What I really want to know and don't like, is Marvel's creepy fixation on placing more writing quality emphasis on feminized versions of the superior male characters. Superior characters in that they are their own invention and not simply a female spin knock-off.

Examples include

Hulk - She Hulk
Wolverine - X 23
Captain Marvel - Ms Marvel
Spider-Man - Spider Woman

Can't marvel throw their talent at a female character with more originality, if that's what they are going for. For that matter DC doesn't deviate much from this pattern either.

Batman and Captain America are not most known for those lines. You're right, that was overdoing it with Wolverine, but I still would have loved to see it. Now if Thor or Hercules did it----

So what lines are they most known for.

You could go with 'superstitious and cowardly lot' or 'Avengers Assemble!' or ... pretty much anything involving the mainstream character rather than some alternate reality version.

If you're going alternate reality, I'd even put Michael Keaton's "'Who are you?!' - 'I'm Batman.'" and "I've got to go to work." lines as recognizable above the God #### Batman line you cited.

BERSERKER BARRAGE! BERSERKER BARRAGE! DRILL CLAW! BERSERKER BARRAGE! DRILL CLAW! DRILL CLAW!

This was the beginning of the end of wolvie for me. In my heart, he'll always be that feisty canadian with gnar sideburns, a penchant for cigars and beer, the innate superhuman ability to not take #### from anyone. My wolvie doesn't say "i'm the best at what i do" he says "nuff said."

"To the Batcave"

I think you’ve hit upon an important point (sorry for not quoting the whole post, it's all good stuff), one of the two things I don’t care for in a lot of contemporary comic writing:

1) The lazy writing that is bred by the ‘untold secret origin.’

Claremont’s Wolverine and his mysterious past pioneered this. It used to be cool that we knew nothing about Wolverine. As you said, over time the ‘sedimentation’ of writers adding to his origin put the onus on new writers who needed to invent other, untold aspects of Wolverine to match the cool factor associated with revealing previous, untold aspects of Wolverine. This works once in awhile, but in my mind, when writers (and not only of Wolverine) rely too much on this it becomes a crutch. It’s essentially an implicit admission that they need to rewrite a character (at least in part) in order to make them a character the writer can move forward with. The lost art of comic writing, in my mind, is to take someone else’s character as it is, warts and all, and move him or her forward in a direction you want to go. Quesada’s toadying to retcon-happy writers has NOT helped to cultivate this much-neglected skill.


2) The fanboy dialogue.

In Days of Old, comic writing was often criticized in the mainstream culture for its unrealistically stiff, heroic dialogue (think Adam West’s Batman calling Robin ‘old friend’ all the time). For me, the pendulum has now swung too far the other way. Every character now talks in the flip clichés and snappy patter (or if you’re Bendis, even thinks in flip clichés and snappy patter) that every fanboy wishes they could talk in at some point in their lives to tell somebody off or come across as ‘uber-cool.’ Just about every line of dialogue in the Ultimates 3 miniseries up to this point (heck, the entire Ultimate universe) falls in this category. Other writers specialize in ‘hard-boiled’ dialogue or ‘insultingly superior’ dialogue for all their characters (and yes, I’m thinking of specific authors, but I won’t name them as I’ll probably be getting enough heat for this post already…). It works for some characters (Spider-Man has always done this), but can become another crutch for writers if it replaces varied, character-specific patterns of speaking.

In short, I find both of these problems, in essence, boil down to violations of the old rule of ‘everything in moderation,’ and that’s the problem with Wolverine. He was cooler when he was the only hard-boiled, cliché-spouting, get-the-job-done-whatever-the-cost, I’ve got an untold secret origin that’ll blow your socks off character; now he’s just the first among far too many equals in this mold.

But that’s just my take. Principled disagreement is welcome, as always.

I can buy the 616 "Avengers Assemble" whatever philosophical meaning that has.

Who are you? I'm Batman, the GD Batman, Batman damnit. Semantics, all the same, I still think I at least picked that one correctly. "To the batcave" sounds more like the TV show version.

Which is even worse yet.

Captain America has more fanboys than those 3 put together.

As cool as Captain America is, that sounds like really bad math, to me.

Wait...people actually think captain america is cool??? I had...no idea...

He's a pretty cool guy.

Wolverine is the only person to take out the Hulk single handedly while taking out Wendigo, how many other super heroes can do that. Not to mention he has been kick butt since before Captain America was born. Bottom line is Wolverine is the epitome of the word warrior and every writer in Marvel and DC would write him the same way. The only bad thing about him is he talks to much lately.