

      If you don't like crowds I would not recommend the MCM Expo as a first convention (well, assuming the NEC events are like the ExCeL ones, which seems likely).

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    4. Second, actually; I went to an NEC last winter under sufferance. It seemed ridiculous not to go, living near Coventry (and now even closer, in Solihull), but I wasn't particularly blowna away. More practice needed at smaller venues, I think. Perhaps I'll pull a Josh Ritter and create my own convention using potatoes as the crowd; get used to the idea that way.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. I've made it! I just deleted my first spam.

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    1. It's a good feeling, isn't it? Though sometimes I wonder if I assume too much. Maybe there really is a keen X-Men fan in Korea who loves my work so much he doesn't feel the need to comment on what I've done, and simply offer me discount golf clubs instead.

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