Team-up Thoughts

As you've probably noticed on account of me posting very little else, I've been on a massive Nick Fury kick lately. What can I say? I like my men insane, prone to replacing themselves with robot duplicates, and apt to blow shit up. It's a kink.

One thing I've noticed about my massive mainlining of various series and one shots and the like is that...I've actually been really enjoying Wolverine.

This is a fairly big thing for me. See, I don't really like Wolverine. I don't hate him, mind you. Not like I bask in my hate of Nightwing, or even my more general and genuine hate of certain other characters. I think Wolverine's a nifty idea and agree that in the issues where he was first prominent, he was remarkably badass and I can see why so many fans imprinted on him.

Me, though, I've always thought he was kind of overused and overrated. Part of it's probably that I've always been somewhat more sympathetic to the over-responsible, repressed, stick-up-their-ass leader types than I am the renegade bad-boy. Mostly because I think it's a lot EASIER to be the renegade bad-boy than it is to be the responsible leader. Anyone can go half-cocked and be a bad-ass. Being the leader takes work.

I like the interaction between Wolverine and Cyclops, because I like Cyclops, but in the end I find it immensely predictable. Except for the occasional moments of unexpected bad-assery from Scott, or the flash of mutual respect that occasionally drifts its way in there, the encounters seem to follow the same basic pattern they did for the past, what, twenty years? And 9 times out of 10, it seems, Wolverine gets to come out on top and as cool as ever.

It gets awfully tedious, you know?

In contrast, the one shots or crossovers where Wolverine and Fury team up? They don't tend to fit that same pattern for me. Possibly the difference is that Scott Summers, for all his angst and brooding and multitude of issues, is a relatively sane man. Nick Fury, it must be said, really really isn't.

It's hard to be the stereotypical renegade rival bad-boy when your "responsible leader" counterpart is pretty much batshit insane.

Besides, you can't out-renegade Nick Fury. You can try. You can do your whole "Well, if you can't handle it, I will!" type gritty spiel at the end of the whole monologue of deep past connection to the villain of the story, that's when Nick will look at you over his cigar and go "I put a tracer on him when I saved your ass," and then the wind'll be taken from your sails nicely, won't it?

(I enjoy the fact that Nick will force his ally to sit through a monologue of "how I'm connected to this villain" before revealing that he can track the twit the whole time. Because he's a jerk.)

Wolverine doesn't get to coast in his usual interaction patterns when opposite Nick Fury. He's still Wolverine, but the dynamic is a lot less predictable to me. I'm really enjoying it. I may have to hunt down more team-up issues.

...

And on a tangential note, has there ever been a Namor/Nick Fury team-up issue? Because that just strikes me as funny. Especially as both characters seem to grow more kick-ass with the less clothing they wear. The book would essentially be a giant strip-tease. And I would be Amused.