By Marc Strom
Writer Karl Bollers and artist Stephen Segovia take readers back to Logan's past with WOLVERINE: HUNGER, a special eight-page story following up on Barry Windsor-Smith's classic "Weapon X" and available exclusively to Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited subscribers starting on April 22.
"WOLVERINE: HUNGER is set relatively early in Logan's career, before he was a member of the
X-Men, and shows one of the most powerful mutants in the Marvel Universe having to deal with that most basic of human needs: food, and how to get it when there is none to be found," Bollers explains.
At the conclusion of Windsor-Smith's "Weapon X,"
Wolverine escaped the government program that gave him his adamantium skeleton and wandered into
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Preview art by
Stephen Segovia |
the Canadian wilderness, something that Bollers plans on following up on in his own story.
"HUNGER will pick up from Logan's escape from the Weapon X facility and how the process of bonding the adamantium to his skeleton has affected him mentally and emotionally," the writer reveals. "He's in feral mode, roaming the Canadian wilderness with no destination, more beast than man, acting on pure animal instinct, doing whatever is necessary to ensure his own survival."
Bollers chose to tell the eight-page story without using any dialogue or captions to better convey Logan's plight.
"You have to be far more visual in the script, since you don't have the luxury of words to help convey the story's meaning to the reader," Bollers points out of his process. "While doing the panel descriptions for Stephen, I realized that in many cases we'd have to rely on body language and gesture to get our message
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Preview art by
Stephen Segovia |
across as well as using visual cues.
"Most of these techniques are present in comics that have dialogue anyway, which can be pretty instinctive, so in the end it comes down to how well the story is told. If you see a character screaming in anguish, you pretty much get that he or she is in pain. You don't need a large 'Yaaaarrgggghhhhh!!!!' sound effect floating above. You're just more aware of things like that when the story is silent."
When asked where the inspiration for making the story wordless came from, Bollers confesses that he's had this tale in mind for so long he can't clearly summon up its origins.
"I can't actually remember," exclaims Bollers. "I'm serious. I came up with the idea for the story back in the 90's. Marvel didn't really have a book that printed eight-page stories at the time, so I held off on pitching the idea for a really long time.
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Preview art by
Stephen Segovia |
"It was truly amazing working on this digital comic and I would like to give a big thank you to artist Stephen Segovia and color artist Rain Beredo. [I'd also like to thank] editor John Barber and assistant editor Jody Lehup and the most excellent folks of Marvel's Digital Media department."
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