Similar to recent films like “Dredd” and “The Raid” (or old ones like “Metropolis”) Claremont creates a spatial metaphor in “Wolverine Alone” that has a hero literally fighting his way up a social hierarchy, one floor at a time, in order to dismantle a crooked system. 1/5 #xmen

In the basement, we find the employees (proles), the ones who maintain the privilege of those above them, but who do not get to participate in it. The main floor is the upper-class, partying and frolicking. Above them, however, is the real power structure – the Inner Circle. 2/5

Wolverine is disregarded. So much so, that he starts below the basement, left for dead in the sewers. From there, he fights his way upward until reaching the top, at which point the X-Men quite literally knock the Hellfire Club down a level or two. 3/5

That the Hellfire Club’s style is British Imperialism adds to the metaphor, highlighting the notion of class oppression and vigorously protected privilege. Watching Wolverine rough up guys in powdered wigs is thus a very cathartic signifier of a sort of proletarian uprising. 4/5

Taken to an extreme, we can actually read Wolverine as a Dickensian hero in this sense. But where Dickens’ protagonists tended to trade on noble suffering and humility, Wolverine prefers to use steel and claws, an objectively more satisfying aesthetic. 5/5 @WolverSteve