I’ve said before that I’m not a comic speculator – but there are a few instances where I have chanced it. The first time I remember was at Uni. I was poor as fuck, because I decided that rather than getting a shitty job, I would make my student loan last the whole term and spend the rest of the time writing, reading and watching cartoons. And that’s what I did, more or less, although there was a lot of sleeping involved too. Sometimes I even went to lectures.

Around that time, Joe Quesada had taken over at Marvel and was turning the company around in a big way – at least creatively. The big story at the time was that they had decided to tell Wolverine’s origin, in a series appropriately named “Origin”.

I didn’t go to the comic shop in Oxford much that year – it was on the other side of town, and I was keeping a pull list with the one closest to my parent’s home – but when Origin came out, I trekked down on release day to get it, which was stupid because the shop in Oxford was so rubbish, they didn’t put new comics out until Friday at the earliest. I wanted to read it though, so I went back on Friday, and they had it on the shelf. I bought it. I read it. I was entertained.

Then people started talking about how hard it was to find a copy, how badly under-ordered it had been. I think Marvel might were in their “no overprint, no reprints” phase at the time, and pre-orders were still locked down weeks in advance, so as a result, when issue #2 came out, that had the same problem. It even made people even more obsessed with finding a copy of the first issue.

Me, I just went and bought issue #2 off the shelf again, expecting it to blow over. The frenzy didn’t die down, though. At some point between the second and third issues, I realised that while I was enjoying Origin, I wasn’t so desperate to read it that I couldn’t wait. So I stuck it on eBay to see how it’d do. From the sale of issue #1 alone, I made £35. Issue 2 went for £17. This, as I had hoped, was more than enough to cover the purchase of the collected edition when the series was over, and gave me some spending money too. Which I probably bought Buffy DVDs with, knowing me.

Although I’ve flogged a few here and there since (usually when replacing issues with their respective trades) I don’t think I’ve ever made so much money from selling a comic. It was unusual for me to be in that situation – caring enough to buy a comic, but not caring enough to hang onto it when everyone else wanted a copy. I’ve had comics that have become briefly valuable since, but I’ve always wanted to keep them for one reason or another – in many cases, the comic is important to me as an artifact as it is a story. But not then.

In the years after, I’ve never felt tempted to try and recapture that magic by buying “hot” copies off the shelves. Aside from the fact I think scalping is a dick move (and I don’t think I was scalping Origin because I bought it in good faith) it’s not reliable enough to be worth the effort, frankly – comics almost never go up in value in the short term, or even long term – only in the super-long term, and even then not with much reliability. Perhaps, if I’m still alive in 60 years time, I’ll find a reason to regret letting Origin #1 go for the meagre some of £35 – but quite honestly, I don’t think it’ll ever happen.

With X-Men Origins: Wolverine almost ready to hit screens (and making waves today because of a leaked workprint version that’s hit the torrent sites) I took the opportunity to finally buy my own copy of “Origin”. Originally a miniseries by Paul Jenkins and Andy Kubert, published in 2001, the book has been retitled “Wolverine: Origin” to tie in with the film. That’s not all that’s changed though – it’s been 8 years since the button was pushed. Is it still relevant?

In 2001, the idea of telling Wolverine’s definitive origin was considered almost sacrilege by most. And yet, in choosing to tell the story, Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas actually managed to predict the way the wind was blowing. The reasoning, laid down in one of several text pieces the TPB contains, was that Marvel wanted to tell the origin before the movies made it up for them. The story went through many revisions, and if you read some of the proposals that didn’t get made (again, included in the TPB) it’s almost worrying how close they came to screwing it up. Wolverine born in Detroit to a poor working class family? Er, no. Just no.

The story they did tell, however, managed to hit all the right notes. The best evidence that they got it right at all is that 8 years on, the origin has been accepted as part the character’s backstory, without anyone trying to undo or revise it – “Spider-Man: Chapter One”, which merely revised an existing origin, barely lasted 12 months. The success of Wolverine’s origin is that, at its core, it’s is a period-drama love story set in Canada in the 1800s. Stand-alone enough to be iconic, but informing the character just enough to be relevant to his future – even if he doesn’t remember it (which, sometimes, he doesn’t.)

Wolverine, as a character, is far greater than his role in the X-Men, so it’s fitting he has an origin that outstrips the simple “he’s a mutant” beginning that many X-characters can get away with. If there’s any problem with the story, it’s that it’s almost TOO specific. You find out who Wolverine really is, and where he came from – that’s fair enough. You also find out why he says “bub”, why he likes cigars, why he’s into redheads, and all that stuff that, really, didn’t necessarily need to be explained. The story downplays these elements enough to get away with it.

The writing is fairly straightforward, concentrating on telling a good, emotionally engaging story without getting too fancy, and it stands the test of time because of it. Likewise, the art is fantastic – Kubert is arguably one of Wolverine’s defining artists, and it takes someone who can do subtle storytelling to make a series like this work. It’s as close to perfect as a Wolverine origin ever could be, and although Wolverine is almost literally becoming synonymous with “overexposed” right now, if you find yourself wanting to read a classic, individual Wolverine story that stands out from the crowd, there’s no better place to look than here.

Buy Wolverine: Origin from Amazon (UK)

Buy Wolverine: Origin from Amazon (US)

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Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue at random, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

With Captain Marvel now out as a Skrull, I thought I’d give the back-issues another going over to see just how planned Secret Invasion is. This week, I’m going as recent as “Dusting Off” has ever been, with a comic barely a year old – Civil War: The Return.

I think it’s fair to say that fandom’s reaction to this comic was “not favourable”.

Here’s what I said about it back in February ’07:

There’s a lot to complain about. The totally uninteresting way in which the character is brought back – he fell into a hole in space, and here he is – the way it takes great pains to sidestep rather than properly deal with the classic “Death of” story, and worst of all, the complete misuse of the character as the Jailer of the Negative Zone prison. As much as I look forward to a new Captain Marvel series, I can’t help feel that this isn’t the best start for it.

Still, the question: Was Skrull-Vell planned? There are some arguments in favour - the fact that he’s a 70s hero, for instance. You’ll remember in Secret Invasion #1, a whole bunch of 70s heroes crash-land on earth. Some, if not all of those are bound to be Skrulls, and from their reaction to seeing the 00′s heroes, they’re likely to be brainwashed sleeper-Skrulls, as in the case of Captain Marvel. Admittedly, they could’ve come up with this idea post-Marv’s return, but it fits a little too well, especially given that Secret Invasion is ostensibly spinning out of events of the Kree-Skrull War – a 70s crossover itself, which Marv was present for.

There are other things that support the claim – Marv’s appearance and role in Civil War served very little purpose in an already crowded storyline, and was then widely ignored until his appearance in his own miniseries which turned out to be a Secret Invasion prologue. Marvel don’t always make the best decisions, but one thing they’re good at is making sure that when someone comes back from the dead, they’ve got a good story behind it. Marv’s return was an uncharacteristically pointless resurrection.

Things against the claim – well, there’s the actual content of Civil War: The Return, for instance. I’ve been over the entire story with a fine-tooth comb and there’s not even the slightest suggestion that the people behind the story knew he was a Skrull. Nothing in the text remotely hints at it. A valid choice, yes, but not one that supports the idea that it was planned in advance. There is one example of discontinuity – the Marv of The Return doesn’t appear to have the amnesia that the Marv of the Captain Marvel mini does.

There’s also a definite possibility that the negative reaction to Civil War: The Return could’ve caused Marvel to shift gears on bringing the character back (though it’s fair to say, people weren’t so upset with the idea of the return so much as the execution.)

On the “could go either way” front, we can look to a Paul Jenkins Newsarama interview, conducted at the time:

NRAMA: So – this “Return” is a return of an older character?
PJ: All I’ll say is that scenarios had to be discussed and a solution found. The character that’s coming back has a big connection not only to the Marvel Universe, but to the Marvel Universe that we’ve yet to discover, which is in large part, trapped in the Sentry’s memories.

Notice how Jenkins side-steps the question of whether an older character is returning – after all, this Captain Marvel is a “new” Skrull character. The connection to the Sentry is more interesting. It’s either an aborted story for the “real” Captain Marvel, or it’s a hint that something in Secret Invasion is going to involve the Sentry’s backstory somehow. The cryptic reference to the “Marvel Universe we’ve yet to discover” could easily be a reference to the Skrull invasion, which could easily be tied in with the Sentry’s past somehow – we only know the “Sentryless” version of the Kree-Skrull War, for instance. Did Reynolds play some role in it?

Unfortunately, the evidence is ultimately still vague, and the jury’s still out. If you think you’ve got anything to add on the subject, please do so now.