Larry Hama served in Vietnam before he wrote comics, and it shows in a way that separates his Wolverine from everyone else's: he writes the character as someone with military training and military damage, not as an animal who occasionally calms down.
He wrote the solo title for most of a decade, which makes this the longest single-writer stretch the character has ever had.
What defines his writing
Procedure over rage. His Logan plans. He assesses a room, identifies the exits and thinks about what an opponent can and cannot do. The berserker moments land because they are the exception rather than the register.
Technical detail treated seriously. Weapons, tactics and equipment are described by someone who knows them. It gives the books a texture that most superhero comics fake.
Honour as a real subject. Loyalty, obligation and the cost of both run through everything. It is why the supporting cast matters and why the deaths in this run stay with readers.
Long-form patience. Subplots run for years. He was writing for readers who would still be there in thirty issues, and the volumes reward reading in order for that reason.
The Wolverine run
Wolverine Omnibus Vol. 4 and Vol. 5 and Vol. 6 at 1,152 pages collect the bulk of his time on the title.
This is the run where Logan's memories are finally addressed rather than teased: what was done to him, who did it and what he owes the people involved. Every later version of the character's origin, including the films, is working from what was established here.
The art across these volumes includes the work described in our Adam Kubert guide and our Marc Silvestri guide, which is a substantial part of why the run looks as distinctive as it does.
Wolverine: Not Dead Yet Omnibus at 1,392 pages gathers a wider stretch of the character's material from the same era, with several creative teams involved.
The crossovers
X-Men: Age of Apocalypse Omnibus at 1,072 pages and its companion carry his contribution to the alternate-timeline event covered in our Fabian Nicieza guide.
Captain America Lives! Omnibus is the other shared-credit collection on the shelf.
The whole shelf is on the Larry Hama page.
Where to start
One recommendation: Wolverine Omnibus Vol. 4, which is where his run properly gets going and where the memory material starts paying off.
If you want the widest single view of the character in that era, Not Dead Yet covers more ground with more creators involved, and works as a survey rather than as an author's run.
Who should skip this shelf
This is 1990s Marvel with everything that implies: crossovers that interrupt the story, subplots that depend on other titles, and art that varies considerably between volumes. Readers who want a clean self-contained run will find it frequently derailed by whatever the X-line was doing that month.
The military register is also not for everyone. If Wolverine appeals to you as a feral force of nature, Hama's version — deliberate, tactical, weighed down by obligation — may read as too controlled.
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