10 Marvel Graphic Novels You Must Read Before You Die

7. Wolverine

He's the best there is at what he does, and what he does isn't very nice. Before this 1982 series by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, Wolverine had neither the popularity nor the insanely convoluted history that he has today, owing to his overexposure in the comic books and the crazy success Hugh Jackman has had portraying him in the films. Up until this point Logan had merely been a member of the main X-Men title's ensemble cast, getting as much screen (or we guess page?) time as Storm, Cyclops or Nightcrawler.

It's in this story, collected into graphic novel format, that his character gets fully developed and he becomes a well rounded, three dimensional anti-hero.

Taking Wolverine completely away from the concerns of the X-Men, this miniseries works perfectly as a piece unto itself - so perfect that it was used as a template for the most recent of his solo movies, in fact.

The Wolverine movie got bogged down in that aforementioned convoluted history, however, whilst the source material is a particularly lean and pacey affair. In fact the 1982 Wolverine isn't really a superhero book at all, but a ninja epic set in the East which lets Miller uncork his love of Japanese works like Lone Wolf And Cub in his art. It also does a great job of making Logan, so often written as a one-note gruff stereotype, human and humane. There's plenty of blockbuster action sequences of him taking on ninja clans, sure, but the bulk of the plot hinges on his tragic romance with future wife Mariko Yashida.

Wolverine is a book that fans of action films, the X-Men or Japanese culture could all enjoy equally for different reasons, a fully realised story that can be used as a springboard to reading more about the character, or enjoyed by itself.