Posted in: Comics | Tagged: wolverine, wolverine statue

Talking About Building A Wolverine Statue In Alberta, Canada With Sameer Singh

Back in 2014, a petition aimed to install a statue of Marvel's number one Mary Sue, Wolverine, in Edmonton made news all over the comic book blogosphere, but ultimately, the statue was never built. Wolverine was killed off by heroic author Charles Soule in the comics, ironically by being trapped inside an adamantium coating, effectively turning the real Wolverine into a permanent statue. But in an unrelated but parallel event, news of the Edmonton statue faded into the internet ether.

But three years later, which is honestly longer than anyone expected, Wolverine is back from the dead in Marvel comics. And now, the idea to immortalize the hairy little runt in bronze has returned, and this time, it's relying on crowdfunding to get the job done instead of Edmonton's local government. All they need is $85,000, or roughly the cost to purchase one month's worth of Marvel's Legacy lenticular variants.

Having failed to capture the hearts of Edmontonians, the statue will now be built in Fort McMurray, which is located further North in Alberta, closer to the area Wolverine was born in. The town even already has a street named after the surly mutant. Backers are invited to help fund the statue on Indiegogo, with the cheapest perk earning the backer's name on the statue's website to me immortalized as a person responsible for making something like this happen. Which side of history that ultimately places you on is yet to be determined.

Back in 2014, we interviewed Brian LaBelle, the man behind the original idea to build a 1000-foot tall statue of Wolverine (the current plan is for "life size," or 4'2″), at our old stomping ground, The Outhouse. Now, like any good superhero story, it seems it's time to cash in on the same concept again with a sequel.

With that in mind, we sat down Sameer Singh, the man behind the current effort, to get inside his mind about the plan to build a Wolverine statue. Check out the interview below.

Since this project was first revealed to the world back in 2014, the planned location of the Wolverine status has changed from Edmonton to Fort McMurray. Why don't the people of Edmonton deserve a statue of Wolverine?

I think it comes down to a deeply rooted misconception and maybe a bit of a (provincial) capital city conceit: we think we are in Northern Alberta, but we're not. Look at a map of the province and you'll see we're squarely situated in central-southern Alberta. Or maybe south-central Alberta. But definitely not Northern AB: you can drive in that direction for 9 more hours from Edmonton before you reach the provincial border.

But at nearly 57 degrees latitude north, Fort McMurray most definitely is. Wolverine traditionally hails from Northern Alberta in the conventional canon (as does the species). For example, in the 1997 Flashback series, "A Whiff of Sartre's Madeline", Logan meets (and is shot by) Heather & James Hudson after stumbling into them in Wood Buffalo National Park, one of Canada's largest nature reserves. You can't hunt in a national park, but that's another story. If he was just plainly identified as an "Albertan" then someone in Calgary would have done it already, and tossed on a Flames jersey just to rub it in. He belongs in Fort Mac, as it's commonly known.

You've talked about putting the statue in a park on Wolverine Drive. What's the story with the street? Who decided to name it after Wolverine?

Probably Titanic director James Cameron, when he came up a few years ago to see the oilsands industry that sustains the economy of Fort Mac. I think he's planning on an Avatar-X-men crossover soon and wanted to get in on the location scouting early.

You mention on the Indiegogo page that Alberta has a lot of cool, offbeat monuments. One of them is a replica of the Starship Enterprise. Have you considered putting the Wolverine statue there? Because that would be like an inter-universe crossover, "What If Wolverine was on Star Trek?" I know you've got your heart set on the whole Wolverine Drive thing, but you should think about it.

We have a professional cycling race known as the Tour of Alberta. We're going to replace it with a Geek Tour of Alberta, where everyone (in full costume) starts from the tip of Wolverine's claws and rides 500+ miles south to the finish line, which will be strung up between the nacelles of the U.S.S. Enterprise in Vulcan. As a bonus, the course will run past the giant Ukrainian Easter Egg in Vegreville and the world's largest sausage in Mundare.

Are you working with Brian LaBelle on this project?

Yep. I approached Brian about it last year and he was happy to start it up again.

$85,000 is a lot of money for a Wolverine statue. You could buy, like, five Wolverine comics at current Marvel prices for that. I did a little research and I think I can get you a better deal. Sideshow Collectibles has a bronze Wolverine statue for $299. Brand new. It's only 20 inches tall, which is a little bit shorter than the actual Wolverine, but you'd really save a lot of money if you went with that one.

Canada has experienced a sharp increase in garden gnome theft. We are reluctant to feed the underground trade in the diminutive humanoid market with a series of easily-kidnappable Wolverine momentos.

Another idea, if you're into recycling, which I'm assuming you are because you're from Canada. They're getting rid of all the old Confederate monuments here in the States. You could probably get your hands on some of those pretty cheap, mine them for parts, and then you just have to do a little reconstruction on the statues to turn them into Wolverine. Most of them already have the sideburns. And by taking these off our hands, you'd be helping to tear down symbols of racism and oppression and convert them into symbols of hope. You'd be doing a service not only for the people of Alberta, for but for the entire human race.

I'd be happy to recycle the past to make something better for the future. We also need some serious muttonchops, and maybe the one good thing we can extract from the statues of Confederate generals will be a collection of immortalized sideburns.

Back in 2014, just as the momentum to build a Wolverine statue was picking up, Marvel killed him off in the comics. Now, just after they've brought him back, the statue plan is back as well. Okay, one time is a coincidence. If Marvel kills Wolverine off again, you understand that everyone is going to have to consider it your fault, right?

If that happens, that will give us a chance to use the Hadron Collider to whip up a new elemental particle, name it adamantium and ask Elon Musk to buy us a new statue made out of it.

Did you have to secure Marvel's permission to make the statue? Because I don't know if you know this, but there's this guy in charge over there name Ike Perlmutter, and he's notoriously against licensing X-Men and Fantastic Four stuff because Fox owns their movie rights. It's a whole big thing. He donated a bunch of money to Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

We want to show that there is community buy-in so ideally, we're going to raise the funds first and approach Marvel afterwards (although Larry Hama told me at the Edmonton Expo that a statue in Alberta "makes sense" and X-Men writer Chris Claremont has also endorsed it on social media). We might follow the steps the Detroit Robocop statue took in becoming a reality.

What is it about the people of Alberta that causes them to identify with a hairy maniac who brutally kills his enemies with razor-sharp claws while in a berserker rage? Is it a hockey thing?

Yes. Blocking the TV during a Stanley Cup playoff game is a decapitation-worthy offense.

The Philadelphia Flyers won the Stanley Cup when Len Wein created the character in 1974 so he was probably inspired by the blinding rage of Philly sports fans.

You've got four reward tiers on the Indiegogo campaign. $10, $25, $50, and $100. The $50 level is listed as "TBD: Perk to be determined." Is that a meta commentary on the way the Marvel announces titles and they list the creative team or the artist as TBA but they still want people to pre-order the book? Or do you have something special in store?

We will come up with something special. Not sure what yet, but because this is going to be a tangible thing, people who aren't able to visit the statue in person should have something they can physically get their hands on.

What's your favorite Wolverine story?

I like it whenever he goes to Japan and fights samurais, Silver or otherwise. I read Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's Lone Wolf & Cub as a teenager and was completely enthralled by their portrait of feudal Japan and one righteous man's quest to navigate through it. Logan is a great interpretation of a reluctant ronin hacking and slashing his way through a harsh and judgmental world.

Finally, the Indiegogo is a flexible funding campaign, which means that even if you don't raise the whole $85,000, you still get the money. But you've made a promise on the campaign page too. Where does the money go if the statue doesn't get built?

If for any reason we can't build the statue (or if we exceed our fundraising goal), we'll donate the funds raised to the preservation of wolverines (the species) in Northern Alberta. They're not endangered but they are a species at risk, so it would be nice for nerdy fanboyism to make a positive difference in the world and not just be responsible for sending death threats to strangers over movies about fictional characters they haven't seen yet.

Thanks for taking the time to answer our dumb questions. Anything you'd like to add?

I think I'm good on that front. Thanks for the great questions!

To support building the Wolverine statue in Fort McMurray, head over to the Indiegogo page.

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