4. Uncanny X-Men #162
Written by Chris Claremont
Art by Dave Cockrum and Bob Wiacek
Published by Marvel Comics
"Beyond The Farthest Star"
The Short Form: Dealing with spasms of pain and hallucinations, Wolverine is hunted and on the run on an alien planet. Fighting off giant scavengers and members of The Brood (an evil alien parasitic species), Logan realizes that he and the other X-Men have been implanted with Brood larvae that will kill their host bodies as they hatch. Logan's healing factor destroys his embryo, and he vows to rescue the other X-Men or kill them before they hatch.
The Cast:
Wolverine / Logan - The best there is at what he does, being the most prolific super-hero with body hair ever.
The Brood - Intergalactic space rapists.
The Long Form:
We are now in the heart of Chris Claremont's first 15 year run on Uncanny X-Men and it is impossible to overstate how important and influential he was to the success of this title. For over 15 years he was the guiding force behind the book and was directly responsible for turning a low selling title on the fringes of the Marvel Universe into a mind-blowingly successful franchise. He shaped the characterizations of Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Wolverine - and created some of the most famous and popular characters in the title, most notable Kitty Pryde, Rogue, Gambit, Psylocke, and Jubilee (among so many others). The Claremont run goes beyond laying the foundation for the X-Men - in so many ways he created the basic vocabulary and situations that are still being reframed to this day. No one offered more to the legacy of the X-Men than Chris Claremont, and while his later runs (and even later in first first run) lack the quality and clarity he brought to his first five to seven years he deserves an unquestionable amount of credit and respect.
This issue takes place after such seminal stories as The Dark Phoenix Saga or Days of the Future Past, but is part of another very famous storyline - The Brood Saga. Claremont very much introduced the element of outer space adventures into the X-Men mythos with the Shi'ar, and he's playing around in that sand box again here. This is effectively a Wolverine solo story with cameos by the other X-Men, at a time when Wolverine was clearly the breakout star of the book, but before he became the overly ubiquitous presence he is now. This is a pretty famous Wolverine moment as we see his healing factor put to one of its most formidable tests so far - fighting against the alien embryo inside of him. This is before his healing factor was amped up over the years to insane degrees and the battle is a real struggle - leaving significant scars.
It's worth noting that looking back with an older mindset this story is seriously messed up in it's core concept. The X-Men are all basically drugged and raped and implanted with these embryos. Kitty in particular is the only one other than Wolverine to have a sense that something is wrong as it is happening and it pretty clearly reads like an off panel sexual assault. This is made substantially worse by the fact that I think Kitty is like 14 or 15 in the comics at this point. When Wolvie gets implanted we get a terrible grimace as well as a literally dripping "ARRRGH!" sound effect. This particular subtext isn't harped on (in this issue at least) but it's definitely there, and the level of trauma the average super hero must go through that gets glossed over in the actual stories is kind of staggering to really think about.
Who Should Read This: Any X-Men fan. Despite the uncomfortable subtext, these are the classics.
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